Pardon the Small Talk

Some of you who know me, and many who don’t may guess that I write as a way of processing.  It’s my way of thinking and recording and documenting.  I like to be as honest as I can be because otherwise it is without purpose.  I don’t think that I owe the world an explanation of my life, and I don’t think it’s bad to keep things to myself.  However, not sharing something that I desire to write about is very difficult.  If you can picture all the words floating around my head, it’s like there’s a big elephant standing right in the middle of all these words getting connected.

So imagine what it’s like having multiple elephants standing in my head, and how difficult that has made writing.  One elephant is of course designing a big project that is due at a magazine at the end of the month.  I want to write about that process, and I will…just not yet.  Then there’s a few elephants roaming in my family life that are really big, and I can’t wait to tell you all about them, but they’re hinging on making sure we’ve finished getting everything prepared for those announcements.  There are favors to be asked of people, and permissions to still come through etc. etc.  So I have to wait, and while I’m great at keeping other people’s secrets, I’m terrible at keeping my own.

Then there’s one elephant I’d love to talk about but am too chicken to.  Plain and simple.  Talking about it will put me into some sort of mothering camp, and I hate mothering camps.  Some mothers do things this way, and they sit in one camp and throw stones at the other mothers doing things a different way in the other camp.  So if you start rattling off some place, or belief you have arrived after a journey, people say, “O, you’ve arrived in ‘This Camp'”, then all the mothers know which category, or camp you belong to, and it’s just annoying because I like having mom friends in all camps.  This day in age it’s tricky to do because each camp only sees the genius of their own philosophy, and sees the flaws in the philosophy at all the other camps.  Sometimes I feel like keeping my mouth shut so I can walk in between camps and glean knowledge from each of them without someone thinking I’m in their camp to judge because I obviously belong in a different one.

So I sit down at the computer and my words get all jumbled up, and I wonder what in the world to write, so I write little.  I am not enjoying that because it feels like I’m making small talk with a good friend over coffee.  I’m not into small talk and have the habit of getting to deep subjects so quickly I think it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. 

All those elephants are surrounded by all these little rabbits and they go running off on their little rabbit trails, and I cannot follow any of them.  I like rabbit trails too.  They’re fun.

So to follow the advice of Mrs. Dashwood in “Sense and Sensibility”, if I cannot think of anything appropriate to write I should restrict my comments to the weather.

I spent all afternoon a few days ago planting some flowers in pots and setting them around the garden in the rocky places.  That evening, a storm came through and in the morning, all my work was ruined and the pots were broken.  It was very discouraging.

Now that I’m on a roll, I’ll try to list as many things as I can tell you that are all true.  We’ll call it a writing exercise.

 -Solveig hasn’t taken her afternoon nap in 2 days now because of the kids’ schedule bringing them here and there and she falls asleep in the car for 5 minutes and then calls that her 2 hour afternoon nap.  I’m very frustrated by this.  She falls apart every day around supper because she’s so tired.

-Solveig has started waking up at night too.  I think her sleep schedule is off during the day and that’s why.  Still, knowing why doesn’t make it any less tiresome.

-I’m tired.

-I should be planting the rest of my garden on this fine day and I am not.  I have no acceptable excuse for this, and for some reason, I’m fine with that.

-I moved all of the new school books, the ones in storage boxes on and around the dining room table onto the cabinet space (since the bookshelf space isn’t done) in the new, unfinished built-in that Knut is working on in his spare time, even though they don’t belong there.  I can move them when the place they belong is built.  This built in is designed for storage of our school supplies and growing school library.  O, and for Knut’s imaginary new t.v. too that he thinks he’s getting.

-Knut doesn’t have any spare time.

-Another round of swimming lessons starts tomorrow.

-We have made rhubarb crisp twice now this season.

-I’ve given up coffee…again.  So now I just get caffeine through chocolate, therefore I’m now eating much more chocolate.