Strawberries

I was eating a strawberry last night before I went to bed and I got a flash of a memory from when I was little!  Now I can not tell you the number of times I have eaten strawberries since I have been an adult or even older teenager and not thought of when I was little girl.  Maybe since it was Mother's Day and I had enjoyed a nice afternoon with my mom and step-dad I was in the right frame of mind to remember. 

When I was a little girl my mom had attempted to grow strawberries.  Now when I say attempted I don't mean that she was a failure at it. She did very well in getting them to grow and she even had berries on the plants!!  For a while she couldn't figure out why there were hardly even any ripe berries, though.   I think it was because two blonde haired little girls would sneak out in the back yard and find all the little berries, green or red, and eat them before mom could pick them!!   As I stood there last night eating that strawberry I was smiling to myself and remembering going out in our yard and searching for those little berries.  The green ones were very tart but they were still good.  I am surprised that we didn't get tummy aches from those!  I like when I remember little things like that, it makes me feel like I am home again!

Memories

This is a penguin.  I have had this little guy for a very long time!  He is kinda cute but really the wrong colors for a penguin.  I found him out in my garage when I was going through things to throw them out last weekend.  I remember when I got him, well sort of.  I don't remember how old I was but I wasn't really little.  So lets say when I was younger my dad won this little guy in one of  those claw machines.  You know the ones that you hardly ever win things out of?  Daddy wasn't one to play those things really and I don't even remember why he did this time....but out came this little guy.  He has been around for, gosh, around 20 years maybe?  I tuck him away somewhere and he reappears when I need to smile, sometimes when things are going bad he is just "found".  I think it is neat the way he appears when I sort of need him.  I was going through stuff in the garage and while I know he had been tucked away  in a container here he was just kind of sitting there with a bunch of other stuff!!  I had a bad weekend because of my medication mix up and I wasn't feeling too good.   Things have been really chaotic lately for no reason it seems.  That is normally when the penguin appears.  He makes me slow down somehow.  I see him and I smile and think, "What are you doing here?"  I give him a hug and make sure I put him somewhere safe.  I have some of Daddy's things, a flannel shirt, an old wallet, a few pictures that were in his wallet, and a quilt his mother made I think, but this little penguin evokes a different kind of feeling when I see him.  Those other things are nice and all, but they aren't stuffed, and cute, and "won" just for me by my daddy!  Now my little penguin is up on my dresser so I can look at him every day.  Who knows when he will get tucked away again to be found again just when I need him....

Vanity

You ever wonder why women feel they have to do so many things just to make themselves look good?  I mean we color our hair, perm or straighten our hair, remove hair from our legs and other areas, groom our eyebrows, use all kinds of lotions and potions on our skin, paint our faces with makeup, and our fingers and toes with polish, wear "support garments" so our bodies look perfect when they aren't, wear heels so we are taller, tan ourselves or use fake tanners so our skin looks golden and on and on!  Where does it stop?  And you know what?  Our husbands and most men don't care if we wear makeup or color our hair or most of the time even fix our hair.  They don't care if we come to bed in our flannel pajamas or our pretty nighties.  All they see is a beautiful woman that loves them and wants to be in the bed with them in the first place!  I mean is it the women that feel that we have to do all these things because other women do them?  Or is it because we look in magazines and see all the "perfect" women there?  I tell my girls that real women don't look like that, that those pictures are airbrushed and altered so much that she could have had a full beard and we would never know!!  I think that we as women hold ourselves at too high of a standard all the time and we should just relax and be happy knowing that our husbands love us as we are!!  Now where did I put that hair color??

I can not believe the weekend is over already!  It probably went by so fast because I had to sit all day Saturday and basically do nothing because of my medication stupidity.  Oh and I forgot a pill reminder when I went grocery shopping!  But I think I made up for sitting a little bit with what I got done on Sunday.  Since I moved in with my husband seven years ago our garage has been a landing spot for my previous life.  When all my stuff got delivered from North Carolina it all went into the garage.  We have gotten rid of some of it but a lot still lingers out there.  Sunday I went out to get something, I don't even remember what, and all the stuff just seemed to jump out at me.  I got Beau and we went through a lot of things on one side of the room.  I believe there were five or six boxes that were emptied and eight or nine garbage bags full out to the trash or to goodwill.  Now I can actually walk out into the garage and see part of the floor!!  All of that was accomplished in less than 45 minutes!  Now since I totally ignored the house over the weekend I have to make up for that and clean, clean, clean.  If I had normal routines in place for keeping things clean it would be easier.  Oh well, maybe one day!!  For now if Connor wants to play or isn't feeling well I will spend time with him.  He will only be this little for a small time and I want to relish is his babyness for as long as I can!  Being Monday today is my running day.  I will see how my body holds up after this weekend.  With all the progress I have made with my running program I do not want to lose ground by not running.  Onward to another wonderful, crazy day in my life!