Is your inner child craving attention? Don’t miss this.

Attention Is All I Want!

My reason for getting organized way back in 1977 was so that I’d have more free time to play with my family. I wasn’t having that much fun in my chosen career as a homemaker and it was mainly because of my disorganization and the messes it created. I knew that my attitude had to change about my life as a wife, mother and homemaker and once I nailed the reason to make the effort to change, everything fell into place (but not overnight).

I met Nelly, (my inner child; that part of me that’s about nine-years-old), in 2002 and in that meeting I realized she was behind my reason to change 25 years earlier. Over the last decade I’ve grown to adore her “take” on life. I see myself as her parent, always needing to monitor her thoughts and guide her into cooperating with all my “adult” plans and rules.

We just got back from a cruise with 3,000 passengers. I did a lot of people watching and I saw many well-behaved children and many who were out of control. In every instance I noticed that back of every child was a parent with either good or bad parenting skills. The well-behaved children stood quietly in lines at the buffets and the out of control children (they always stick out more) were always issued a variety of useless directives.

We were in line behind Jason (about six-years-old) and his parents and sister Becky (about four) and we watched him hit his sister when the parents weren’t looking, tug on his father’s shirt, kick his mother’s purse and sag to the floor several times in the five minutes we were in line.

But what about the Inner Child?

Is it Time for a New Bathrobe?

I decided it is for Terry and me. My robe is 20 years old and I bought it at a garage sale. It’s heavy and comfy and if I write too much about it here, I’m apt to talk myself out of dumping it. (Maybe I should keep it as my winter robe. On some of those cold winter nights I have found such refuge in it. I also feel spiritual in it sometimes, because it has a hood and when I put it over my head, I feel like St. Francis.) Okay, okay it’s going in storage until November when my winter sweaters and coats come out of waiting.

Terry’s robe is another story. It is downright scary! It’s blue plaid velour and after the first washing it lost most of its “lour” and because the arms were too long he cut them off and insisted I didn’t need to hem his alteration project. So I didn’t, leaving the ends frayed in strings that grow longer with every washing.

The thing is, I never think to go bathrobe shopping and only when I’m pampered with a luxurious white terrycloth robe in a fancy hotel do I think it’s time to spring for a new “morning” look.

A Saint and a Blue Man

Terry and I have changed our routine this year and I don’t shower, dress and make the bed first thing in the morning anymore.

Do you ever stop to think about how honored you are to have given birth? When my first child was born it absolutely changed my life in more ways than one. I did not want to have this baby the whole time I carried it. I was in a very unhappy marriage and with that pregnancy I felt trapped. If abortion would have been legal then, I would not have done that, but I did think seriously that when it was born we could adopt it out!

The Four Ps

It's spring and we SHEs are like busy bees around the nurseries where the flowers beg us to take them home like puppies at the Humane Society.

Have you ever seen a honey bee that’s got so much pollen on her thighs that she can barely fly? I often wonder if some of them never make it back to their hives they're so loaded down. Like those bees, we can get carried away buying more than we can plant. We fly home with our trunks full of flats of annuals and the optimism we’’ll plant them all in a day. Often we poop out in the middle of the plant and the remaining purchase is at the mercy of our next planting mood.

A good rule of thumb is the four Ps. Plan, Prepare, Purchase, Plant. If you try to prepare and plant at the same time, you’ll poop out and then those plants that you have taken into your care face possible death. Of course it’s not premeditated, but the plants will be just as dead.