So I took a wee break...

and  stopped back in...

and we were at the same ole' same ole' yet again...

Bush is satan/Bush is great

Jesus rules/not so fast

quick/hot  topic of the day:

Christmas is under attack!  Save it quick!  If we must I suppose we could allow Hannukah... it is actually of the Judeo-Christian heritage... and Kwanzaa is non-religious and sometimes celebrated in addition to Christmas, so I guess that's okay... as long as we all acknowledge that really Christmas is the reason for the season (would winter even come without it?  hmmmm.... let me check with CS Lewis)

but those other December holidays?

Bodhi day?

I don't think so...

and let's not even get into Yule/Winter Solstice with it's wierd rituals that... ummm... look a whole lot like... yup... Christmas.... that's even scarier than actual scary rituals................

overlooked topic of the day: (imo obviously)
Darfur

most personally ironic topic of the day:

the debate over whether soldiers think things in Iraq are going well or not.  w.o.w.

and the beat goes on....

rock on folks...

... interrupted by...

a new bike!

and actual beautiful weather in the desert...

and making costumes for the kids (one princess bride "in the wedding dress, mommy", and one Ben Kenobe. "not the young one, mommy, the old one with the white hair."

and apple picking

and did I mention my new bike?

and actual days off for my husband

and helping with homework

and helping my daughter with dance and gymnastics

and...

well...

life. 

remember life?

yeah.  catch ya if/when it slows down...

...maybe.

So our neighbors have a daughter that plays with our daughter quite a bit.  And they have a son who follows her here.  He's 4, loves dinosaurs, is more distractable than a flea, and more than anything would like some attention.  He does not want to play house.  Or dress-up.  Or babies.  He does not want to 'be the kitty'. He *does* want to play... his game, his way, on his timetable... in other words, now.  No now this.  Now this over here.  Now that. 

At first he focused on my son.  But... my son is nine, and can focus better than most adults I know.  And does.  This makes him *incredibly* boring to a 4 year old.  So I was next.  Only I kept doing things like cleaning, or cooking, or other mommy things while oohing and aahing over his dinosaur stories, and really, that only works for so long.  Especially when you're 4.  So it was back to the girls. Unfortunately, this is where we began to run into the troubles many 4 year olds have when things aren't going their way... hitting, and not listening.  So, we've had to establish some ground rules, and sometimes, we've had to send him home.  He tried walking out the door, turning around, and knocking again.  That didn't work.  So he tried wallking all the way to the sidewalk and coming back.  No dice.  Eventually, he made it the whole way up the street. 

Now, whenever he comes over, we remind him of the rules.  He cannot hit and he has to listen the first time, or he'll have to go home.  We're not sure how much of this he gets, but he's been doing better lately.

So yesterday, the kids were outside with my husband, and down he came, following his sister.  So my husband said, "Okay, you need to remember the rules.  No hitting, and you have to listen the first time, or you're out of the game." 

To which the little guy replied...

"I like football." 



Yeah.  I like football too, kiddo.

the dog will not stop squeaking...

and I know exactly how she feels.

for a month now, I get up, get the kids ready for school, and we all mount up on bikes or scooters (I'm always on a bike) and head to school.  The neighbor's daughter rides with us.  Then I ride back, take the dog (the squeaking one) for a run with me on the bike, and come back for our poor old arthritic dog, who I walk around the block with squeaky doing her cool-down lap.  I'll be honest, for the first half hour I'm up I keep thinking of reasons why today I'm *not* going to ride.  I'm not going to struggle for air as I hike it up the hill, I'm not going to pedal so fast my legs burn, I'm not going to get all sweaty and smelly first thing in the morning.  I'm not going to start my day sucking wind with my face roughly the color of Barney.  But... when it comes down to time to go, I go.  I put on my sneakers, and check the kids' helmets, and make sure we have everything, and pedal off shouting things like "stay together!" and "stop at the stop sign!"

Yesterday, my bike broke.  I use the term 'my' loosely, as it is actually the bike my mother brought me after it had done hard time collecting dust in her various garages.  There are people whose castoffs you want, and people who, when offering you something of theirs they no longer want, inspire you to feign deafness.  My mother is one of the latter.  I knew this going in, but... even now, I wouldn't change it.  Because I wouldn't trade this last month of riding the kids to school for anything.  ANYTHING.  No matter how I gasp for a breath.  No matter how much I want to just roll over and go back to sleep in the morning.  Neither the sleep nor the air would I trade. 

But this morning, there was no bike for me to ride.  MDH is off, so he got on his bike and rode with them... and the dog and I stayed home, and watched them go.

She is still squeaking.  And if I could hit that note, I would probably join her.

The first time I was accused of being ideallistic was when I was in Jr High.  As a class exercise, I was engaged in a debate over the fate of trees.  I refused to cop to being ideallistic, because my entire point was that one could take their ideals and make them *practical* with just a wee bit of thought, flexibility, and ingenuity.

Yes... I was highly ideallistic.

Yesterday MDH (my dea husband) came home a wee bit cranky.  The news is always on at work, so he is force-steeped in it.  And everyone from the brand-new barely 18 recruit to the crusty guard folk has an opinion matched only in its extremity by their ferocity to shove it at everyone they meet.  Of course it is delivered with the full assumption that the receiver will a) agree fully and b) be grateful.  In the meantime he's watching the same people barely manage their jobs while talking about how their own life-management is going.  This they are non-chalant about.  But they know, by god, who Brad Pitt should be dating, how to evacuate an entire region of the united states... twice... what the tax rate, interest rate, and price of oil should be, the purpose of the UN and how it should be carried out, what version of what religion we should *all* be practicing, what type of court the supreme court should be, and of course, what to do in Iraq so that the entire place will be filled with daisies sometime in the next two months.  And they are pissed that the people actually in these positions are not as smart as they are.  And even more pissed at other americans who disagree with them.  Turn on the tv... more of the same.  Two minutes of news for every 28 of conjecture and opinion.  Internet? Blogs?  Rinse, lather, repeat.  Everyone just as sure they are right and everyone else is full of it.

Oddly enough, MDH and I came to the same conclusion yesterday.  ENOUGH already. He asked me if we were getting old and crotchety... I said maybe we were.  When I was young I was going to save the world.  But when I was young, I was... mentally incapacitated is a gently way of putting it. 

I still want to save the world.  But I've learned a few things.  Life is actually not that very dramatic.  It really isn't.  And I have a choice as to what I will do with the dramas I am presented.  And I have a life, right here, which I am presented with every day.  The decisions I am faced with on a daily basis include how I will balance my own health and well-being with the care of my family.  How I will treat the people around me.  And those decisions, when managed properly, do not depend on me getting everyone else to agree with my inherent rightness.  They are simple, daily, and quite enough to manage when one truly pays attention to them.  It seems to me this is the way things are set up intentionally.  Manage your own house, and the circle of effect widens and ripples out naturally.  Attempting to jump out and manage the ideas and decisions of others before you've even mastered your own is merely a lesson in futility and frustration.  So yes... I *do* want to save the world.  And I will do it by starting *here* with myself... mdh... my children... the people I meet every day.  Rather than distracting myself with dramas I find easy to point at with my righteousness, I will practice right here, right now, and trust that it is enough.  And if there is more for me to do, it will be shown to me. Because becoming as rabid as some of the folks I've met, can *not* be good for me, or mdh, or my children, or the people I meet... and I'd really rather spread a little positive than all that negative, stressed-out, foaming-at-the-mouth mess.  It just can't be good for us, ya know?