Studying

In the in between, right now, I'm studying. The in between of taking care of sick children that is.

Studying a little bit of this and that, and I'm hoping one day, when I'm not recovering from ten days of nasty and gearing up for however many more, to share it with you. If you'll just be patient and hang in there with me, I want to meet you on the other side of this.

In the meantime, a few blurbs for you:

• Do not teach your children to sing. Not anything. Because if you innocently teach them the words to "Rejoice in the Lord always! And again I say rejoice!", they will sing it at you after a long day of cleaning up diarrhea when you have retreated into well-deserved grumpiness. Then you will want to throttle them.
• "Order is the shape upon which beauty depends," says Pearl Buck. Most of the time I agree in my obsessive need for structure, neatness, and scheduling, but what about the need to revel in a wild storm? wind-swept hair? a tangle of what some call "weeds"?
• Do you ever ask yourself who you really are, at the end of the day? Am I really a mother or am I just going through the motions of parenting? Am I really a homemaker or am I just sweeping the crumbs under the kitchen rug? Am I really a writer or am I just shoving words together in the hopes that someone is listening?
• In the course of the gazillion loads of laundry, I accidentally pinked our two cream coloured pillow cases. They are a lovely, perfect shell pink now. They are just crying out for creativity, and there will (hopefully) be more on that later. Unfortunately, in that same load of wash was one of the Man's very masculine t-shirts that had some manly saying written on it in what used to be white lettering. He has graciously not said a word. In my defense, this is the first load of laundry I've ever pinked...and I blame Little's red-trimmed Thomas shirt. Thomas pinked the laundry!
• Saturday night I took the boys and dog for a walk, and we pointed out spring nests and loose down feathers drifting beside the creek. I love learning as you live.

On that note, taps has played and I need sleep before I attack whatever tomorrow brings. More crackers, applesauce, and toast, I anticipate. My military brats do love that BRAT diet.