One of my dearest friends asked me why I think some people always seem to pick the short straw while others always seem to sail through life.

I've thought about this all week in hopes to give my clearest of answers. So here goes:

Point One: At church the other week someone stood up and said something to the effect of, "Satan just wants us to be miserable." I had to hold my own arm down and my mouth closed as I refrained from shouting a huge rebuttle. In my opinion, Satan wants us to be HAPPY but in doing things that are stalling our progression to our ultimate goal (put specific religion aside and focus on ultimate life-and-afterlife goals). C.S. Lewis supports this concept (or maybe I support the his thoughts on this concept...) in his brilliant book The Screwtape Letters. When we find ourselves joyful in doing things that are actually hindering our true happiness/goals, THEN he is doing his job successfully.

Point Two: I have a hard time believing that we all sat around in Pre-Earth Life and made lists of the things we could and couldn't handle and made up a blue print of what exactly we'd go through. BUT, I LIKE to believe that God recognizes our physical, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive abilities, strengths, and weaknesses and sees that one trial or another may be more suitable to teach us something than another. When I watch my babeh run around the house and come to a place where he's stumped, I can tell straight away if I should say, "Keep trying" or run to his aid. I think the same goes with our Heavenly Parents (if you should believe we have them.)

Point Three: The fact of the matter is that EVERYONE has some kind of struggle going on in their lives all the time, serious or just troubling, internal or obvious. The examples are endless, but my point is that no one is at all times care/worry/pain free. "Pain is inevitable, Misery is optional, but Joy is a choice." We all get to draw the short straw in some form or another, but we all just choose to bare the burdens differently.

So, my conclusion is this: We all suffer in some way or another. We all have burdens that seem too heavy to bare at times in our life. And we all have a choice in how to deal with them. We, nor God, in my opinion, necessarily CHOSE what murky waters we'd have to wade through to learn the lessons we need to in life, but we GET TO choose if we are going to find goodness in the experiences and keep on our track to our ultimate goals...or if we are going to let ourselves be stalled or led off track and let ourselves find joy in the attention and the pitty and the woah-is-me-s or even *in the little things that aren't going to be useful in getting us to our ultimate goals in the long run. The trickiest part of this whole life experience is learning how to buck up and keep moving. My sister in law always says, "Cry a river, build a bridge, and get over it, would you!?" Its hard to get over and through struggles. But it isn't impossible.

Its so much easier to say than do, I realize. And its even easier to just say you've drawn a short straw and hope for someone to save you. But I think our parents (both here and Heavenly) and our friends can see when to say, "KEEP TRYING!" and will do all they can when they know we need a little more than just encouragement. Nobody just sails through life...no one that I know, at least. We all just have to not look at the other straws in the handful and just learn to believe that what you've got infront of you is for your good no matter what happens. Again, easier said that done...but saying it is a good mantra...

Any other opinions out there?

*There is nothing wrong with making lemonade out of lemons. My heavens, we MUST make a huge amount of lemonade in order to stay sane in this life. But in The Screwtape Letters we see that sometimes finding joy in the things that aren't useful to us and aren't helping us and allowing ourselves to stay in the hole that we've found ourselves in (rather than finding a way out), THAT is when the Devil has his sneaky grip around our little necks. Brilliant book. EVERYONE should read it.

Just like Mother Nature so sickly outside

The three of us woke with a nose at high tide

Our throats are a ticklin', we're sneezing a storm

We can't seem to get our poor bodies to warm

We're coughing and sniffling and rubbing our eyes

And sucking on sweet cures all colors and size

The trash cans are stacked full of crumpled up tissue

And we've warn out the saying, "Oh, honey! God Bless You!"

We're keeping the couch feeling loved all day long
As we snuggle with blankets watching movies with song

I guess its a good thing the weather is poor

'Cuz today, sad but true, we won't leave our front door!

Yesterday, when I left my babeh at his favorite-place-other-than-home while I went to work, I walked away feeling relieved that he didn't cry as I closed the door behind me and also a little confused at why my bag was so light.

It was then that I realized how much stuff we tote around all day every day to ensure his (our) well being should any circumstance arrise: Diapers and Wipers for a dirty bum, juice or milk in a sippy, a truck or two or maybe a ball, some goldfishies, fruit leather, or pretzels, one or two binkies, a book or two, and somehow an extra pair of shoes always turns up at the bottom of the bag. All that stuff adds up to several good pounds...not to mention MY daily necessities...and when left with a sitter, well, the bag becomes a lot lighter.

I tried to do the traditional "Diaper Bag" thing for a while but learned quickly that carrying a baby, a diaper bag, a purse, and probably a blankie-and-toy wasn't very logical or appealing to onlookers. So, I opted for a not-so-trendy but VERY spacious and VERY useful Hobo bag. I love it. I love how I have to reach in up to my shoulders to find something at the very bottom--the way Mary Poppins did and I love that if we were stranded on a desert island together for an entire day with nothing but my bag, we'd both be perfectly happy.

Its amazing how happy you can be with just a small bag of things useful to you...

My first "real" boyfriend called me Princess. Looking back on that whole "first love" experience I might be willing to admit that one of the reasons I feel so head-over-heals for him was because he called me Princess (and because he was was a killer kisser---although, I had never kissed anyone before him, so how would I know?).

I've always held the title of Princess close to my heart because of that boy, so when people say we wives or we mothers should be Queen of our household, I kind of take a step back and wonder if being Princess of a household is a lesser ordination. I'd rather be Princess of anything than Queen, I've decided. Princesses get to wear gorgeous dresses with glass slippers and dance with handsome, dreamy eyed Princes. Heavens, I even think of my hubub as a Prince---a dreamy-eyed one at that. The king, to me, is my dad and the Queen is my mother; kind of like when someone calls me Sister ______ at church. "That's my mother-in-law, thank you. Call me by my Princess name, please."

It may be good to be Queen, but for now, I'm perfectly happy being the Princess of my home...although, what do you then call the children of a prince and princess? Prince once removed???

We've been doing a lot of looking out the window over the past few days. It's amazing how we made it through several long, hard inside months and with just two weeks of warmness teasing us, we can't seem to digest the pit in our stomachs as we watch the flag stick straight out from the wind (as if it were standing at attention to Mother Nature) and every last flurry of tiny snowflakes dancing outside our window screaming NANNY-HA-HA! SPRING HASN'T SPRUNG YET!

Spring HAS sprung. I know it has. I can feel it in my bones. So can the rest of my family. We've even turned off our heater. Good thing we have plenty of inviting warm blankets...

I've decided I need to stop talking. Not only do I leave most situations thinking that my mouth said WAY TOO MUCH, I also feel like the #1 reason I get into trouble these days is because I opened my mouth when I should have just kept it zipped.

Don't get me wrong. I'm actually a very good listener. And If I am asked to, I can keep any secret for as long as requested. But often I just talk and talk--sometimes just to make someone else feel like they don't need to talk if they seem uncomfortable, sometimes because I just have to vomit out my ever-coming thoughts. But man, my ongoing opinions, theories, and tangents seem to leave me redfaced with that foot-in-mouth syndrom more often than not.

From now on, I'm mute. Or at least until my babeh needs his story time.

Hard boiled eggs are surely the most indicitive sign that Easter is drawing near. I happened to have 18 EXTRA eggs just chillin' (pun intended) in my fridge this week, so we decided that instead of overwhelming ourselves with eggs for every meal, we'd boil them all hard and treat ourselves to eggs when we felt the need for a snack.

The best part of the whole harded (is that a word) egg is the process of smashing it against the counter and rolling the crispness out of the shell until peeling it off the whites is easy. Its almost a liberating motion in and of itself. And then sprinkling salt, pepper, and maybe paprika over each half of the split snack just tops off one of the best non-sweet sweetnesses of spring. I can't wait to dye another batch of 18 eggs with my babeh and hubub in a week or two.

I love hard boiled eggs. Heavens, I love spring. So so much.

If I were deemed Queen of anything, I think many could agree that a crown would be worthy for my ability to go off on tangents. Stories that should take only second to tell somehow turn into a scenic route of random details and thoughts that are always intended to give "my point" a more solid foundation...but sometimes just make me sound like an absent-minded professor. I can assure you I'm not absent-minded and I'm not a professor. I'm just someone who might think more than necessary--if that's possible.

So, having had to turn my online ramblings into an invitation-only quarry for my family's life, I have decided (after sweet encouragement from some of my favorite people) to tame all my silly tangents here, in public, for those who might care to read my thought processes without having to LOG IN or EVEN KNOW ME. We'll see how it goes. Encourage me with comments or help me realize my tangents really aren't all that interesting (by NOT commenting) and we'll see how effective this idea really is.

As for now, I'm here to

Tame The Tangents

in my life and just have another

somewhere to write something...