As A Matter of Fact....I Do Still Blog!

Why as a matter of fact.....I do still blog. I guess I have been on a blog vacation of sorts. Actually, I have been both mentally and physically otherwise occupied. Yes, the blog ideas have tried their best to clutter my mind, but other things have shoved them out. Today I decided to take some time and organize. My plan is to organize my thoughts, my paperwork and maybe my freezer. As plans go though, by the time my thoughts are organized and spread out all over this page, there will likely be no energy left to organize anything else. Baby steps girl! Baby steps. 

This summer took on a life of its own with me mentally. Thoughts, feelings and emotions have reared themselves this summer. Some are good and some have been really rather dark. The older you get the more you realize just how little control you have over some processes in your life.....the grief process for instance. I think they get it right to some extent about the steps to grief and grieving, but they leave out the part where "everyone is different" and that the process isn't completed in just the span of a few months. Sometimes it takes years and sometimes it takes a lifetime. What really sucks though is that grief can blind side you. Just when you think you are home free, a picture, a song or even a smell can make you feel like the whole process never took place and you feel that you are back at square one. Yeah, I've been there a bit this summer. I'm better though.....at least for now.

I also have come to some conclusions about myself, people and life in general. There are things I have control over and there are things I don't. There are times when taking a stand is not only the right thing to do, but also very necessary. There are also times when speaking out does nothing but cause more issues than already existed. I can't control the world. It is far too vast and way too far out of my skill set, so I must put the world in Gods hands. I cannot control my country or its leaders. I can vote, I can educate myself and I can speak out when necessary but again, there comes a time when one has to realize just what their limitations are and weigh the good against the negative. Again, the rest needs to be handed to God. As for people, I continue to get schooled in people regularly. I found out recently that I am in some ways very naive about the human population. I am not alone in this as people like myself use Facebook and other media sites with the incorrect belief that somehow they are safe. We put out personal info, pictures and way too much info on ourselves and then we somehow are surprised when people use all of this to attack us and our families. Not all people are moral and ethical. Not all Facebook friends are our friends and sadly, even some we know on a personal level who stand as both family and friends are not what the words suggest they should be.

I would like to be angry, and I was for a while about some of the people who have shown their true selves to me this summer, but after thinking it through I realize the real blame lies with me and not them. They did nothing to me or my family that I myself did not allow, whether it was in the cyber world or in person. It was a great lesson in trust as well as an eye opening experience into what people will say and do when they are hiding behind their computers. Lesson learned and I move on.

I also found myself extremely humbled this summer. It is humbling to know that maybe as a woman in my home on my own turf I am queen of all my kingdom and usually in great demand. After all, I am the only one who knows how to change out toilet paper, where the laundry room is or how to load a dishwasher, but when I step out that front door....I am just another someone. You would think that all my years in various jobs, working in the home and doing everything from daycare to domestic service, along with my years of blogging, writing and expressing myself to the world would find me some kind of work that would provide for my family and give me a sense of purpose. Of course this all needs to be on my terms (working from home)....but come on, am I asking that much???? Apparently I am. What I have found is that my blogging has gotten lazy along with my punctuation, spelling, editing and it seems at times that I have a fairly poor general understanding of the English language. Don't get me wrong....there are jobs out there where you can work from home, but it seems that first you must put your time in on the job. Being told for the umteenth time that you are simply not employable is no fun to hear. It is also no fun to take the criticism from writers. I know I have done it for years, but when I am at a point where I am trying to learn from said criticism, it gets a little a lot humbling. Sigh!!!!

Aside from all of my mental, emotional brain clog, there has been a lot of physical stuff too. No not health or anything like that. Physical as in home repair. Z (or should I say WE) took on a project this summer that in theory sounded like a week or two deal. Here we are in the second month and I am kind of over the whole home repair thing. Unfortunately it doesn't matter how over it I am as there is still much to be done. Z decided to actually put up sheet rock walls in his room, along with a new floor and ceiling. Before, it was just cement walls, cracked and curling 1970's linoleum over cement and ceiling tiles with pool cue holes in them. Thanks to a friend of mine Z has pushed forward even though I think he realized somewhere about week two that he might be in over his head a bit. In the midst of all of this a few other repairs have been done such as light repairs, a new door and David's room no longer has a Z head size hole in the wall. All of this along with cooking, cleaning, organizing, rearranging, decluttering and running every which way has kept me physically busy and usually fairly exhausted.

So as you see, blog ideas haven't stood much of a chance in my overused brain in the last couple of months. Now as I look at the calendar I see that school is just a couple of weeks from starting and I find myself wondering how the time has gone so incredibly fast. It seems that just the other day the kids had their last day of school and we were wondering what to do with the 12 weeks in our future. As summers go though,  this one wasn't horrible. A lot seems to have been accomplished and I feel a change in me. Maybe it has been the life lessons about people and trust. Maybe it has been the humbling and realization of where I stand in this world. Maybe though....it has been the combination of it all and the feeling that this summer has not been wasted. Whatever the case, it has been a very busy summer and one I don't think I will soon forget.

Oh, and yes.....I do still blog.