Five Minute Friday - Opportunity (has a fat backside)

Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama does a Five Minute Friday post each week on a topic she chooses.  Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking

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Topic: Opportunity

Opportunity has a fat backside.  It's huge.  

Her frontside?  No idea.  I'm not sure I've ever seen it.  

The only time I see her is when she's flouncing away, big, bustled, neon, polka dotted rear end waving in my face as the door slams shut behind her. 

Like when it's 2 am and Belle is saying, "But Mommy, just come lay down with me for a few minutes and we can snuggle!" but I'm desperately trying to get her back to sleep so I can go back to sleep, so I come up with creative reasons why that won't work and get her to go back to sleep alone.  

 

Then laying in my bed a couple minutes later I think, "Maybe the stiff neck and sore shoulder and punch in the face would have been worth it if I had just laid down next to my precious girl and slept for a bit..."  And I hear Opportunity snicker as she creeps away down the hall.  Gone again. I didn't even see her there.  Just that HUGE backside that I can't miss as she's leaving.  

 

So the next day when Belle gets up I lay down next to her on the bed and say, "Let's snuggle!" and wrap my arm around her.  She gently takes my hand and pushes it off her and says sweetly, "Mom, sometimes I like your hugs.  And some times I don't."

 

And my phone does a little jingle as Opportunity sends me a text saying, "Give it up.  I'm not even in the building."  

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Note:  I know it's supposed to be 5 minutes, but I'm ALWAYS using my timer for something else when I write this, so I keep missing the five minute mark.  For honesty's sake, this post was 6 minutes and 22 seconds.  Hopefully there's not Five Minute Friday Gestapo. 

Five Minute Friday - Perspective

Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama does a Five Minute Friday post each week on a topic she chooses.  Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking

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Topic: Perspective

There was a muffled crash and a squeal from her dark room.  Then a call for me.

"Mommy!  I have problem!  I keep rolling over!"  At my evident question as to why rolling over in a bed should be a problem she explained, "On my head!  And I fall!"

She must have been able to see better than I could in the dark because to clear up the look of confusion on my face she said, "Here, I'll show you. " Then she turned around, set her head down on the edge of her mattress and kicked her feet up onto the wall, falling sideways in the process back onto her bed. 

"See," she said plaintively, "I keep rolling over and I can't do it."

I laughed and asked her if she really expected me to help her with that particular problem when it was forty-five minutes past her bedtime.  Her real problem, I explained, was that she was supposed to be sleeping and that was hard to do while standing on your head.

As I think about her troubles I realize how often I'm there trying to stand on my head, or focused on getting that one extra errand in before nap time and I don't see my real problem.  Maybe a little girl needing a bit of her Mommy's attention or a bigger boy who really wants to finish the story he started an hour ago and needs an audience.

Most likely, if I could just shift my perspective from the problem I'm trying to solve to the actual thing I should be doing, things might go a little more smoothly.

And then when I'm more well rested and I have the help of, say, some benevolent giant, I can tackle that "I can't stand on my head" problem a little more efficiently.

Bedtime Story

  

‘Twas the time of the day

When the sleepy sun heads

Far past the horizon

And tucks into bed,

When Bartholomew Barnabas

Burlington Bap

Was wrapped in his jammies

And cozy night cap.

He looked at his bed

With its soft fluffy covers,

His squishy big pillow

And cuddle bear brothers.

But something was missing,

Something just was not right.

“I’ve found my blue blankey,

Turned on my night light,

But there’s still something big

That just has to be done.

Oh, where is my story,

My favorite one?

Please read me a book

Like we read every night.

Sit me up on your lap

And wrap me up tight

In your arms while you speak

The words into the air

Which will float ‘round the room

And ruffle my hair.

And the words will make pictures

To dance past my nose,

Bump into the ceiling

Or tickle my toes.

See?  There goes a castle

Perched up on some fog.

In the tower’s top window

I see a small frog.

And is that a pirate ship

Far out to sea?

Or the tale of a whale

Who is waving at me?

My room’s crowded full

Of the loveliest things,

All the dreams and adventures

A good story brings.

So then when we’re done

And you tuck me in bed

Oh, the places and friends

I will see in my head!

Then I will not mind

When you turn out the light

For you stories will stay with me

All through the night.”

Five Minute Friday - Real

 Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama does a Five Minute Friday post each week on a topic she chooses.  Here are the rules:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. That's pretty much it.

I want to write more and five minutes is quite doable, so here's my first Five Minute Friday

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Topic: Real

There is a lot more pain and sadness in the real world than I wanted to believe before.  Pain that is hard to look in the face.  Pain that is hard to accept.

We dodge around it and avoid it.  We stand at the edges of other people’s pain, somehow fascinated, unable to look away but also unable to help.

And when it strikes our own life we are overwhelmed by it.  The bad, the wrong, the broken things of life that wash over us are strong and often so unexpected they can leave us adrift in a world we don’t recognize.

And that is part of “real.”  A part we don’t want to think about.  But it is real and I think it is the reason that when someone says “real” we think “bad.”  Because it’s only when we are really faced with something terrible that we smash up against reality – something we can’t wish away or redo. 

I never struggle with the reality of happiness.  I say, “I can’t believe how good this is!” as I smile and skip away.  But that’s not really true.  I’m fine with good happening. 

It’s the bad that I can’t believe happened.  The bad part of reality that I want to escape.  The bad part I want to be unreal. 

But it’s a bit unfair for me to label “real” as “bad.”  If I’m telling how I “really” am, that doesn’t just include the fact that I’m up, again, in the middle of the night trying to soothe a pint sized crisis when all I really want to do is sleep.  It also includes the fact that Belle’s hair is soft and long when I lay next to her and her voice is about the sweetest sound in the world as she talks to me. 

Real intertwines the good and the bad.  Somehow I’d like to wrap my brain around the balance that is there. 

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Well, there’s my five minutes and that’s good because this is where the thought gets stuck.  The point where I stop and ask myself, “Self, is that where you were headed at the beginning?" then I roll my eyes at myself and say, "I didn’t think so.” 

And so even though I can still see the thought a little bit farther ahead of me, it soon gets tangled in with all the other half-formed and unthunk thoughts and the feelings and hopes and fears that all wrap themselves together into a tangle. 

But one thing I’ve learned from motherhood is that almost any task can be set down midway through, like a pile of unfolded laundry dumped in the middle of the living room floor which will wait patiently, for days if necessary, for me to come back and continue folding.  So for now, elusive thought about the relationship between real and bad, enjoy your home in the tangles.  I’ll be back to pull you out a little more some other time. 

Probably.