Saturday, November 8, 2008

A crazy beautiful mess...

I started to allude to this in my accepting me post. But I'm a mess. I mean a real mess. My house is cluttered, my hair's a frizzy curly riot, I strew projects from one end of the house to the other, my clothes are simple casual and usually covered in baby spit (hopefully she'll get past that soon enough). And it's good. It's me. I'm a disorganized mess. But my house is clean, my children are fed and polite and loved, my husband and I love each other and love to laugh together.

So I'm a mess, but a crazy beautiful mess. (not saying I think I'm beautiful - just that my mess is good - because it's me and it's my life and I'm happy with it all right now).

I often worry that my kids suffer from my mess. They've been known to go to school in wrinkled clothes and I don't always remember to brush their hair (but Miss G's hair is such that you couldn't tell I'd brushed five minutes later anyway - she's a mess too, I think). I've turned in papers late (I'm trying to be better about this - or at least with the most important ones). I don't know if it's affecting them in a bad way or not. I would love for them to be organized little neat freaks (Mr. T is OCD about his animals and stuff, but this doesn't reach into cleaning anywhere else), but they're not going to learn it from me.

But then, I didn't learn it from my mom. And she didn't learn it from her mom. Even my aunts are a little messy. I come from a messy people. My kids don't stand a chance.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Rethinking myself...

I have this image of myself as sort of Plain Jane, very buttoned up, sort of serious. I've had this picture of me like this since I was a teenager at least. This came to my mind recently when I saw a fabric I liked. I thought that is so me. It was a nice evenly spaced plaid in two colors. Then I saw a bright multi-colored floral and mess pattern - now that is the true me.

The older I get, I feel like I really know myself. And I may be quiet when I'm around new people and kind of shy about doing new things, when I'm the slightest bit comfortable, I'm kind of a crazy, colorful, opinionated mess. I have a pair of sunglasses that I have often thought were a symbol of my personality. Basic black on the outside, but the insides were wildly colored stripes.

It's kind of liberating and refreshing to update one's self-image.