She Laughs at the Days

A friend is having a fabulous 40th birthday getaway in a few months. It involves a short flight and a drive and some fabulous scenery and an overnight stay at a great house. Guests are making their plans for flying in from all over the place and it looks like a really good time. I started doing the mental gymnastics needed to figure out how to pay for the plane ticket, and checking my husband's schedule for whether he's in town that weekend, and scheming who would watch my kids if he's not and then I stopped. I'll be sending my regrets. It's not the money, or the schedule, or even childcare, really, that is keeping me away. Those things can be worked out. It's this person right here. He has spent every night of his short 20 months firmly tucked in against my side and nursing when he wakes before drifting off to sleep again. There was a time when his Beema could get him to sleep the first time, but even then, I was the one he wanted when he woke again.

I've been thinking about habits lately, and the power they have in our lives. There's a woman I know who has suffered a lot in her life, and is not in an ideal place, for her, right now. She doesn't understand why her life is at the point it is and yet her default mode of existence is to see only the bad in her life, never the good. She's practiced finding the bad for such a long time now that she's very good at it. She doesn't know how to do anything else. She has researched, to find out just how bad her family history really is. She tells stories, of things that happened, and what she sees in them is all negative. It's like she is truly blind to the places where good entered in . She sees none of the blessings and only the trials. Now, I dearly love her and I'm still figuring out how I could possibly explain this all to her, in a way that she would be able to receive. I know that the bad things that happened to her were truly bad, and that she

You know what's not simple? Trying to get rid of your extra stuff, AND, take pictures of it and record the process. Let's face it. I'm not a very good blogger. But I make headway. And I have lots of awful before shots. I have a box full of clothes that don't fit right now that is going up in the closet shelf. (I have hopes of fitting into those ones yet you see.) before they went into the box I have a big laundry basket full of clothes I'm not keeping, and most importantly, I can shut all of the drawers in my dresser, even though they are small. I have more than 7 shirts though. It's more like 10-12 plus tank tops to wear under a lot of them. I am liking not having as many choices. I know that anything I reach for in my drawer is going to fit and I'm going to like it. What a change that is from having a dresser full of things I only like sometimes or used to like and don't anymore, or really like but it doesn't fit right now. I wou