Random Thoughts of a Wine Soaked Mind

It started with a series of sneezes.  My body telling me to slow down.   It wasn’t a lecture or a scream, more like a quiet suggestion that I stop moving at a break neck speed.  Of course I ignored it.  Then came the stuffy nose, the headache, the chills, the fever and the body aches.  This was my body yelling and screaming at me to slow the heck down.  After two days of being miserable I finally hit the wall.  I just couldn’t go to work, I couldn’t clean the house, hell I could barely move off the sofa.

After three months of a pace that would make a marathon runner tired I have been forced to slow down and rest.  Resting is always something I “say” I put at the top of my priority list, but in reality it isn’t something I do often.  Between moving from one home to another, closing out a sales quarter, the holidays and normal daily family stress and activities I had worn myself out.

I have really rested for the past two days.  I took time OFF work (only working a few hours a day), watched more TV than a 13-year-old girl and slept.  It seems as if the antibiotics are kicking in and I might be myself again very soon.  This morning I woke up feeling better for the first time in two weeks.

I haven’t put make up on in three days and the only time I have left the house was to visit the doctor.  It is no vacation but sometimes we need to listen to our bodies and take time to simply be still.  Of course when you are a mother of four you can never totally stop but with the help of a husband who is sympathetic I have rested, finally for the first time in months.

There really is no heroism in going when you are sick.  There is a certain amount of maturity in admitting that you need down time, a time of rest. It is a shame that for most of us we do not take this time until our body demands we do it.  Although I have said before I will learn from my mistakes, I am going to try to learn from this latest adventure with illness.

Maybe next time I need a break, to slow down, I will do in a way that does not include a Z-pack, multiple boxes of tissues and a blanket on the sofa.  I think next time I would like it to include a quiet vacation with my husband and my kids.  Yep, next time I am going to skip the sick and go right for the vacation.

Although my Mother tried every year to make Christmas a magical as possible, my father said the same thing each year.

“Christmas is canceled due to a lack of interest.”

As a very young girl I would try to figure out what the heck he meant.  At five-years-old I really thought there was movement a foot to rid the month of December of Christmas.  Year after year Christmas came, presents were unwrapped and cookies were baked.  Christmas was never canceled.

As an older child and teenager I began to think my father was just the personification of The Grinch.  I thought he was just cranky and hated the holidays.  Some of that may have been accurate but now as an adult I now understand what he was saying.

It is not that I want to cancel Christmas.  I want the holiday season to actually last longer.  I want December to be a month with six weeks.  It seems as if I never have enough time or money to make the holiday season anything but a stressful mess for myself.

There is a certain amount of pressure on parents to provide a holiday fantasy for kids.  My husband becomes frustrated each year with the commercialism of Christmas.  Part of that comes from the financial aspects of showering kids with yards of plastic crap that will be broken before winter break is over and part of it comes from his true abiding faith in his Lord.

He asked few days ago “how did the celebration of the birth of Christ become a time to  buy your kids a bunch of stuff you can’t afford?”

I didn’t have an answer and he didn’t expect one.

The entire point I am trying to make is I completely understand why my Dad tried to “cancel” Christmas every year.  The push and pressure of commercialism is much for parents to bear.

This year we are going to focus on family and food and surprises.  I am looking forward to Friday and Saturday, not because my children will have a ton of gifts to open on Christmas morning, but because I have my children and they have us.

I may not have the time or resources to shower the kids with computers and video games and new cell phones.  I will make the time to make cut out Christmas cookies with them today.  I will find the time to make a wonderful holiday meal next Saturday.  I will have time and resources to cuddle with them and watch Toy Story on TV, like we did last night.

I honestly don’t think they will remember that Christmas 2010 was the year they didn’t get something.  I do pray that they remember that Christmas in their house when they were children was full of fun and love and Mom and Dad were always there for them.  There is a value in those memories you can’t find a Target or the mall!

And an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. – Luke 2:9

And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people. – Luke 2:10

for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. – Luke 2:11

I realized recently that my sarcastic view of life around me has been gone lately.  I know it will return but for now I am in the middle of absolute change.

I sit in a nearly empty room, a room just three years ago we remodeled to accommodate our growing family.  My feet rest on a beautiful hickory floor we picked out and look at walls void of decoration painted in a color I chose.  I do feel a bit of failure.  Failure to make good choices, failure to live up to personal responsibility and failure to provide stability to those who were counting on it and didn’t even know they were counting on it.

This is my last weekend in my house.  If I am honest I can say I never really loved this house.  It wasn’t my dream house, it is a big house, a gift from heaven at a time when we needed a lot of space.  I think the outside of the house is plain and rather ugly.  The kitchen is not functional for two cooks.  The ranch style of the house is my least favorite floor plan.  It is okay that I won’t live here anymore.  Perhaps this change would be easier if it had been my choice of when to leave but it isn’t my choice, it is the choice of the universe.

Everyone worries what the neighbor’s think.  It seems as if other people rejoice in the failure of others because it makes them feel better.  I know it should not matter.  I am proud of our most recent decisions and I am so proud that my husband and I have not taken all the stress out on each other.  Thankfully, we have not had bad days together.  If I am particularly down, he is my rock and when he is down, I try to be the voice of positivity.  More than ever in our 15 year marriage we are learning that we can really count on each other.

Perhaps that is the one thing that most people don’t understand about us.  We have to count on each other because we are all we have.  So often we hear friends talk about hard times and how their parents helped them out.  Other people have been given second chances through inheritance or live off the efforts of their parents.  We see it time and time again and become quite smug with each other.   The fact is we don’t have that magic person to call, it is all on us and sometimes we just have to suck it up and realize our mistakes are our own.

I do have to give glory to God.  The lessons he is giving us are the catalyst for this absolute change.  Not just a change in residence.  Not just the change of going from overly proud homeowner to more humble home renter.  If I really focus I can see how God has given this family exactly what it needs at the exact time when it is needed.

So, as I move through the motions of the worse part of this move I will be happy and content knowing my family is happy and healthy.  As I continually remind my children that there will be no big Christmas gifts this year I will rest assured this will be the year they begin to learn that gifts come in forms other than material gain.

My morning indulgence is over and it is time to get to work.  As I remind my children, I will remind myself, idle hands are the devil’s workshop and only through hard work and challenge and absolute change can we grow in character and become the kind of people who affect change rather than be overcome by change.

On some stress scale they say moving is nearly as stressful as a loved one passing away.  I don’t know about that.  I have lost both my parents and I have moved many times I would have to say the death of my parents was much more stressful.  With that being said, moving is pretty darn stressful.  We are in the middle of a big move.

We may not be moving across the country but we are moving from our home of the past six years to a new home.  Each day when I walk into my “old” house it is more and more empty.  My husband has worked for two days slowly moving furniture and other things to the new house.  It is kind of weird to walk into this house as it gets emptier and bigger.  I haven’t been up to the new house yet but I suspect it is getting smaller as it is getting filled.

I am excited about the move, I love our new house but yes, I am feeling the stress of change.  I am so happy to have a husband who understands my crazy stress and is working hard to make this move as easy and painless on me as possible.  I’m a spoiled rotten wife (this is like a spoiled rotten child only a wife not a child…get it?)

So, I am going to take a drive up the road and look at my new house as it is being filled by my old belongings.  Since tomorrow is Saturday I will work on packing and moving more old belongings into my new environment.

Yep, moving is pretty stressful but all in all it will be a good result!

I had a dream this weekend.  I came home early from work on Friday because I have been ill.  A cold I think.  I have not taken any cold medicine so that would not explain my dream.

I laid down to take a nap and had the most vivid dream about seventeen nails.  Let me first say I don’t generally remember my dreams.  I am usually so dog tired by the time I make it to bed I can’t remember going to bed much less what I was dreaming.

This dream was vivid and I could feel it and I can still, days later.

I took a hammer and seventeen nails, big six-inch silver building nails, and drove them one by one into my lower back.  I couldn’t tell you how many on each side but I did it.  Strangely enough in this dream the nails, being hammered in by my own doing did not hurt.  I hammered them in one by one all the way down.  I left the nails for a what seemed like a good long while but they became uncomfortable.  There was still no pain just discomfort.  I guess there would be discomfort from six-inch building nails in your back.

Then I decided to pull them out.  I pulled them one by one from my lower back and it hurt.  It didn’t hurt as badly as you would expect but there was now pain and blood.  That is what is so vivid from the dream was there was so much blood.  I dropped the nails one by one into a sink and they were covered in blood.

There were people around me and no one said “hey crazy lady why did you put nails in your back?”  Nope they just said “oh, I see you are getting the nails out of your back.”

Not one person helped or seemed concerned and in the dream I was not concerned either.  I just knew I had to get the nails out of my back.  I was also very aware that I had put them there, alone, with no help or influence from anyone else.

I don’t put much thought into dreams and I have no idea if they mean anything to our waking lives but this dream changed me.  I realized that all the turmoil I am currently facing may be nails I have driven into myself.

Now as I go through the painful and messy process of removing the nails I realize it is going to hurt and there might be blood but after it is all done, I will be better off.

I told my husband about the dream and he has taken to saying  “well babe, that is one of those seventeen nails.”

Crazy?  Yep it sure is.

My oldest son played his last JV football game of the season.  It was a Saturday game held at a private high school tucked away in beautiful Orange Virginia.  Woodberry Forrest is boarding school located about an hour and a half south of the Washington DC area.  I don’t know much about this school except they have two Astroturf fields and this weekend was parent’s weekend at the school.

Our JV boys played their game on what I assume is the practice field because the stadium was occupied by the varsity team.  Upon our arrival down the tree-lined driveway punctuated at the end with a guard building, we saw the banner which said “welcome parents.”  It was then I understood why we were playing a Saturday football game at a private high school an hour away.  The school needed to show off for the parents who had come to visit their offspring.  The offspring they had shipped off to boarding school earlier in the fall.

Because our team was playing on the practice field we were up close and personal with the game.  There were no bleachers to sit on and we could walk right up to the sidelines.  This idea has its pros and cons.  The major con is it is very hard to actually see the game past the backs of shoulder pad wearing young men.  There were two small portable bleacher seats but they didn’t offer much improvement in the view.

East Rockingham High School had a good turn out of parents for an away game and we all gathered together and about 500 feet from us were the parents of the home team.  The dichotomy of the parents was interesting.  When I go to a football game I wear blue jeans and a T-shirt or sweatshirt with the logo of  my team.  My footwear will almost always be athletic shoes.  In our area this is the dress code, unless of course you wear your camouflage.   I live in rural Virginia, all in all we are country people, some might call us rednecks.

The parents of the Woodberry Forest students were dressed a bit differently for the game.  As men in khakis and white shirts walked by us, their wives huddled up on the stands with high heels and slacks all topped with orange tops or sweaters to support their team, but no a logo in site.  The women really looked like the cast of The Real Housewives.  With their expensive jewelry and perfect hair I don’t think they understood the game at all.  This was proven when the Woodberry team had the ball and one of the perfect mothers yelled “Go Defense!”.

I did almost laugh out loud when one of the fathers walked by in pressed khaki shorts with little green dogs embroidered all over them.  His perfect green golf shirt matched the color of the little dogs perfectly.  I whispered in Dewayne’s ear that I wanted him to get that ensemble because it was hot!

At one point in the game when Woodberry had the ball some extra time appeared on the clock.  We were all confused by the extra time and one of our parents piped up and said: “That $30,000 a year tuition must by extra time on the clock.”  It was poetic and funny!

As we left the game in our pickup trucks and American made vehicles we passed the Mercedes and Saab convertibles  and headed home.  We did lose the game but our parents had  passion and our boys played a good game.  We were proud of them and thankful that we would see our boys and the end of the day, not just on parents weekend and during the holidays.