It seems like everyone has a focal point on which they exert a lot of energy each day. Some days it changes from one thing to another, sometimes someone gets so fixed on one thing that nothing else is clear to them until they can shift their attention.

I haven't been focusing very much on this blog lately. And I apologize to the few of you who have paid attention to it. But visit my/our other blog (it is an invite-needed blog, so if you haven't been invited, you're welcome and invited to leave your email address and I'll invite you in) where I have been focusing more of my attention these days. That blog is more family oriented.....which is why I have been focusing a lot on it. My family is my focus these days, especially since we are less than a month away from adding a new member to it.

And when that happens, I'm sure my own focus will change. But as for now, come visit the other blog...

I have never responded well to people who feel like they need to tell me what to do and how to do it. Ever.

But I do a pretty good job at telling myself what to do--in fact, I can't go to bed at night without my neatly-written list of TO DO's for the next day beside my bed. I even like to write things and cross them off as I do them (there's a phsycoanalytic term for that, I'm sure), which keeps me fairly busy and fairly on-the-move each and every day.

Today, however, my TO DO list was unusually short (due to getting more than usual done day previous to this one) and, for the first time in a long time, I don't really have too much else to do while my babeh naps. If I were my mother I could easily sit down and read a famous novel for the remainder 2 hours I have of "nap time." If I were my father, I would find some great sporting event on the TV and put my feet up. And if I were my husband, I would pull out a challenging Sudoku or crossword puzzle and lose myself in numbers. But I'm none of those people, so none of those things sounds very appetizing.

So I guess I'll sit here for a few more minutes, replaying a few of the dances from SYTYCD on Youtube, and try to decide how my few moments of solitude should be dealt with. It should be relaxing to have nothing to do...but for some reason, its unnerving.

How silly of me.

READ ME A STORY, eh?

Sure seems appropriate for some of my babeh's jammies to say. We love reading and I've recently discovered a new love for the library. Friends around me have told of their adventuresome visits there and though I grew up frequenting the great palaces of books, my adult life somehow associates them with endless study groups, late night cramming, and worst of all, testing centers...so I have somehow forgotten the fact that libraries are actually filled with fun collections of stories that my babeh and I can explore together before and after naptimes and bedtimes.

I'll happily read him stories.

He doesn't need jammies to ask me...

...even though we LOVE these jamms from his Gramms...

A splash of thoughts today:

We've had some of our favorite guests stay at our house for the past week living within the walls of our study where our computer also resides, so I've let my attention go toward the living than the linking. The house is empty for now, other than my babeh napping in the adjacent room, so I thought I'd revisit my computer and a few of my internet interests (aka hotmail, blogger, gmail, etc.) and let my brain just talk through my fingers for a bit. Here goes:

The other night at The Ball Game an obviously overweight woman leaned over to her dad who had just commented on her candy arrangement on her lap and said, "Well, Dad, I figure candy is my birth control. The bigger I get, the less anyone will want to have sex with me." I just about burst out laughing. Why would someone brag about something like getting bigger and bigger (besides a woman who is pregnant)? We love going to ball games--but it always amazes us to watch so many fat people (sorry to not have much political correctness here) eating such loads of fattening food and watch already drunk people march down the isles with two filled-to-the-brim cups of beer not spill an ounce on themselves. Its the best people watching I know of (other than parades...)

Sometimes I check people's blogs just to see if what I HOPE I'll see or what I FEAR will see on their blogs finally happens...a pregnancy announcement, a birth, a breakup, an instance I was there to see, an instance I wanted to be there to see...And sometimes I retire blogs that I used to look at because they are too full of pictures or too picture-less. Some people I thought highly of until I found out that they have no eloquence in their writing and others I have gained much respect for because I've discovered their brains are much more intricate than I ever knew. This blogging world has opened my eyes to so much.

Everyone has to wait for something at some time just about every day. Whether it be at the grocery story check out line, for 40 weeks to pass during pregnancy, for someone to call/text them back or for their engine to turn over, for the curling iron/waffle iron/clothing iron to heat up properly, everyone has to wait. Aren't we told that practice makes perfect? Shouldn't we all be good at it, then? Well, I'm awful at it. Waiting is NOT something I'm good at. God knows it. He's constantly putting opportunities in front of me to teach me patience and if I could just master it, I'm sure I could move on to the next life lesson I need to learn in this life.

There is a mystical silence that comes over our community between the hours of about noon to three o'clock. Its the time when most ladies have their babies down for naps--and we're all busily getting things done inside our homes. The pool is less crowded, the mailboxes aren't visited, and if you knock on anyone's door, most women will poke their heads out with a whispered look to them. I like this time of day-not because I like the break from my motherly duties, but because I feel like the overall silence is pretty cool.

More thoughts later...My babeh is waking up...

You know the saying, "It's the best invention since sliced bread!"? Even though I can't say that I think sliced bread is the GREATEST invention of all time (I actually like cutting my own slices from fresh loaves of bread best), I often take notice of what GREAT inventions we have out there.

Like the Twin Pop Popcycle. Genius!

Not only do you feel like you get TWO juicy treats in one, but you also have the option of saving one for later or sharing one with a friend! And the flavors?! You can't get much better than the banana or rootbeer ones...and the blue ones aren't all that bad either. It seems like they'd become old hat after all these years, but every year I look forward to them more and more.

Ah, twin pops. Best invention since...fresh baked bread that you can cut into yourself. :)

Last night I dreamt, for the second time this weekend, that some incredible, incurable rage came over me.

In bed last night, I dreamt that over and over again on the way home from somewhere we ran into bad guys who kept bullying us until I learned that the only solution to the frustrations we encountered on our way home was puff myself into a huge, awful, hulk-like being. In order to to this, I had to forcefully focus all of my energy into a glob of anger in order to *POW* and *WHAM* the bad guys out of our path. YUCK.
It wasn't fun to wake myself up from such feelings.

I'm quite certain I'm NOT an inately angry person. As a matter of fact, I hate contention or even feeling like things aren't "cool" between me and someone else. I like to believe that no one really enjoys contention and feeling hulk-sized anger. Its scary to hear of so many scary stories where people really ARE that angry and will do things that are hideous and freakishly mean.

Typically, dreams are incredible. But man, its crazy to feel some feelings and experience some things you'd never want to feel while awake... What would a dream reader say about THESE dreams?

Along with all the other crazy changes that come to my body during pregnancy, my hips are changing enough so that my feet are blistering to accomidate the change in pressure my feet are getting while trying to adjust to a new gait on my morning walks (that was a WORDY sentence, wasn't it?).

So I've started apply bandaids to my toes and heels before I slip on my walkin' shoes each morning in protest. I love walking much more than I hate blisters and sore hips. Found tucked in a tiny pocket of an old purse, I found this quote written on a little piece of paper...

"Above all, do not lose your desire to WALK: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it...but by sitting still and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill...thus, if one keeps on walking, everything will be alright."
--Soren Kierkegaard 1847

I love it. I love walking. Come along if you want.

I'm being chased by subliminal messages everywhere.

Maybe they aren't so subliminal.

Around our home I have spotted three, count them, THREE pairs of wayward panties/big boy pants crumpled in the parking lot, under a tree, or near the swimming pool. Since when did tiny-people underwear start wandering off? Socks, I can understand. But underwear?!

We are determined to not have two kids in diapers and though the months are somehow zipping by, my son's determination/willingness/interest/desire to be potty trained comes and goes as quickly as the robins outside our window. One day he's nearly potty-pro and the next day he's anything but pro-potty. Sigh.

I have to wonder if perhaps these wayward underpants I keep seeing aren't pairs that belong to little ones such as my son who think they are meant to be thrown OUT like diapers. Isn't it obvious that they aren't since they don't have sticky tabs? Hmm.

Needless to say, big boy pants and potty trips are certainly on my mind.

There are three main places that I receive personal revelation (not the spiritual kind, folks, I'm talking the revealing of personal ah-ha's that clarify things going through my head...although, come to think of it, these places have also been very spiritually clarifying places, too). These places are 1: Beneath the heated flow of my shower head, 2: On a good, long walk/run, and 3: During pillow talk late at night with my eternal cuddle companion.

The other night, as we lay in bed discussing our daily insight and adventures, we started talking about how GOSSIP means different things to different people. I've grown up with the understanding that gossiping was (as the picture above suggests) a way for little snippits of mean information about someone else to be spread to other people/groups who wouldn't otherwise learn the information. The key words for me always were MEAN and SPREADING---like nasty tar that makes you and everyone else feel icky around it. If the information is common knowledge and just NEWS (ie. "So and So is having a baby boy!" or "They are moving at the end of the month"), I haven't felt it was "gossip."

But as my hubb and I discussed it, we realized that some people were taught that any talk about anyone, good or bad, news or rumor, true or false, is considered gossip and shouldn't be messed with at all. The Wikipedia definition suggests that gossip is "idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It forms one of the oldest and most common means of sharing (unproven) facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information transmitted." Hmmm. Yes, true.

My hubb and I then discussed how most people talk about other people and what's going on with those around them within most every day conversation. It isn't necessarily degrading or spiteful, just making light conversation and comparing opinion and facts...at least in our case. As we lay there, our "revelation" came as we realized that not everyone was raised with this tar-in-hands picture in their mind when it came to gossip (what a strange concept), that not everyone could agree that light-hearted "news sharing" is harmless, and that the safest bet is to avoid being the initiators and contributors to any kind of negative or uncommon information about anyone we knew to anyone.

We laughed as we snuggled closer listing all the other things we could initiate conversations about...the weather, athletic techniques, types of clothing we like, spiritual insight, economical issues...all things that may start and end a conversation much quicker than talk about people we know...

There are very few television shows that I just can't miss. Sure, American Idol is unnervingly addicting, and if I have the right set of ladies to accompany me, The Bachelor/ette is pretty fun to gauk at, but for the most part, the tube isn't my favorite place to fling my attention. I seem to be a reality TV fan, don't I? I guess I don't get out much when it comes to TV shows...

However, So You Think You Can Dance has started up again...and I feel nearly obsessed. Even my dreams are letting me know that my subconsious is just as hooked as I am in my conscious state. I love discovering new music, discovering how much I miss dancing, discovering how untalented I was even at my peak, and how awe inspiring it is to see people so dedicated and passionate about dance. This show moves me--even though I can't move from the TV while it is on!