Many of you have probably wondered where I’ve been…well I’ve been stuck on Step 1 of my 12 step process of caring about what people think. A friend of mine would call it being stuck on “duck duck.” You all remember the game duck duck goose? Well what happens when you get one of those kids who just keeps saying duck the whole time and you are wondering, when are they going to just pick a goose already?! That’s me, stuck on duck duck and stuck on Step 1. Like the children of Israel who kept circling the mountain and who made an 11 day journey a 40 year one; like the crew who got stuck on Gilligan’s Island and made a 3 hour tour a spontaneous extended vacation, I have been stuck on Step 1. At one point, I think that Jesus went ahead of me because He knew that I would be coming around the corner (circling the same mountain)…to say it’s okay that you are here again, but you know you don’t have to be right? Just when I thought it was safe to leave the house…I realized that I didn’t have the proper gear on. The gear I am referring to is all mental. I didn’t have the proper “head” gear on to keep my head in the game. I started out the year with one goal (thanks to one of my sisters): Do it Big in 07′…in ALL areas. If that isn’t enough to get your year going, then I don’t know what is. I signed up to run the Shamrock Shuffle, I started another job (like I didn’t already have enough jobs), and I set out to be a better wife. Then about a week ago, I hit a wall…which then came an epiphany: I still care about what people think. Dang…and I thought we were delivered from this one.

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I don’t feel like my parents adequately prepared me for this thing we called life. As much as I feel like I wasn’t sheltered, I didn’t know how they did it. What was going through their minds when their parents died and they were under attack from the extended family? What problem solving skills were used when my mother was falsely accussed of something on her job and had to get her victory in court? Not to mention, how they handled the constant fighting between me and my siblings without sending us off to boarding school or juvenile detention. How do you off set a potential breakdown? Where do you go to get relief? Check out the account of my latest trial at The Parenting Post this week.

Did you guys make New Year resolutions? Well, I have shared my many resolution strategies. My favorite (and the one I’m most consistent about is the letter. I write a letter to myself that I open at the end of year, reflecting on all that I have accomplished. It’s funny, upbeat, reflective and challenging. I took some time this year writing the letter because I’m experiencing a lot of transition and I want my letter to be truly reflective of what it is that I really want. Have you ever felt like you don’t know what you want? Well, I thought I was clear until I ask God what He wanted for me and begin to study the promises of God. Now, I’m stretched.

My 2 year old is an incredible example of believing that you should have whatever you want when you want it. Now, I understand due process, but he doesn’t. He knows that he can’t reach the cups in the cabinet, so he pushes a chair up to the counter, climbs on the counter and get a cup. Does it matter if it’s glass or if it’s too big? Nope. He just knows that it’s a cup. Once he gets the cup, he goes to the refrigerator (I still can’t believe he is tall enough to reach the thing) and pushes the water spout (what do you call that?) and gets him some water. He walks in the living room, sits down on the couch and when he’s done, he just drops the cup and carries on his way.  I’ve learned a lot from my most independent child to date.

1. Nothing can stand in his way of getting what he wants. When he can’t reach the counter, he goes to the dishwasher. If he can’t open it (it’s sometimes not closed all of the way), then he goes and drags anyone in the house that’s bigger than him (including my oldest daughter) and takes them to the kitchen, points to the cabinet and says, “Cup, pease.”

2. He doesn’t wait to get results. Once he has a cup, he doesn’t even ask for the water. He knows his capabilities and he gets the water himself.
3. He takes pride in his achievement. His face lights up when he gets what he wants.

When I grow up, I think I want to be like him. I have spent years saying what I don’t want or what I’ll settle for until…until I can get a bigger house, until I can get the kids off to college, until I can pay off this student loan…how many untils are getting in the way of what you really want?

I read a lot (as you all know) and although I started my writing life wanting to write novels, I haven’t read a good novel in awhile. I read 4 to 5 books a week (separate from the books have to read for the kids’ schoolwork–geesh) and my latest books have been a couple of re-reads–the Aladdin Factor and the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. Different books, different ideas, but both of them are meeting a need for me right now.

The Aladdin Factor is about asking and I want to let you know for an independent sistah like me, asking is not easy. I used to think (praise God for a renewing of your mind) that asking was either a form of neediness or a tactic used to agitate or irritate. I would forget my money at home on my job and have a headache during lunch because I didn’t ask anyone to borrow a few bucks until the next day. “They are going to think I’m a leech, a buster.” I wouldn’t ask my father to help me buy some glasses because our insurance didn’t cover the full amount (ooo, I live for the day that I’m either wearing contacts or having my eyesight strengthen because glasses are providing me with a lot of challenges lately) and I wore glasses for 2 years!! that I couldn’t really see out of. You should have seen my father’s face when I finally confessed after he badgered me for squinting all of the time. “You couldn’t have just asked. What do you think I would have done?” I kinda know where my poor programmming came from, but again, I’m new and approved. I think women who stay at home or women who are experiencing parental guilt (for whatever reason) have an extra layer of “not asking” going on. For me, I’ve gotten so good at suppressing/repressing/oppressing (just pressing) my desires that now I’m spending an incredible amount of time trying to reconnect with me.

The 22 immutable laws of branding is about what is your package, your image, your…brand. Since I’ve started this blog, many doors have opened for me in the area of writing. I love writing, but my heart is also teaching and speaking. The three go together so I have to be a business person (which I’ve been for many years off and on) and be cautious about how I handle my…my stuff, my…brand. The deal is that I love parenting and I love working with women as a life coach. I’ve had to get some help in finding out who do I want to be when I grow up.

I know I’ve posed this question before but I think it’s taken a different tone because I don’t think I was ready to accept what I REALLY want. I happened on this current life and lifestyle that I have (SAHM, homeschooling, 5 kids!) and I’m so grateful, but for someone who wrote her life plan when she was 7 and revised it at 11, being where I hadn’t planned is throwing me off. I’m really out of whack because I feel that the one place that I could let my hair down was here and now people…not yall, of course, have kinda taken it away and kinda…I don’t know branded the blog. Does that make sense?

I’m okay with change and I know that the kind of people who work well with my personality type (not Type A, but close enough that my idiosyncracies really throw people for a loop…did I tell you I had 4 different personal assistants in 90 days in my last business? Remind me to share that story one day…no I’m not Murphy Brown) are coming in my life to push me to the next level. I just gotta get back to a routine that is prepared for the next level.

This staying up til 1 or 2 and then waking up at 7 or so just doesn’t work for me. I’ll let you all know how I get my groove back. For now, forgive me because I’m real out of whack.

Ok, ok…I’m getting my dahgurl vibe back after I had to take care of some legal matters (remember I have a lot of new material to launch, but I had to see the business gurus so that I handle the business of intellectual property properly)…Any-who…I get ready to write my post and I got a gazillion spam messages and 1 or 2 comments. This has been going on for sometime and I just want to figure out how to stop it. I think I have put up all of the filters built into WordPress, but I am going online so that I can take care of this. It is so frustrating that it is taking the joy out of my blogging. I am going to be on the phone to whoever will listen until I get this matter resolved. Who are the people who spam exactly? How do they benefit from jamming up my email? Oooo…If computers could talk…

Anyway, enough with the rage, I owe you guys so many great stories, but I am going to make it short since it is late and my frustration caused me to procrastinate. Starting to get a little tired. Well, the babies are coming back tomorrow and I gotta be honest with you, I’m not jumping up for joy. See, I had a taste of what it is like to sit in quiet and just think.I used to do that a lot a long time ago and I realize that the ability to sit quiet/still is key to maintaining normalcy and sanity.

I will definitely do more of that quiet time/still time in 2007.

Trying to do everything (via Mountain Dew) was not a good choice and planning to do everything wasn’t that smart either. We’ve had bad car karma since the two accidents and I have been back and forth to the auto repair shop every week between our 2 used cars more than I had been in the past 1 year with our minivan. After spending close to $2000 in auto repairs over the past 6 weeks, I am trying hard to stick to the plan. No major purchases until after we buy this new house in the next 6 months. No new car. Yes, it’s inconvenient and sometimes unsafe (rear brakes went out while picking up oldest daughter from dance…luckily, highway driving was not necessary), but keep your eye on the prize. Being financially fit, mentally fit is a struggle/battle, but well worth the outcome.  Right?

I think this season of hecticness in my life is one of the reason the spam thing is bugging me. I am always being spammed. I spammed by the insurance companies who are still not completing their role in the accident chaos. I am spammed by everyone’s opinion on what we should be doing with our lives (“You should live in the suburbs/You should live near that mall by the highway/Why are you giving away all of the sheets (that I don’t like or are in bad shape) when you might need them?). Although I miss the kids tremendously, I have found some value or better yet, I got a small taste of what it will be like a few years from now when everyone in my house can take care of themselves, the house and one another. That’s what these past couple of weeks have brought me. Clarity/ Conviction and I know one thing…I am seriously knocking out clutter in ALL aspects of my life, so look out spammers, Spam I ain’t.

So, how does a mother deal with guilt? She overcompensates for her shortcomings by pouring it on and I do mean pouring it on. Here it is, the 10th of the month and I haven’t REALLY checked in with all of you. I am mad at myself because I love having everyone here, but I have needed to adjust. Adjust to what? Well, as you all know, I am my own worse self critic and I have been pretty hard on myself. When I sit to right, I like to bring it, so I don’t do a lot of pictures (I’ve decided to change that as I may be taking a course in photography) and I like to make every entry a story, a deep thought. Now I am deep most of the time, but some of the time, I just want to check out, veg out, chill. It’s hard because I don’t relax well. I’ve learned to take better care of myself by relaxing more, but it isn’t easy.

Ok, here’s a situation right now. I could explain to you why it’s hard to relax or I could tell you what I’ve done to be better at relaxing. Hmm…which way do I go? which way do I go? (A little Bullwinkle moment there…for you 70′s children). Alright, I think I’m going to go here. I have really enjoyed my three children and I regret that we had to jump back into school and school-related activities so soon after returning to Baltimore. I have resisted the feeling of perfectionism while still doing a little something every day that I couldn’t do with the babies.

The hardest part of this transition is that I haven’t deemed my life difficult (somewhat challenging) because, well…it’s my life. But when the big kids are doing their silent reading and I am able to sit at the computer quietly and actually have my 10 minutes of thinking in my thinking place (Shoot, it’s taking me forever to have a thinking place. Got that from Thinking for a change by John Maxwell). I think “Wow. Is this what “normal” people do? Is this what my life will someday be like when the kids are old enough to fend for themselves?” It’s kinda weird for me, actually its been really weird for me. Can’t say I like it, but I am trying to capitalize on it by putting the big kids to sleep at their right time (8:30 and 9:00 p.m) and by having my 30 minutes of quiet time with just me and my husband (hadn’t been doing that, but I’d like to try that much harder this year for this to be a habit). I, unfortunately, haven’t been waking up early like I should (no vitamins, overcoming a cold…still no excuse) and I have been losing my high productive time. Ugghh. So to complete this blog, to let you know that I am trying to get it back together and I haven’t disappeared, I grabbed some Mountain Dew (that is my caffeine drug of choice) on the way back home from Bible Study and I’m going to get some writing done until maybe 2 a.m or so.

Oh, I’ll be sure to tell yall what I did about my daughter’s hair over the holidays and to tell you about my latest teeth challenge, then I got a urine situation to share, an acting audition sorta thing, along with a new research assistant and a file clerk that I am hiring…Man, just like I said, what does a mother do with so much guilt (I feel guilty that dahgurl has fallen short)? She lays it on thick. Sorry to dump this all of your lap, but I got some good stuff coming. Thanks for having faith in me.