This Summer (DSP Prompt 8/31)

Okay, I know it's not officially the last day of summer, but (in the US) after this coming holiday weekend, all kids will be back in school. So, what did you get out of summer this year? Did you learn anything? Do anything new? Wrap it up for us!

Well, my summer wasn't actually that great. I was busy enough and there were some great moments (like Musical Theatre Camp, for example), but what will always characterize this summer is the fact that I lost a baby on June 12...

It was so surreal. I had my cycle in April and then, right on schedule, my monthly visitor in May, but I kept feeling bad and was having some pretty severe cramping and small bits of spotting. I thought I had a cyst or something, so I went to the doc, and he told me I was pregnant. I was two weeks out from AF, so I didn't think it was possible, but apparently AF doesn't always mean you aren't pregnant (which is a terrible thing to someone who has IF problems, because now I can't even count on that to mean anything, ya know?)...

Anyway, I knew from the beginning that it was not a viable pregnancy. And so one week later, at 7 weeks pregnant, I lost my baby.

That is what I will remember about this summer. But I will also remember how great my DH was and how great my friends were--Trish was at my house when I found out for sure that I was going to miscarry, and she cried with me. I will remember what it felt like to know that my baby was in heaven, and the strange peace I felt about that. And I will remain thankful that I was able to take the Eucharist while I was still pregnant and that my favorite priest was able to say a blessing on my family of 5, even if we were only a family of 5 for a very short time...

So, this summer has changed me.

My little girl started preschool...

Evie started preschool this week, and she did so well despite the fact that she had been telling me she did not want to go ("No school. I go Rose's.")! Here is a layout of her first day:



I used Bella Gypsy Design's "Longing for Fall" kit with a special preschool add on that Lena and Tabatha made for me! Thanks Tabby and Lena!!

Message on my Gravestone (DSP Prompt 8/30)

Prompt: For what would you like to be remembered after you have gone?

I'd like people to remember me and say that I was genuine and loyal. I would like to be remembered as someone who cared and listened and participated fully in my life...


If you died tomorrow, what could they put on your gravestone?

Well, I guess there are a lot of things, but the first thing that popped into my head is this:

"SHE DID IT! SHE DID NOT TURN OUT LIKE HER MOTHER!"

Funny, yes, but important to me! :)

Showing Love (DSP Prompt 8/29)

Prompt:
What do you do to let others know you love them?
What do others do that make you feel loved?

Gosh, what do I do to let others know I love them? The first thing that came to mind is that I let my family know I love them by cooking for them, doing laundry, carting them around, etc...But more importantly, I try to take some time to play with my family, even if it is as simple as dancing to a song or singing with them or reading a book. I hope I let my friends know them by remembering little things and being available to them.

I am so super blessed because lots of people show my how much they love me:

My dh has stuck with me for a little over 10 years now (if you include the time we dated), and that is a show of love in and of itself!! :)

My kids are always so happy to see my when I have been away, even for a short time. And it makes me feel loved to see their smiling faces.

My friends are the best--Trish has many times dropped whatever she was doing to keep my child/ren. Just yesterday morning when I was late taking Cater to school, she waited at school so that she could walk him in and I could go on to work. It is small things like that make me know I am loved...It is not unusual to get a phone message or little email from my friends that says nothing more than "Hello--I love you" (in a nutshell).

Did I mention I was blessed?

Who Do I Wish I Knew Better (DSP Blog--08/28)

My dad died when I was 19 years old, and it occurred to me not too long ago how little of my life I actually spent with him...

My parents divorced when I was 3 years old, and my dad moved to Texas when I was 5. I spent all of my summers with him until I was 17, and then I spent my entire summer with him after my freshman year of college. I spent 8-10 hours a day in the hospital with him and watched him die in stages....

And I did know him for 19 years, but turning 30 has really brought back a lot of the grief for me.

Here is the thing: I am finally myself--I am comfortable with myself; I am confident. I wish so much that we could sit down now and talk. There are so many things I would want to know now, as an adult. My dad played and sang in night clubs--I wish I had known that side of him. And I know it is a side of him that I would have known only as an adult.

I sang at a funeral recently, and afterwards I cried for my father for the first time in a long time. I cried because it was the best I had ever sang, and I was so very sad. I was sad because I realized how awesome it feels now to sing--the whole time my dad knew me, I was so nervous to sing. But now I just let go, and I wish so much that I could sing for him now. I wish he could sit down at the piano and cock his head and play and that I could sing with that abandon that he always tried to get me to sing with....

I wish that I could talk to him about my children.

I am just now so keenly aware that no matter how well I knew my father at age 19, there will always be parts of him that I never will know or see...

Random Acts of Kindness (DSP Blog 8/25)

Prompt: If you were able to, what 3 random acts of kindness would you do where no one would know that you did it?

This one is a toughy, in a way, but I do have a couple of ideas, all depend upon me winning the lottery, mind you:

1. I would pay off my best friend's house, cars, everything, and I would put money in trust for all of my godchildren to have money for college. They work so hard and have accomplished so much in one generation (first to graduate college, own a home, etc), and I think to be relieved of that burden would be so awesome for them. But I would do it in such a way so that they would never be able to prove it was me because I would not want them to ever feel beholden, ya know?

2. I would buy my husband a big truck and a boat and a house at the lake...he works so hard and I think if we hadn't married, he would be living in a shack on the lake, fishing a lot and being solitary...maybe not a random act of kindness, but an act of kindness nonetheless...

3. I would, hmmm..., third one is harder.....I would pay for all of my friends to go through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University--there is no gift like financial independence.

My Education (DSP--08/23/06)

Gosh, my most recent degree was a Master of Technical and Professional Communication, which is what they used to call technical writing. Of course now it included multimedia and document design and web design and so they gave it a long, fancy name...essentially it is all the kinds of writing that are practical and useful. I think it says a lot about me that I chose this degree and loved it so much...

When I was younger (like a teenager and even undergraduate), I liked to read literature, or at least pretend to read literature. I thought of myself as an artsy English major type, but I wasn't really. The truth is this: I love to read, but I found a lot of what is taught in Literature classes to be, well, pointless. It was not practical to me, and after many, many literature classes as an undergraduate, I finally realized this. My other undergrad degree was in history, and I found it to be more to my liking--it was more concrete to me somehow, although I would venture to guess that most history professors would debate that with me.

So, I graduated and didn't go back for a graduate degree until like 6 years later. And by that time the English Department had a new degree--technical and professional communication. IT WAS MADE FOR ME!!! It was while I was working on this degree that I first got to teach, and that has become my real passion, but that is probably another blog.

The long and short of it is this: I learned a lot as a Literature major and as a graduate student in Tech & Prof Comm, but what I really learned is that I am fundamentally a really practical person. Writing with a practical purpose appeals to me, and I love that what I chose to do encompassed my love of practicality along with my love of the written word...

I am...(Brainstorming for DSP's NKOTB5, rnd3)

I am my Memaw's granddaughter, and my mother's daughter, and part of a great line of women. Only girl in my generation, I was pampered and cherished. But truly, I am my Memaw's granddaugher. It amazes me how much alike we are in temprament--even though we are 50 years apart.

Music

Maybe do a layout about something that defines me (find the fuzzibunz layout)...