I just have to say this again, in case anyone is under any illusions.

Having a bunch of kids as a virtual single mother is hard and very few things are idyllic. Anyone who makes it look easy - well, God bless them if it is, because they are rare. So if anyone out there with alot of little kids is pulling their hair out because they had to clean up cat litter all over the laundry room, after the toilet upstairs overflowed AGAIN, and are perpetually behind on laundry, and the dishes, never mind school (what is that we are supposed to be doing here again?)- you are not alone. And if there is also a phone call from Texas about the husband's business project- the HUGE one that was going to save the sinking ship-the one that has absolutely eaten your whole quality of life for almost a year now and is going up in smoke as you type- you are not alone.

I recommend that you punt. What does that look like? Scream everyone to bed, turn down the lights so the disaster area does not look quite so tragic. Pour a stiff drink and think about it.

Come to terms with your reality:

1) 25 years married with hotdogs and boxed mac n cheese as staples on the menu instead of caviar and champagne is still better than eating alone.
2) 13 children, alive, some of them healthy enough to leap all over the furniture and trash everything they touch today, is better than bedside in the cancer ward in the Children's Hospital, or annual visits to the cemetery.
3) 55 extra pounds on the frame is better than nothing to eat at all, or eating in a warzone.
4) A house in need of continual repair and restoration, full of a bunch of hooligan kids is lived in and not sterile or lonely- there are alot of people who love each person in this family, even in this second rate ghetto environment where the neighbors have no appreciation for the fact that our house makes theirs look more valuable and our life makes theirs look even more pristine.

That would be getting some perspective.

My dad called and asked if he and his wife, my stepmom could join us for Thanksgiving Dinner Thursday. They have two girls who are much younger than I am, in their 20s- and they are both away from home now. One is in Baltimore in law school and the other is trying to break into acting in NYC. We are so happy to have them if they can stand it!

My dad is a heart transplant survivor. Every day is a gift to him. I should think about that alot more often. I remember him telling me happiness is a choice, and that no matter what happens today the sun will come up tomorrow. The earth keeps turning.

I guess we all know what to do to improve our lives in as far as we are able to in small ways.
Tomorrow I will do what I would normally do and then do one more thing that I need to. Therese of Lisieux taught me that.

Quiet here but chatty on the mission field.

You know I write, if you could call it that, for these guys. I think most people there really don't like me, but my friends clandestinely show up and recommend what I write so I look popular. Anyway, I have been a chatty Cathy over there lately, and my MAC is busted so I can't really do the things I like on my own personal homeplace here.

For example, my hair if I really really work with it is actually almost in that Debra Norville style I wanted so many months ago, but I have no photo tools to show you. I know you are feeling real deprived by that tidbit.

I also can't figure out how to upload the photographic evidence of my having actually attended West Point although I have it here, I really do. Working on that.

In the meantime, the family is converging, some of them anyway home from college for Thanksgiving! YAAAYYYY!

I will promise photos later this week of a floral arrangement I intend to make for Thanksgiving. Again you will all be on tenterhooks over that right?
If you can't' wait for me to get with the program catch the good stuff at all my friends places from the margin here!

I mean no disrespect...

but I think President Obama is inept. All I see him doing is running around the world as a type of figurehead or something visiting and chatting with people . What does he do? Is he making any difference? Does anyone feel any better off here a year later and HOW MANY TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS have disappeared?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, OVER?

Bad News Good News

Bad News

The Pelicans have lost 26-0 to the 14th Century Lawyers, or whatever they are called.
We'll get em next year!

Good News

We DID make it to the Belmont Abbey Fun Run. I did jog the whole mile- actually at a faster pace I think than I usually run!
A gaggle of college guys took off ahead of the rest of us and after them was a young mother pushing her baby in what looked like a Bugaboo running stroller. She was first and I was second after those college "dudes". I asked her later how old she was and all, and she was only 26 and had been training for a marathon with her husband before getting pregnant. (She could have run the 5k with that stroller, easy.) My daughter Sophia was behind me, and bringing up the far rear was my husband with a baby on his back, pushing the stroller with the twins in it at an airborne shuffle.

We had fun and we want to go back next year and do the 5k! I hope we can take a whole crowd from our homeschool run walk club. It was a fun event. They had face painting and games for kids, and doughnuts, fruit and water after the run. They gave the kids who ran in the fun run teddy bears until they ran out, and we now have three of those. This year the fun run part was free but the 5k was about $30. After the run they had a soccer game. The Abbey is lovely at this time of year, too. It was a beautiful, relatively cool but not cold morning. Perfect!

(That is me with the shirt I bought as a reward!)

I am going to now go get in the bathtub with these bath salts that I bought yesterday at Earthfare for the occasion. The name is kind of scandalous, but they smell really good!

a journey of a thousand miles...

I have been up since 3 am. I should have prayed the rosary instead of wandering the internet reading the news and secretly wondering if I am going to make it to the Belmont Abbey fun run this morning.

It is only a mile for Pete's sake, but I am petrified. It's a walk run, for crying out loud. I can walk, I think my whole family will walk, except me. In fact, after breaking my ankle on a hike in New Hampshire a couple of years ago and having to be hauled down a mountain by a bunch of amazing volunteers, and doped up on serious amounts of morphine with a surgery to follow I am very lucky to be able to walk at all. Let alone jog. My problem is that I think I should be at least 20 lbs lighter and able to do the 5k, and I am at least another year away from that possibility. That depresses me and makes me anxious. You will note that I am not talking about something meaningful here- this is about a hobby. I am stressed out about how I can't get it together for a little showtime with a hobby, at which I am a perpetual beginner.

Maybe I think if I had this one thing 'right', the rest of the important stuff would line up. It is made more difficult for me when both my sisters are training for the actual 5k and can run it, while I am limping along at the not quite 2k level. I am trying to catch up with them- they have both had happenin' hair for thirty plus years, good figures for at least ten, clear skin, and baccalaureate educations. One has two under grad degrees and the other has a master's degree. They are both tall, thin, popular and funny. (I think I was adopted.)

Before I got pregnant with Fiona, I bought myself a ring with an inscription on it:
"the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step..."
I feel like I have been taking the same one step for so many years and like I 'm in a low rent version of Ground Hog Day.

So what to do now?

Get that coffee brewing and go find those workout clothes, and charge the battery on the camera because here we go again!