Just Telling Our Story

Sometimes my job takes me to the most unusual places

Like here:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, yesterday I was stomping the grounds (or, more accurately, being escorted around by a motorcoach/tour bus!) of the local landfill. Joy! It was actually fairly interesting to learn more about the place that has been somewhat annoying me lately, just due to the whiff we've been getting as we enter our town on cloudy, cool days. (I'm guessing the clouds are trapping the smell close to the ground? And thankfully we don't smell it throughout town or anywhere close to our house!) I learned that it will be around for 30 more years (likely eventually consuming our town golf course, Boy Scout cabin, soccer fields, police shooting range, archery range, skeet and trap shooting range and a state forest—all of which is owned by Waste Management—before it's done). But I also learned that it traps and converts enough methane gas to heat 5,000 homes. I don't know if that's per year or per month or what, but that's a lot of methane gas. And it is paying our town a chunk of its profits, which have helped build a new fire station and helps keep our property taxes relatively low. And I learned a little more about what happens to all of that trash that we put out on our curbside every Tuesday. Makes me want to recycle even more religiously!

Anyway, just wanted to share that from yesterday. That was actually only one stop of three that we made as part of an introduction to the Hendricks County Convention & Visitors Bureau's newest tour. I am not sure they're ready to officially announce the tour to the world, so I'll keep some of the other details hushed for now. But rest assured that the landfill is an educational stop along the way on this non-traditional tour, and the tour as a whole includes some fantastic stops at several other "prettier" stops along the way. Stay tuned to www.tourhendrickscounty.com for more details in the future!

OK, on to today. I started my day as I usually do, with a quick check on my friends' blogs. Two of them made me stop and say a little prayer for my dear friends this morning. One friend is facing some financial uncertainty as her husband lost his job and unemployment benefits have run out. Another is facing physical exhaustion from having just given birth to her fourth little one and having to care for three rambunctious and busy others at the same time. Another friend of mine just had a memorial service for her grandmother and lost her stepdad within a week or so. Just wanted to let them know that I'm thinking of them and keeping them in my prayers. You guys are strong women, and I admire your ability to keep moving forward. Hopefully things get better for all of you very soon.

Their experiences have made me stop and take a reality check this morning. I am so thankful for our family having two incomes, for having a home, for having our families, for having some energy and the ability to sleep a regular schedule. But it makes me sad that that's not true for everyone.

These are tough economic times for many Americans, but sometimes hearing that on the news every day doesn't bring the reality home. Having friends (and family members, too) facing economic uncertainty makes the reality of the situation too clear. My thoughts are with all of you facing your own challenges lately. Keep the faith. Hang on to hope. Things will get better eventually.

***

PS The economic crunch hasn't skipped over us, either. I have lost two clients so far—two of what I have considered my five major clients—in the last month due to economic problems on their ends. It's a scary time. I'm trying to focus on the positive: I also gained two clients (including one national one!) and have another possibility yet to be confirmed. They might be short-term, one-time projects, but they're projects, and for that I am thankful.

Time with grandma...captured

My very good friend recently lost her grandma, and it made me stop and remember how short life is...and how fortunate I am to still have a grandmother (and a step-grandmother) who's living. Tonight we got to visit a little with Grandma Thomson at my mom's pumpkin-carving party. It wasn't exactly sit-and-get-to-know-each-other-better time, nor did we really even think about it specifically as a day to visit with Grandma (it was all about the pumpkins and my sister & brother-in-law's mid-year graduations) but it was another day and another memory to be made. (And I am now kicking myself for not getting any pictures of her there, I don't think.)

Anyway, as I sat down tonight to find some pictures to scrapbook while I watched Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters (my guilty pleasures), I came across a couple from last Easter, when all of us took time to have individual family pictures taken with Grandma. Perfect! I'm so glad we did this. I wish the photo of all five of us had a couple of better smiles, but I'm not complaining. These pictures will be treasured for a long, long time.

 

Leaf leapin'

Just a quick layout share before I head to bed. I loved the photos in these sequence shots of the kids jumping into leaves and wanted to share! I love the looks on their faces. They were having so much fun with this simple little pile of leaves. I often wish I could find as much joy in simple things as kids do. That's a real gift.

Anyway, this is a digital scrapbook page, and those of you who are scrapbookers will likely instantly notice that it's 12x24" vertical! This will require flipping the book around, assuming I actually get all of these layouts printed and bound into a book. It's a bit awkward, and so unlike me! I like things ordered, straight and organized. So this is a real stretch for me. (You might notice I even tilted the photo strips a little! Yikes!) But it was the best orientation for all of those photos (and they're small enough as it is), so I went for it. Enjoy! [click image to enlarge]

PS That gap in the text block? That's where the page will be split. Also, I didn't use any digital kit elements on this page. The leaf is just a shape in Photoshop. (In case you were wondering...)

Missing my work buddies

(Sorry, no picture today. Don't have time to find and edit one. But I'll try to keep the text short so your eyes don't go crazy and get bored on me.)

Yesterday, as G was finishing his after-school snack and I was trying to squeeze in some more work time, he walked over to my desk, sat down on my pile of scrapbook travel gear next to my chair and asked me, out of the blue, "Mom, sometimes do you miss your friends at work?"

What a wise little comment to come out of my 6-year-old's mouth. I was kind of taken aback.

I told him I did (more on that later), but this was the perfect chance for me to explain why I work at home: to have more time with him and his sister, to be able to get him off the bus, help him with his homework and get him a snack. He recently told me, "You always have to work," and it was clear to me that, even though I'm at home more often than his daddy, in his eyes, I'm the one who's "always working." Of course it would seem that way. After all, the 2.5 hours after school that he's home before his daddy, I have to work. I take a break for an hour to get him off the bus, get him a snack and get through homework, but after that, it's to his room for quiet time while Mom works. Then I frequently make comments on the weekends about having to work during the kids' nap times, and I frequently say stuff about having to work after they go to bed at night. So of course that's not helping, either. It's made me wonder sometimes if this is the best arrangement for him. I know it is for me. But I don't want him growing up thinking Mom was always working. What to do?

Anyway, his comment yesterday has had me thinking today. I do miss my work friends. Many of them I still see occasionally or talk to on a regular basis, but working at home frequently gets lonely. There's only so much personal interaction you can get through e-mail and phone calls. I miss hearing my coworkers' idle chatter in the background while I work. I miss going to lunch with my work buddies. I miss being able to take a break and walk around the corner for a pick-me-up gab session. I miss talking with people who have the same frustrations and who get the same highs as I do with this job.

Still, I have to focus on the positives. I love my job. I love being able to avoid the gossip and politics (at least for the most part) that come with any office environment. I love being able to focus my energy and my time on the creative side of communications -- the design, photography and writing, especially -- that I love, without having to spend so much time in meetings and doing budgets and dealing with employees and interns. So there's plenty to enjoy. Sometimes, though, focusing on the positives is tough. And that's where I am today.

So that's all for today. Just jotting down my thoughts. Some day I'll look back on my blog like I do my scrapbooks, and I want to be sure it reflects more than just my kiddos (although I love them to pieces). I want it to be a real documentation of my life. Today, what feels oh-too-real is being lonely in a quiet house ... although Molly, Cole, Lucy and Jack (my animals) are welcome company.

The cutest nose-pickers around

It's been a busy week, and I have lots of new photos to share with all of you if I can make some time tomorrow. We shall see. We had a lot going on this week -- including G's soccer wrap-up, his Cub Scouts pumpkin carving, E's adorable performance at her school program, G's Pumpkin Run at school (where he ran 2.25 miles!) a walk downtown for JDRF for my friend Becky's son Riley, and the kids' first-ever jumps in fall leaves in our front yard. (After 8.5 years here, we finally have enough leaves to require raking!)

I haven't had time to download all of the pictures, let alone get them edited into something interesting, but I hope to do that soon. I especially want to share the pics of the kids in the leaves. I took some sequence shots that show the kids in motion with hilarious looks on their faces as they jump in the tiny pile of leaves. Too funny. Anyway, check back later. Maybe we'll all get lucky and I'll get them posted before the month ends!

In the meantime, I have to share this scrapbook page I did a week or two ago, because I love the picture in the bottom right. My kids will kill me some day for posting this, but I think it's hilarious! The photo was completely unprovoked. After a couple of minutes of me taking pics of them, they just forgot I was there! Enjoy! (Click on the photo for a larger version.)

PS I haven't seen Chip in the past two days, but I did see an Animal Control van in our neighborhood on Thursday. Cross your fingers. This would be a terrible time for G to "lose" Chip, given all of his recent thoughts about losing people in his life. (We had another conversation tonight at bedtime. It's been a daily conversation for the past week or so.)

He saved a caterpillar's life today

At least, that's what he's convinced happened, and maybe he's right.

When I went to meet G on his way home from the bus stop this afternoon, he was about half-way between our house and the corner. He begged to walk back to the stop before going home. He wanted to save a caterpillar.

He and our neighbor's son (for whom I was responsible this afternoon, as his mom was late getting home) walked back to the corner and spotted the caterpillar. There he lay, motionless, in the middle of the sidewalk, having just been passed by nearly a dozen elementary kids who were let off the school bus just feet away. I nudged him. He didn't move. Our neighbor said he was dead. G said he was sleeping. I tried to pick him up, but he wasn't moving. We decided to go home.

After the neighbor boy was out of sight (his mom had returned by then) and before we could get inside, G started crying. Of course I knew why, but I asked anyway. "I wanted to save him!" he cried. We went inside, G wiped the tears from his eyes (to no end...they were still flowing), and I tried once more to explain why things have to die. G was heartbroken. "He didn't get to live to be a butterfly," he said through his crocodile tears. I just held him and tried to help him understand the best I could.

A few minutes later, I asked what it was that made him so sad. "I will never get to see him again," he said. I told him that I wished I knew what to say to make him feel better, but I didn't. But he had a solution. "I want to go take a picture of him."

I couldn't tell him no.

We returned to the bus stop, and G got his picture (above). We nudged the little critter again. This time he flinched. I nudged him again. He flinched again. Then he curled himself into a little ball. He was indeed alive.

I scooped him into my hand and then gave him to G. He was elated. The thing was still tightly balled, but G knew he was alive. "This is the first time I got to hold a caterpillar," he said. His smile returned.

We carefully escorted the caterpillar back to our yard, and G started saying his goodbyes. "Bye, little caterpillar," he said several times. He clearly did not want to let him go.

 

After several minutes of trying to decide where to let him down (not in the grass; G might step on him while he's playing soccer), we settled on sitting him down in the mulch that circled one of our trees in the front yard. We eventually got him off of G's hand (after uncurling and crawling around a while, he had "fallen asleep" and wouldn't budge) and gently placed him on the pavers/border by the tree. G watched him for a while, nudged him with sticks a few times, petted him and said goodbye.

After his snack and homework, G asked me, "What kind of animals eat caterpillars?" I told him I didn't know for sure, maybe birds. "I don't want that little thing to be eaten by a bird," he said. "Maybe nothing eats that."

Maybe, I replied.

Bedtime conversations

Tonight was just an interesting night when it comes to bedtime, tuck-in conversations with the kiddos.

First up was E. We pretended spiders were crawling on our faces (courtesy of the other one's tickles...it's all about Halloween lately), shared plenty of tickly giggles, and talked about her favorite three-and-a-half-year-old topic: her birthday party. It doesn't matter that the party is still many months away. To her, it's a source of daily dreaming and entertainment. Our conversation went like this:

• Her, in her sweetest voice: Mama, you can come to my birthday party.
• Me: Thanks, Sweetie. I'd love to come to your birthday party.
• Her: Anyone with princess undies can come to my birthday party. (Thinks for a second.) You wear color undies, but you can still come to my birthday party. (Sorry...too much information? Pretty much every woman wears colored undies, right?)
• Me: Thanks, Sweetie.
• Her: I'll have a color birthday cake. It will have crayons, all different colors, but not the paper. (She likes her crayons naked...no wrappers.)
• Me: That sounds nice, Honey.
• Her: I'm going to have a Tinkerbell birthday. Not Dora. (It's been all about Dora for months. This is a big deal for her!)

It was a typical, sweet conversation that I can't seem to get enough of lately. Sometimes I just want to bottle her up at this age.

Then it was on to G's bedroom to tuck him in. This conversation was dramatically different.

• Him: Will you rock me? (This stopped me dead in my tracks, because just yesterday I teared up at a scrapbook thing when I pulled out a note I had written on his first day of kindergarten just one year ago. The first thing I read made me cry. I had written something like, "soon you won't want me to rock you at night...." It has been months since he wanted me to do that. And here he was asking me. It made me stop and realize I wanted to take some more time with him tonight and soak it all in. Unfortunately he changed his mind about me rocking him before we actually got around to it; he decided to have me rub his back instead.)
• Me: (I told him about the scrapbook thing yesterday.)
• Him: Are you sad I'm growing up?
• Me: Yes, it does make me sad sometimes.
• Him: Because you want to play with me?
• Me: Yeah, because you won't always want to play with me.
• Him: I will always want to play with you, Mom. (He's just started calling me Mom. He's wanted to for a long time, but I've made him call me Mommy. I haven't been fighting him on it lately. It's time for him to grow up and move on, I guess.)
• Me: (I gave him a big hug.) 
• Him: Why are you sad?
• Me: Because I wish I had more time to play with you. But I have to work so we can pay for things, and you're just growing up really fast. (This was no time to explain that I like to work.)
• Him: (Then he starts to cry. And somehow - I can't remember the exact line of conversation - he gets to the subject of dying.) You won't always be here. We all die one day. I want you and Daddy to live forever.
• Me: You don't have to worry about us dying, G. We're going to live for a long, long time.
• Him: But you might not. (Big tears.)
• Me: (I tried to explain that there are lots and lots and lots of years between now and when we die and that he doesn't need to worry about it right now. I also tried to explain that he could be like 65 years old before his daddy or I die. But he's a smart kid.)
• Him: But maybe I will die. Even kids and babies can die.

This was a long conversation, so I won't continue line by line. But it is a conversation I will probably not forget for some time. I have no idea if I responded "right," or what I "should" have said. It is heartbreaking to hear him talk about dying -- especially when he's crying and especially when he's thinking about himself dying. I struggle with finding the right way to talk to a six-year-old about death. And it's a topic that for him has been rather frequent in the past year or more.

Chad's dad was in a bus accident in March 2007. He was gone without any warning whatsoever. It was very traumatic for all of us, but for a 4-year-old (G's age at the time), it has been almost impossible to process, I think. Without a good grasp on time (he doesn't understand the concept of the possibility that we could be alive until we're 90 years old), and with constant reminders of death and being left alone on TV and in movies (he cried during "The Fox and the Hound" the other day and cries when Boog is taken out into the mountains in "Open Season"), he's scared of losing us. Really scared. How do we help him with that? What can we say that he can understand? Does anyone have any good advice? If so, please, please leave me a comment. I can use some advice right now.

Well, sorry to end on such a sad topic. But it's a big part of G's life right now, and I wanted to write out my thoughts about it while it's happening. I'm hopeful that he'll soon be able to really understand that we're not going anywhere. And until then, I just pray that nothing happens to anyone in our lives...especially Chad or me...until he can get through it.

I can understand how some old women end up with 100 cats

Because I might be tempted to bring this one inside to live with us. But I'll resist. Our current three are enough.

He's a stray the neighborhood kids have named Chip, and he LOVES this little guy. Every morning, he walks with us to the bus stop, mostly unprovoked by G. When we get to the stop, he puts his paws up on G's legs, begging to be picked up. Of course, G obliges, and they snuggle until the bus comes. Then after school, he follows us home, G snuggles with him some more, and he often sits in our front yard after we go inside. He is just the sweetest little kitty. And G is so sweet with him. He just loves him.

I love it that my little boy has such a love for animals. He's just like I have always been, and it makes me happy. He gets very attached to animals -- and other creatures. Take, for example, the monarch butterflies his first grade class watched transform from caterpillars over the course of a couple of (few?) weeks. The day they had to let them go, he broke into tears when he was telling me about it. He was completely heartbroken. I tried to explain to him that they were doing the right thing and helping them live long lives by letting them go rather than keeping them in a cage, but it was no help. He was attached, and to him, it was like losing a pet.

But back to Chip. I am a little worried about this little kitty following us to the bus stop each morning. He's already stopped traffic on the busy road (next to a busy school at a busy time of day) at the end of our street one dark morning because he walked into the street and just stopped in the middle of the lane. We tried to keep him near the kids and away from traffic, but he was new to this (it was the beginning of the school year) and darted away from everyone...right into the path of oncoming traffic. Now he loves these kids and does a little better at staying put on the sidewalk. But I do have to pick him up and hold him back to keep him from following the kids onto the bus. Anyway, the nervous mom in me is terrified that this little kitty is going to get smashed right before the eyes of 10 elementary school students before school some day. Or, when winter comes, I'm afraid he's going to just not come to the bus stop one day, if you know what I mean.

We'll just have to hope that doesn't happen. Because my little boy is completely smitten for Chip. And that makes me happy. (Now if he will just stay out of our garage when we back out...)

Meet Sweet Little Ashley

Meet Ashley, the fourth child of our good friends Kevin and Kelly:

Is she not the sweetest little thing? I love, love, love the crazy baby hair!

We finally made it down to visit our good friends yesterday, two weeks after this sweet one made her grand entrance to the world, and it was so good to see them and meet little Ashley. And it was fun to take a few pictures, too. I just had to share them, because she has the sweetest little baby face. And I love baby faces! :o)

Here are a few of my favorites:

 

Cute even when she cries...

Big sis Hailey is a big help for Mommy, I can tell!

Proud parents!

Thanks, Kevin and Kelly, for letting us come down and hang out with you guys last night! We had fun, and we loved meeting Ashley! You have a beautiful family and are very blessed! (Now Kelly, go get some sleep! :o)  )

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And if any of you are wondering why I don't share my own kids' names on my blog, but I did Kevin and Kelly's...Kelly's blog has all of her kids' names and photos. She keeps their last name private online, which in truth is what I'd rather do. But because my blog was originally intended for (and promoted to) my work clients, and because it is still linked to my business Web site (where my last name is plastered on every page), I keep my kids' first names private. You just can never be too safe, you know?

Because it's only the most important election of our lifetime...

...vote.

I'm pretty sure today is the last day to register to vote in Indiana. If you haven't already...do. Our future...our kids' future...depends on it.