Too much time inside my head.

I've spent far too much time inside my head lately. I turn everything over, look at its tender underbelly, and generally find fault with what I'm doing or who I am.

So for this moment, I am celebrating me. Me who wonders if what I'm doing as a mother is good enough. Me who wonders why there is not a made from scratch meal on the table every night. Me who wonders if I'll ever be a person that someone else admires. Me, for better or worse, I'm a person who lets all these thoughts run unchecked so that I'm unable to move in any direction as I'm constantly analyzing things. Analysis paralysis is the phrase that comes to mind.

But, if I start to make friends with me, then maybe I can find the strengths and weaknesses that lie within. I read on a blog recently something that cut a little close to the bone...this person said that many people can always say what they don't want, but they are hard pressed to verbalize what they do want. Human nature, maybe?

Still thinking...

Monkey Park.

These are lemurs. Which one had too much coffee?

Time Passes So Quickly.

We're almost mid-November now, and the rest of the year is soon going to become a race to the finish. While I never thought I'd be one of those people who answers "Busy" when someone asked how I was, I feel like the days go, emails remain unsent, and vital connections are not maintained.

This morning I dropped by a friend's house to return something she left in my car this week. Holding her little girl, 4 months old, made me think about my own. This 2 year almost 5 month headstrong girl that calls me "Mommy" or sometimes says "I'm coming, Betty" alternately causes me to want to push her into older toddlerhood and hold tight kicking and screaming. You can see where she gets her bipolar attitude, Sissy.

So in order to remember the small baby that was, here's my own gratuitous memory...

Particular

So, this morning I was on the phone with the previously considered other half of the Siamese conjoined twin that together we are/were/are. Quite a tightly wound Siamese conjoined twin, though I think she's more so. Of course that's my objective take on it, and it has to be truth.

She was mentioning to me about a person who her cat has immediately taken a shining to. So, immediately I began to protest. How did this other person get a pass into Jethro's life? I've been around longer and have never been taught the secret handshake. This girl comes from out of nowhere and suddenly he's winding himself through her legs and later falling asleep in her lap. Bitch, please!

In the course of our conversation and a possibly upcoming short term transfer for her out of the country, this looks like a good thing that her cat has come under the spell of this "siren", I will dignify her only with that term. Perhaps this is a good thing. When my friend went on to say that they had similar approaches to energy consumption in the house and coping mechanisms, I could see the writing on the wall.

For a long time she has joked that when we grow old, we'll move in together and rejoin our previously separated Margaret and Isabelle activities: providing running commentary of why things are not up to our approval and why are people so stupid, and it's a curse to be smart. Why could we not be just dumb and happy instead? I don't know if there will be similar geriatric males in our lives or not; that part of the dream has never quite gelled.

But, when she said she got in this siren's car and it was immaculate, I saw what was happening. No need to spell it out for me. Ole Isabelle is not as slow as you think. She might be short and dumpy but she's spry.

"I realize I'm particular...." started the sentence with howling laughter ensuing.

The use of the word particular in this context in the most constructive form means exceptionally selective, attentive, or exacting. In the South, there would be no need to consult a dictionary, but I do this for my other friends in case it's "indigenous to the region" as someone else often says.

And to find that this Johnnie come lately, this siren, has higher standards than my Siamese conjoined twin when it comes to the thermostat setting. What can I say? I know when I'm beat.