I'm sad to say I did not complete my October challenges, but I do plan on carrying them into November and find a few more ways to pamper myself. After all, it is a much less stressful month. Our weekly Nature Cove escapades ends next week. There's only two weeks left of soccer. I can take a little bit of time for myself.
But, to get to the very exciting part, I'm already ahead of myself for my November challenge. When I first moved in with my husband, he encouraged me to find a hobby that would allow me to bond with his sister and sister-in-law; thus, I picked up scrapbooking. I might as well have picked up a cigarette because it's just as expensive and addictive and carries just as much guilt with it as any nicotine habit. Here's the deal with scrapbooking. When you're child-less, you have basically all the time and money in the world to support a scrapbook habit, but you have very little worth scrapbooking. This kids come along leaving you with thousands of pictures and no time or money to put them all in books, and you're left feeling guilt-ridden, especially with the younger ones, who you haven't finished or even started their scrapbooks.
Such is my case. And not only do I not have the time or money to support the habit, I no longer have the space. There are amazing scrapbook/craft room designs on Pinterest. My "scrapbook room" is my dining room. I'm a very organized, Type-A person, but even the very term "scrap"booking suggests mess. And that is what I have right now...a mess!
The challenge is to complete one scrapbook page for each day in the month of November. A few months ago my BFF unloaded all her old scrapbooking materials on me, so I am good to go and shouldn't have to drop more than a few dollars, if any at all, to complete the challenge. At first I was going to complete one page, start to finish, each day, but upon beginning my first page, I realized this was going to be a challenge. With scrapbooking you have the layout involving all the pictures and paper. Then you have the embellishments: stickers, ribbons, buttons, stamps, etc. This means twice the amount of materials out at a given time. So, I decided approach the challenge a bit differently. For the first fifteen days, I'm going to layout fifteen pages, pictures and paper. That will give me thirty pages, one for each day of the month. For the remainder of the month, I'll bring out my embellishments and go to work on decorating and journal on each page. I already have four page layouts complete thanks to Pinterest.
And I feel no pressure. I did a little bit at first, but once I made the adjustment and kept my embellishments tucked away, I really just absorbed myself in looking through old pictures of my babies. My focus is Eli's and Milo's baby books, not yet complete. My husband even sat with me for a few minutes to look through the pictures. It was so very nice.
Needless to say, November has been off to a wonderful start. And this morning, a little something extra happened that kind of made my day, a little bit. Two years ago I was struggling with the fact that I really had very little friends here. I decided to go to a Mom's Club new members event at a park. For those of you who don't know, a Mom's Club is a support/social/network group for moms. I was the only mom there who had three children. Most only had one new baby and a few had a toddler and a new baby. Then there was me, juggling three. Okay, fine.
Well, the vice-president of the club was there with her son, and she happened to be the only other resident of the town where I lived. Her main topic of conversation was how they were leaving and moving to a four-bedroom house in a much better school district and what would they ever do with four-bedrooms and maybe they'd have another baby since they did now have four bedrooms. Up comes my little Eli for lunch and sweet as can be sits at the table and bites into a peanut butter sandwich. Only it wasn't his peanut butter sandwich; it was the kid who has four bedroom's peanut butter sandwich. My knee-jerk reaction was to gasp and shout, "That's not yours!" leaving my own little boy in tears. Now, here was an opportunity for her to be human and forgiving and maybe even a bit concerned that a child she doesn't know who may or may not have a severe peanut allergy just bit into the peanut butter sandwich she left laying on the table. Nope! She took the sandwich and threw it away. I of course offered my profuse apologies and, even though I didn't expect her to accept, offered to give her the sandwich I had packed as a gesture. She coldly said, "It's fine," turned her back, and proceeded to give me the cold shoulder for the remainder of the event. I felt miserable and embarrassed, and left feeling even more alone than when I arrived.
I never attended another event, oddly not because of the incident, but because their events were for moms and babies, not moms with kids. Everything took place during drop off and pick up times for my older boys' schools. I took it as a sign that maybe yet another social outlet was not for me.
Skip ahead two years, and I find myself at the Nature Cove with you-know-who. She has made no effort to acknowledge she knows me, but given the energy, I am pretty sure she remembers. Maybe not? My husband always accuses me of remembering "insignificant" events. Could it be that she found it "insignificant" and no longer remembers me? She surely didn't treat it as insignificant and my embarrassment was not easily gotten over given her reaction.
So there we were standing looking at this giant brush pile and learning about what types of animals might choose to hibernate there. Milo, for some unexplained reason, was very attentive and very interested in the possible weasels, snakes, and groundhogs that could be inhabiting the pile of branches. Suddenly, he and I were hit from behind with a giant branch. Milo was hit in the head. The sun was shining very brightly and when I turned to see what happened it appeared the branch came from nowhere, but suddenly there she was grasping her son's arm who was crying, forcing him into an apology. Apparently, he had come up behind us and kicked the stick at us, probably unintentionally hitting us. But, dear me, did her son make a mistake? A mistake all little boys make? Was it possible? It felt just a little bit good that she stood there embarrassed. Her kid was a monster that day, pushing other kids and being fairly unruly as opposed to Eli on that day in the park who made an honest mistake.
Does it make me a bad person that I felt just a bit giddy on the inside? We don't see karma in action all too often, and her treatment of me that day at, of all places, a new member welcoming event, stung. I am not a mom who has it all together. I don't pretend to be, and though I am self-conscious of myself as a mother, I still don't put on to be anyone other than that crazy lady with three boys who loses it more often than she'd like. Maybe it makes me a bad person, maybe it doesn't, but I'm not perfect and, damn, neither is she! Ha! Ha!
I love November!
The challenge is to complete one scrapbook page for each day in the month of November. A few months ago my BFF unloaded all her old scrapbooking materials on me, so I am good to go and shouldn't have to drop more than a few dollars, if any at all, to complete the challenge. At first I was going to complete one page, start to finish, each day, but upon beginning my first page, I realized this was going to be a challenge. With scrapbooking you have the layout involving all the pictures and paper. Then you have the embellishments: stickers, ribbons, buttons, stamps, etc. This means twice the amount of materials out at a given time. So, I decided approach the challenge a bit differently. For the first fifteen days, I'm going to layout fifteen pages, pictures and paper. That will give me thirty pages, one for each day of the month. For the remainder of the month, I'll bring out my embellishments and go to work on decorating and journal on each page. I already have four page layouts complete thanks to Pinterest.
And I feel no pressure. I did a little bit at first, but once I made the adjustment and kept my embellishments tucked away, I really just absorbed myself in looking through old pictures of my babies. My focus is Eli's and Milo's baby books, not yet complete. My husband even sat with me for a few minutes to look through the pictures. It was so very nice.
Needless to say, November has been off to a wonderful start. And this morning, a little something extra happened that kind of made my day, a little bit. Two years ago I was struggling with the fact that I really had very little friends here. I decided to go to a Mom's Club new members event at a park. For those of you who don't know, a Mom's Club is a support/social/network group for moms. I was the only mom there who had three children. Most only had one new baby and a few had a toddler and a new baby. Then there was me, juggling three. Okay, fine.
Well, the vice-president of the club was there with her son, and she happened to be the only other resident of the town where I lived. Her main topic of conversation was how they were leaving and moving to a four-bedroom house in a much better school district and what would they ever do with four-bedrooms and maybe they'd have another baby since they did now have four bedrooms. Up comes my little Eli for lunch and sweet as can be sits at the table and bites into a peanut butter sandwich. Only it wasn't his peanut butter sandwich; it was the kid who has four bedroom's peanut butter sandwich. My knee-jerk reaction was to gasp and shout, "That's not yours!" leaving my own little boy in tears. Now, here was an opportunity for her to be human and forgiving and maybe even a bit concerned that a child she doesn't know who may or may not have a severe peanut allergy just bit into the peanut butter sandwich she left laying on the table. Nope! She took the sandwich and threw it away. I of course offered my profuse apologies and, even though I didn't expect her to accept, offered to give her the sandwich I had packed as a gesture. She coldly said, "It's fine," turned her back, and proceeded to give me the cold shoulder for the remainder of the event. I felt miserable and embarrassed, and left feeling even more alone than when I arrived.
I never attended another event, oddly not because of the incident, but because their events were for moms and babies, not moms with kids. Everything took place during drop off and pick up times for my older boys' schools. I took it as a sign that maybe yet another social outlet was not for me.
Skip ahead two years, and I find myself at the Nature Cove with you-know-who. She has made no effort to acknowledge she knows me, but given the energy, I am pretty sure she remembers. Maybe not? My husband always accuses me of remembering "insignificant" events. Could it be that she found it "insignificant" and no longer remembers me? She surely didn't treat it as insignificant and my embarrassment was not easily gotten over given her reaction.
So there we were standing looking at this giant brush pile and learning about what types of animals might choose to hibernate there. Milo, for some unexplained reason, was very attentive and very interested in the possible weasels, snakes, and groundhogs that could be inhabiting the pile of branches. Suddenly, he and I were hit from behind with a giant branch. Milo was hit in the head. The sun was shining very brightly and when I turned to see what happened it appeared the branch came from nowhere, but suddenly there she was grasping her son's arm who was crying, forcing him into an apology. Apparently, he had come up behind us and kicked the stick at us, probably unintentionally hitting us. But, dear me, did her son make a mistake? A mistake all little boys make? Was it possible? It felt just a little bit good that she stood there embarrassed. Her kid was a monster that day, pushing other kids and being fairly unruly as opposed to Eli on that day in the park who made an honest mistake.
Does it make me a bad person that I felt just a bit giddy on the inside? We don't see karma in action all too often, and her treatment of me that day at, of all places, a new member welcoming event, stung. I am not a mom who has it all together. I don't pretend to be, and though I am self-conscious of myself as a mother, I still don't put on to be anyone other than that crazy lady with three boys who loses it more often than she'd like. Maybe it makes me a bad person, maybe it doesn't, but I'm not perfect and, damn, neither is she! Ha! Ha!
I love November!
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