So I am sure you noticed that I haven't written much lately.

2016 knocked me for multiple loops, and the stress going in to 2017 wasn't much better.  Although I had developed the habit of writing every week, soon it devolved to every 2 weeks, then every month.  It wasn't that I lacked anything to say; I had lost my writing ritual, and re-gaining it has been one of my great challenges.

Actually, during this last year or so, as my children and I have adapted to any number of startling and profound changes, we have found that a number of our rituals have either been seriously modified, or eliminated altogether.  We are not living in what we had once defined as normal circumstances, so we adapt as we can to a narrower version of what normal looks like today. Less material things, unless they are a necessity, was of course the first change we made.  Living in a motel room the size of an efficiency apartment necessitates that we keep the "stuff" down to an absolute minimum. With a growing teenager, clothes need to be purchased at intervals to make sure they fit properly, and are not worn out.  Space needs dictate that for everything that comes in, something else must go out.  Such is the law of living in small spaces.  And with a small kitchen with little storage space, groceries are bought while keeping in mind where exactly can said groceries be stored, and for how long.

With every item or habit that was left behind with our last place there were a couple of little rituals that take place around my pay days that I kept in place, at least to the extent that I could.  I suppose that because even in trying times, evn the smallest thing can lend a little comfort.

For both of my children, I have collected some item that they expressed interest in.  For my son, it was Hot Wheels cars, which we unfortunately lost in our former storage unit.  For my daughter, it's Hello Kitty: when I can find them, the tiny, Beanie Babies, and when they are not expensive, the larger plushie dolls.  With the ravages of both early adolescence and ADHD wreaking havoc on my already stressed daughter's emotional state, the Hello Kittys function both as a little reward for continuing to keep it together, even if not perfectly, and at all times, and a reminder that we will get to a place where she can get the remainder of her collection out of storage, and display it again.  Our lives weren't always this way, nor will they always be this way.  The world is fluid, and nothing always remains the same. So in that way, the Hello Kittys also represent a kind of hope; the hope that at some point, our lives can return to some semblance of the normal that we used to know.

I surprised a couple of my co-workers the other day by stating that I have never been on a vacation in my entire adult life.  Never.  Anytime I use vacation days, I either have something to do, somewhere to go, or I have to, for some reason or another.  And even then, I usuallyend up performing some task or running some errand that I otherwise would not have had time to do.  Or as my daughter put it last night, when I commented that we didn't have anything that we had to do until late tomorrow, so we could relax during the day, "No.  You will find SOMETHING that needs to be done.  You always do."

Guilty.

As a single parent of two people with moderate to severe issues, I find myself often in the unenviable position of hyper-awareness of the kids moods (a survival skill), and micro-management of their needs to make sure that their issues don't overwhelm their achievements.  This is a second full-time job outside of my regular full-time job, and that is with only advising my son, who as an adult, still has some level of difficulty managing his own affairs.  With my daughter, I am seemingly always in full "Mother on top of everything" mode: emailing teachers, touching base with her sitter, and generally making sure that I am never caught off guard by any of her words or actions.  Or lack thereof.  I am "on" at all times, and rarely ever alone, either at home or in the car.

Which is why I try to protect my payday Friday breakfast.

I work an alternate work schedule, called a 9/80.  All this means is that I still work 80 hours, it's just compressed into 9 days instead of 10, which results in me having a day off every other week.  My regular day off is the Friday after payday.  So my RDO ritual is basically unchanged since my daughter started school: On my day off, I take her to school myself, which she loves, run whatever errands I need to run, and I treat myself to a breakfast that is NOT fast food: cooked by someone else, in a restaurant, and served to me on a plate that I do not have to was myself.  Mercifully, thanks to places like Dennys and Norms, this is something that can be done inexpensively, but it is one small pleasure I reserve for myself, once every two weeks.  I get to eat one meal alone.  No moderating arguments.  No trying to engage a bored teen in conversation from the other side of a phone.  No warnings about only ordering something if you are going to eat it.  Just my favorite meal of the day, eaten in peace, with some favorite reading material by my side, and a cup of coffee that I can drink while it is still warm.

Of course as my financial situation has fluctuated, I have had to occasionally forgo this part of my day off Friday ritual, and I feel seriously deprived when that happens.  Much like Ashley with the Hello Kittys, this is sometimes my only little glimpse of joy, and reminder that not life was always this way. Sometimes it is my gift to myself for continuing to do what I know is the right thing to do, even as my paycheck disappears into bills and obligations the minute I get it.  I suppose I see it as a little act of defiance:  I am bold enough to spend $10-15 on myself, by myself, once every two weeks. My little admission being that I do need some sort of little break to make up for the vacations that I don't take.

Which I am hoping to change in the next couple of years.  With two of my sisters and my mother to soon be out of town, I now have a reason to try to find ways to get out and travel.  What with taking real vacations, and actually going somewhere, I may not need my small rituals anymore.  But I may just keep them, just because.  Comforts, even small ones, are hard to find, and worth keeping when you find them.

I was a reader long before I was a writer.

I didn't come to avid reading naturally, or early.  I ended up learning to read early because my great grandmother ran a daycare, and I was around when she was helping everyone with homework.  My ability to read well at an early age was a nifty parlor trick that got a tiny version of me lots of attention from the big people, so I read everything I could in order to show off at pick-up time.  I clearly remember picking up a copy of a flyer that got sent home with one of the kids off of the table and reading it.  No one thought I could possibly read every word on the flyer, so my great grandmother told me to read it out loud.  Imagine everyone's surprise when the 1st grader sounded out the word "auditorium" without any assistance, or prompting.

Although reading assignments for school were never an issue for me, reading for pleasure never really crossed my mind until 7th grade.  I will always remember 7th grade, specifically, because that's when I was introduced to the teen novel "The Outsiders".  I finished the book in a couple of sittings, and light years ahead of the class.  I loved it, and ended up not only re-reading it, but reading all of S.E.Hinton's novels because I was so fascinated by the world of teens and young adults in the Oklahoma of the late 50's and early 60's that she drew on as inspiration for her novels.  From then on, I was drawn to the world of fiction, and reading became one of my favorite pastimes.I read all of the youth and young adult fiction of the time, and by high school had developed a serious appreciation for cheesy romance novels (ok, ok.  I was just reading for the steamy parts. I was a repressed kid from a slightly conservative family. It happens.)

What really turned me on to reading, not just fiction, but prose, essays, and other points of view, was something I wasn't even supposed to be reading.

Those of us born in the late 60's and 70's, and were in our teens in the 80's and 90's were the last great generation of latch-key kids.  We came straight home from school (more or less), and let ourselves in with our own set of keys.  In our house, that means we picked up the mail off the floor, and left it on a nearby table where my parents would see it when they walked in.

Among the bills, junk mail and sales papers, were my Dad's copy of Reader's Digest.  Once a month, he availed himself of short articles, jokes, quotes, and points of view that may have been opposite his own.  What initially intrigued me about Reader's Digest was the Table of Contents listed on the cover.  I have always been the kind of person that once something caught my eye, I just HAD to read it.  Now being that this was my Dad's subscription, and I didn't exactly have permission to read it before he did, my tween mind saw the challenge as reading it very carefully, so as not to wrinkle or bend the pages, and put it back before he got home.

My Dad, who caught on very quickly to the slightly bent pages, told me in a very amused voice one evening, that although he had no problem with me reading it, just let him read it first, then he would happily leave it out for me to read.

This began my current life long love affair with the little magazine, and introduced me to two writers, among others, who would inform my style of writing for the ext 30-plus years.

I was first introduced to Erma Bombeck during my son's infancy, when I read a short, humor piece that had been re-printed from one of her many books.  I am not kidding when I say that I was desperately looking for information after I had my son, as I was only 21 years old, and had no idea what I was doing.  Because parenting has always been a competitive sport, I was completely unaware that I could laugh at things like potty-training, kids saying embarassing things at exactly the wrong moment, and 1000 other little things that can drive you crazy when raising little people.  Being able to read Erma's funny, and ultimately, wise, little tidbits got me through so much of my son's childhood, and also showed me that you don't always have to write James Michener length novels in order to be a writer.  Sometimes simplicity is the best tool in your toolbox.

This simplicity is what drew me to the next essayist.  Several years after I started reading Erma Bombeck's work, I was introduced to the quiet, reflective world of Robert Fulghum.  I was introduced to his work the same way many people were: via the essay "All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten".  Of course it's not comprehensive, but I was stunned at his phiolosophical, but very straightforward, take on life.  Sometimes, he mused, the answers to our big questions in life are found in the places we are least likely to look: our humble beginnings.  Reading through his body of work after that, I continued to see that same warmth, wit and wisdom displayed on every topic he covered from his pursuit of a favorite meal, to interactions with neighbors, to his hindsight regarding the practice of religion.  With Fulghum, I realized that not only is humility the better part of philosophy, it might be the best part.

And it is with humility, dear readers, that I leave you with this last post of an incredibly long and somewhat painful year.  I will return next year, my fourth year in this exercise, with what I hope will be with, wisdom, and some insight into this space we all share.  You have been kind, and exceptionally patient with my musings over the last 3 1/2 years.  I also hope that I can be a little more consistent with my content in the coming year, as there will be so much to talk about.

Good Night, Dear Readers.  Take care, and Be well.

It is a warm, mid-September  early evening here in the South Bay.  The children are out of the house, and I am "resting", and preparing to go back to work, after a week of fighting the flu.  As I listen to the traffic racing by just outside my window, I contemplate the past few months: the summer, as it were, of my discontent.

I am sure that you noticed that I haven't written anything in a while.  There were quite a few attempts, but at no point could I get past more than a few sentences.

My father, Milton Washington, died on May 19th in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was living, one week before he was to escort his youngest daughter, my younger sister, down the aisle at her wedding.  In what was likely to be one of the strangest emotional moments in our lives, my sisters and I found ourselves preparing for both my sister's wedding, and our father's funeral, all in the same week.  I wrote my father's obituary on a Saturday morning, emailed it to my older sister, then dressed my daughter to be an attendant in her aunt's wedding, heading out to the celebration shortly after.  It was a wonderful service and celebration, tinged with just a hint of the bittersweet, for the glaring absence of someone that was supposed to be there.  And the day after my sister returned from her honeymoon, we help my father's funeral.

May was a helluva month.

Yesterday, we had our father's ashes scattered over the spot in the Santa Monica mountains just opposite of where they filmed the TV show MASH, which was one of his favorite shows.

On Monday, September 19th, he would have been 66 years old.

And except for a brief moment, the moment I found out for sure that he was gone, I haven't cried.

Shock, grief, anger and regret have played through my mind and heart at various times over the last few months, sometimes overlapping at odd junctures where you wouldn't expect them.  But I had supposed that because he lived in another state, and I hadn't seen him in a bit, I thought I would just have a delayed reaction.

Or not.

If you talk to each of his three daughters, like the stories in the synoptic gospels, you will get slightly different versions of the same person.  Milton gave each of his daughter's a different side of him, neither perfect, nor horrific, but ultimately, entirely too human: another person muddling his way through life, doing the best he could with the tools he had.  One could argue that his preferred methods for coping with a relatively young marriage and parenthood in the early 70's left something to be desired, but one could also argue that despite the psychological bumps and emotional bruises that come along with a person trying to figure out parenting while still trying to grow up himself, we three girls actually turned out none the worse for wear. Two Master's Degrees and a skilled trades-person aren't bad outcomes.

Maybe my own guilt over an un-returned voice mail, figuring that I would see him in a week anyway, and was in no mood for one of his long phone conversations, and admitting to myself that I was sort of avoiding him.

Or perhaps it was the realization that, rather than spending anymore time or emotional energy replaying the past, even if in an effort to repair anything I though wrong or off, I was now forced to push forward, as now nothing could ever be said again, to explain or rationalize our common story with the wholly uncommon elements.

And Dad has gone, and we go on...

It is interesting to contemplate; this relationship between sons and their mothers.

Especially when the mother in question is parenting on her own.

I have talked extensively in this space about my darling daughter: her wit, her intelligence, her perseverance in the face of circumstances that might hobble another child.
​
But I don't say nearly as much about my son.

​Possibly because, in my own mind, I'm not really sure how to talk about him.

There is a certain group of mothers whose sons can do no wrong.  No matter what is going on in their lives, their sons are heroes.  Everything they touch turns to gold, or will, eventually.  In all honesty, they have every right to be proud of the accomplishments their sons have made.  They have made every correct turn, always taken the right path, and have remained steadily on course for eventual success.

​On the other end of the spectrum are the mothers whose sons made terrible choices, and are either incarcerated, dead, or well on their way to either fate.  Some of these mother tried everything they could to make sure that their sons had decent lives, but in the end, none of that mattered.  This is NOT the way their sons were raised, and the man they see is not the boy they saw growing up.  This is the group most vilified in popular media.  Especially if there was no father in the home.  The reason for the absence of the male parent doesn't matter; there was no male role model, so any and all parenting was pre-determined to end in failure.

And then there are those sons that fall into neither group.  Neither reaching the lofty heights of perceived success, nor the terrifying lows of a life gone tragically off course.  They are flailing somewhere in the middle, quite literally neither here, nor there.  Sometimes they are continuing their education post high school; sometimes they are working; most times they have no idea what they really want to do.  They are not bad people, often telling those that inquire about their latest change in direction because in all honesty they've changed their mind so many times even they can't remember what they originally wanted to do.

It is in this wispy gray area that my son exists.  Funny, talented, and utterly frustrated by his own shortcomings as he embarks on his latest run at getting his life to the point where the world determines it should be: a 23 year old should have a job, a car, and his own apartment, excuses be damned.  It is a different relationship, this one between a parent, and an adult child with an issue or two that may be hindering his ability to move as fast as his peers or get the same results.  Me, the parent, trying to be both understanding, as I have been through a great deal of this already, (with a child to take care of to boot), and nurturing but firm, without being pushy or nagging; and Him, the son, wanting badly to be the independent young man, running to make up for past missteps, and trying to deal with the issues that are preventing the move forward.  All while dealing with a certain level of snarky condescension from adults who are supposed to be in a position to help, advise, or at least encourage him get to the next steps in his journey, but are far too jaded to be of any real assistance.

As I watch him crawl, walk, run, stumble and fall, then start the process all over again in an effort to reach this or that goal, I marvel at  his willingness to keep trying until he find out what fits him in a world that expects all young people to identify a goal as soon as possible, then stick with it until the end.  There was no promotion ceremony from Elementary school or Middle school for this son. And after going far too long without any help for a learning difference, and it's related co-morbities, no high school graduation either, as he dropped out.  I observed during a frustrated conversation with him one night that I have spent most of his life waiting for him to FINISH something.  As I study his hurt, defeated and angry eyes, I realize that I just want to be able to brag about my son the way I hear my friends bragging about theirs, which is completely unfair to him.  We have come up through some strange and trying times, this young man and I, and as hard as it is for me to realize that it is even harder for him, this teetering between where he is and where he wants to be.  The burden of managing other people's expectations, as ridiculous as they sometimes are, is now on his shoulders, and he is finding that the yoke of adulthood can strangle just as fast, if not faster, than the one he wore as a child.

Occasionally, I look back over the times and struggles we've had over these last going on 24 years now, and wonder how he made it through, even when I admittedly was still learning how to be an adequate parent. I love my son, obviously, and was always determined to do right by him, even at enormous personal cost to myself, if that's what it took.  I look at him now, and see traces of both his father, and myself: His father's temperament, mellowed by my sense of the absurd; his father's hair and chin, with my eyes and nose; His father's nonchalance about most politics, mixed with my passion about issues that affect me directly. In the midst of this, he still manages to be uniquely himself, which is all he should ever be required to be.

Really, this is the story of patience for a late bloomer, in a world that expects early and continual success.  But the rose that blooms latest smells just as sweet as the rose that bloomed first.  We just have to continue to nourish, water, prune, and WAIT, until the rose is ready.  Like all things in nature, it will happen when the time is right, not when we want it to.

​As it should be.

 May I be completely honest with you for a minute?

I wasn't always a Christian.

I mean that to say that while I was raised in church (first Baptist, then non-denominational, a long stretch of non-attendance, and now Lutheran), the early part of my life was a lot of ritual performed out of habit, always doing what had always been done.  How I actually lived, however, was an endless loop of experiences and regret when those experiences didn't turn out the way I thought they would.  Or to be honest, I couldn't get away with what I saw my friends getting away with, at least not completely unscathed.  We all called ourselves Christians; we had all been raised in church, and knew, at least peripherally, that there were certain expectations for our lives and behavior, we just chose not to meet them.

Looking back from a vantage point of 20-plus years, I now realize that we were part of a very common group of Christians.  We called ourselves Christian more out of habit than anything else, but our personal practice of it was incidental at best, and completely non-existent at worst.  This is not a condemnation.  There is a time in every young person who was raised in a religious household's life, when they begin to question what they were taught, and if that is what they still believe.  It is a natural part of growth, and an important transition from merely practicing your parents faith, to forming your own point of view, and spiritual life.

Or not.  I suppose this is why I have no quarrel with questioners, atheists, or anyone who has a different spiritual practice than I do.  Different points of view are a healthy part of a functioning society. Especially considering the behavior of some of us Christians.  I will be the first to admit that sometimes it's our own behavior that gives people pause.

At some point, I posted on Facebook that I didn't have an issue with either this song or a couple of others that were either denying the existence of God outright, or at least seriously questioning everything those of us who were raised in a faith environment, were taught to believe.  Although, viewing the above video now, I notice how many of these disasters are really the results of man's greed, selfishness, and contempt for everything and anybody that has no personal benefit to himself.  We Christians are not immune to these same characteristics, and I wonder if part of the reason most denominations are seeing a drop in weekly attendance is a lack of critical self examination that might reveal what part we play in the problem of how Christianity is popularly perceived.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7fkjv_pet-shop-boys-it-s-a-sin-1987_music

The video linked above, for the song titled "It's a Sin" by English band The Pet Shop Boys, shows songwriter Neil Tennant's take on his Catholic upbringing in England.  Based on personal accounts of those who no longer attend services, the Catholic Church seemed to depend on guilt over perceived sins as a means of gaining obedience to entrenched church doctrine.  The entrenched church doctrine being at least part of the problem.  I give the current Pope, Francis, a lot of credit for trying to change the direction of the Catholic church to at least be somewhat more inclusive.  While he is being applauded for practicing the philosophy "Change Begins at the Top", this still might not stop the slow trajectory of individuals and families away from weekly attendance and participation.  There is a very different set of questions for that.

This song, "Loving the Alien" by David Bowie, delves a bit into Christian history, and the origins of our faith.  It asks more questions than it answers, which is kind of the point.  How much do we really know about the faith we practice?  And if we knew more, would that make us better practitioners of our own faith?  Would we still lie, steal, gossip, backbite?  Would we still practice usury, mean-spiritedness, and spew vile rhetoric at others, as well as each other, then still stand before the world and continue to call ourselves Christian?  Will we continue to teach our children one thing, do another, then try to cover it all with "Do as I say, Not as I do", knowing that just underneath the surface, it is our hypocritical nature that is driving the younger generation out of church more than anything else?

Spirituality is as old as the Earth itself, organized religion has existed for thousands of years, and while I doubt either of these things is going to change anytime soon, our approach is going to have to.  Not just in terms of how we get our message out to the world, but how we conduct ourselves while teaching it.  We will never be able to answer those honest questions, if the askers' are so turned off by the messenger that they don't bother to ask.

Methinks that's where our true challenge is coming from.

Hello, Dear Readers!

Took me awhile to get anything started this year, at least partially because my darling daughter and I have been taking turns getting sick.  Kimberley Clarke must love us, as much Kleenex as we've been going through these last couple of months or so.  Combined with being almost insanely busy at work, as much as I have jotted down the many, many things we will eventually be discussing (and believe me, there are some goodies coming up!), I haven't stopped to put an actual post together since the end of December.  

We will be remedying that in the VERY near future.  As I take care of us, you take care of you, and we will talk again soon.

​I promise.

It's not unusual for me to be awake at odd hours of the night.

My mind is almost always constantly moving from idea to concept to words that might need to written down at some point, to things I wish I'd remembered during the day.  This non-stop buzzing most often wakes me up multiple times during the night, not stopping until the alarm alerts me that I should probably begin preparing for my day job.


I like to consider New Years Eve the habitual insomniac's favorite holiday.  We weren't going to sleep anyway (or, we were going to wake up again), so what better an excuse to remain awake until midnight to ring in the New Year.

This year, as always, I will spend the minutes just preceding midnight summarizing this year, and trying to visualize where I would like to be next year.  I will likely focus on the very things that kept me awake all night this year, and those things I hope to change in the New Year.

I will think about the subtle feeling that something wasn't right with the apartment we had just moved into, and my excitement that I had been invited to test for a promotion.

I will remember the day I took the test, walking out of the testing feeling like I had passed, even if barely, and driving home while taking a phone call that no one wants to receive.  I will recall arriving home, sitting my daughter down, and telling her that one of her friends had passed away.  For once, I had to step away from my little "I can handle everything by myself" island, and enlist some additional support for my daughter while she was going through all of this.

I will never forget holding her through the funeral of her four year old friend for the rest of my life.

As the clock ticks down, I will remember the frantic scrambling of feet above my head, running upstairs to find both of my children curled up in chairs, trying to stay away from the mice they had just seen in the apartment.  I will also remember them taking up baseball bats and covering what room openings they could, moving furniture to try and draw the mice out in order to kill the mice themselves.

I will think of my happiness to find that my son had been accepted into Job Corps, followed by my mixed feelings when the call came for him to report to San Diego so quickly.  A small get together with friends, old and new, prayer, a family dinner, then he was on his way.

A fast move, wherein my daughter and I hauled only what could fit into my car to a small storage, then found a way to live only on things that could only fit in my car in one trip.

It's been one hell of a year.

There is the thought that everything changes at midnight on New Year's Eve.  All of the trials and troubles of the past year fade away, and a clean slate is granted to start fresh with the new year.  I think we all like to believe that, especially when the past year has been a particularly hard one.  Any year that feels like one long night, with only a promise of the day to come, has all that live through it only too happy to see it come to an end.

But like most insomniacs will tell you, dawn eventually comes.  Slowly, but steadily, light will begin to peek through the gaps of blinds and shutters.  The minutes will dwindle to seconds, and this long, dark night of 2015 will end.

I, and so many others, are absolutely ready for morning.  Welcome, 2016.

Everybody has a "thing": a certain little something that catches your notice when you first meet someone.  Because no one can immediately see what kind of personality a person has, more than likely your initial "thing" will be something physical.  And we all know some body part aficionados: legs, breasts, hair.  We are all at least a little guilty of being mesmerized by some aspect of another person's outward appearance.

I am just as guilty as anybody.  I am about as into male objectification as most single women my age.  I marveled at the well formed bodies of the men in Magic Mike, and I enjoy the, ahem, sight seeing on warm days in Southern California, when men turn to tank tops and shorts for relief from the heat.

But if I were to be completely honest, I would admit that I am a huge sucker for a beautiful pair of eyes.  Color doesn't matter.  I always thought it was a cliche that the eyes were the windows to the soul.  I don't know if I would go quite that far, but I know that really paying attention, and looking right at people during a conversation, can often tell you almost all you need to know about that person.

It's a habit I picked up after taking a class on work habits and study skills at a local community college.  We went through a section on different types of listening, and I was most struck by the instructor's definition of active listening: When you are completely silent, and absolutely focused on the person you are in a conversation with.  

Far beyond just looking away when they are not telling the complete truth (and even that isn't always necessarily true), you will always be able to get pretty close to what's going on with people internally if you watch their eyes during a conversation.  You will learn that even while smiling and insisting that they are "okay",someone's eyes can tell you that they are actually in the worst pain of their lives.  It takes a lot of learned empathy to see a person's life through their eyes, not just their words.  I've heard people say the sweetest things, while seeing the judgement and condescension in their eyes.  It was more than a touch disconcerting, and unfortunately confirmed suspicions I already harbored about those same people.

If I ever decide that I want to be in another relationship, I hope to find a person with nice eyes.  Not blue or green or hazel necessarily.  Although those would be nice, I mean a person whose eyes show me that kindness and understanding are a part of their internal makeup.  I've mentioned before that as much as I like a pretty face, internal qualities are extremely important, and we all need somewhere to start ascertaining what those qualities are.  I figure the eyes are as good a place to start as any.

  It's been a pretty quiet day.

For the first time in months, there was no reason to rise early.  My daughter slept until she was ready to wake up, and we both lounged around, watching movies, reading, and generally enjoying the day until we were ready to go to the restaurant for dinner.  We had a nice, unhurried dinner, and returned home in a happy food coma.  A glass of wine later, while finishing a movie I had started before dinner, I sat back and considered the day.


This was our first Thanksgiving without my son, and my younger sister, whom we generally hung out with for the last couple of Thanksgivings was out of town.  We are living in a motel room with only a microwave and a refrigerator.  My car is making a weird noise, and Tuesday afternoon, the seat started this weird lean to one side.  In theory, I should have been slightly unhappy about today.

What I actually feel, is blessed.  There is a roof over my daughter's and my head.  There are a lot of people that can't say that.  We were able to go to a restaurant for dinner,  Might not be what I had in mind, but at least we were able to do that:  there are plenty of people who could not.  My car note pretty much busted my budget for the next two weeks, but I am able to maintain my transportation, as I remember what my life was like on the bus.

What I have chosen, on this day, and everyday, is gratitude.  My situation is not all it could be, but today, and everyday, I maintain that there will always be someone in more dire circumstances that I, and that I should be grateful for the blessings I do have.  Always strive to do, and be, better, but never forget to be thankful for the small things you do have.

This occurs to me as we in the US prepare for Black Friday, the day when stores open frighteningly early in the morning to entice consumers to start spending for Christmas gifts for family and friends.  In all honesty, the large retailers hope to appeal to the shopper's latent feelings of something missing in their lives that they hope to get them to fill up with more stuff.  Coming on the heals of Thanksgiving, the day of gratitude for what you currently have, it's especially ironic to have all of the advertising leading up to this day focused on convincing you that you absolutely need to add something new to your life or home.  In fact, you need it so badly that you are willing to camp out overnight for it, and fight other shoppers for it.  Maybe if we could learn to be more grateful for what we already have, we could start to avoid the inevitable scenes of violence that we see every year over the Thanksgiving holidays.

I refuse to be a part of the madness. Yes, this is the start of the Holiday season, but I will not be joining the insane crowds.  I will remember what I have, and where I am, and find ways to revel in some kind of peace.  The one thing in really short supply, that we can definitely use more of.  Perhaps a short hike, a trip to the park, or maybe just a walk around the block.  So long as it is something that will get me outside for a little while, away from the TV, with all of it's non-stop advertising, and finding some small sliver of peace in the outdoors.  

Have a peaceful day, Dear Reader.

I'm not generally a person to let my gas tank get to the point where the Low Fuel Indicator turns on.

I know that running one's vehicle with the tank so close to empty will eventually harm the fuel pump, among other things, and that is bad for the car in general.  But there I was, on a Monday evening, on my way home from work when the indicator light came on, with my paycheck not hitting the bank until early Wednesday morning, and still needing to get my daughter back and forth to her daily before and after care, and myself round trip to the Metro station for work.  All I could do for the next day was pray that my car would start, and just get me to where I needed to go until Wednesday.  I had to go as far as I could before the one gallon left in the reserve portion of the gas tank ran completely out.

It was a VERY long couple of days.

I thought about this again over Halloween weekend, as I watched my daughter try mightily through two extremely long days that started with a 6:30am wake-up to get ready for school (and get into costume for the school's Halloween festivities), a full day at school, followed by a sleepover for a friend's birthday, in which very little sleeping actually happened, but a couple of dips in a hotel pool which did a number on her pressed, 4C hair, getting back on Saturday, which was Halloween, around 2:00, followed by eating while I ran my errands, only to get back to our room to endure the 2 hour ordeal that was washing, conditioning, de-tangling (an unholy mess!), and blow drying her by then dry and very matted hair.  By then it was time to get into Halloween costume #2 for trick or treating and a Halloween party for grownups and kids given by some good friends of ours later on.

Unlike a car that might start sputtering when low on gas, my daughter got unusually cranky and overly picky about little things when hitting her reserves.  The costume itched, and the wig I had purchased to go with the costume was driving her crazy.  The friends she was to go trick or treating with were running a bit late, and she fussed about that until they showed up. She mustered enough energy for a festive round of trick or treating, but I could tell after an hour or so that she was definitely starting to get tired.  By the time we parted ways with her friends drove to the party, and grabbed something to eat and drink, I could tell that she wasn't going to last too much longer.  My daughter then proceeded to lean against my arm, and fall fast asleep in the middle of an extremely loud, boisterous party.  It was very difficult to wake her up, walk her to the car, get back to the room, then wake her up a second time in order to get her into the room, and ready for bed.

She had just done the human equivalent of "running on fumes": pushing herself to use every last bit of energy until she quite literally had nothing left, and had to rest to replenish.

I am considering this as I listen to the local news while watching my daughter sleep on an early Sunday morning.

Soon, this peace will give way to the normal noises of my daughter and I preparing for our weekly church service, although this Sunday, we will be visiting our sister church to sing.

There are a lot of people who wonder about those like me:  This group who regularly rouse themselves out of a comfortable bed on a weekly basis to attend a worship service.  For me, it is the equivalent of refilling my tank, after a long week of having my faith challenged, tested, and almost run into the ground.  Especially when I've been going through some iteration or other of the same issue for a long period of time.  My father calls those pro-longed faith fights.  You pray and pray, and do everything physically, that you are supposed to do to change, or improve, your situation, but there is no movement for long periods of time. These issues can drain you, physically and spiritually.  My method of replenishment is to spend a few hours each week among kind, like minded people (Not to say that there isn't anyone there that is mean-spirited or petty.  I've just become an expert at avoiding the overwhelmingly negative.) who may or may not have been through what I've been through, and at least TRY to understand.  I need that little bit of understanding and empathy to get through my own dark moments when I wonder if any of my ongoing efforts are ever going to yield any results.

It's getting late, and I need to get dressed.  I suppose I could talk a bit more about how it's other Christians that make it hard for Christians to be Christians, but that is a subject for another post.

​Time to go refill my tank.