Free writing #1

When I was in college I took a writing class. I enjoyed it so much I repeated the class in my last year just for fun. It goes to show you that you never quite know when something you are obliged to do, such as taking electives in college, turns into a joy.

In this class I learned about a practice among writers called free writing. It includes writing, ahem...yes,  WRITING with a pencil (I used to have a dent in my long finger from writing)  in a spiral notebook. The idea is that you write without editing yourself and see what happens. This would include some very strange side thoughts while landing on whatever topic you were writing on. This proves to be a fun, and random wander through all the things the writer may be thinking about. It is a bunch of nonsense that usually ends up being a roadmap to a good thought. Who knew this would become a foundation for almost every other creative process I would find myself in in the years to come.

It is similar to brainstorming, you throw out everything that comes to mind without edits. As you review you throw out the bad and keep the good. The benefit in writing is that you can come across some really nicely written phrases if you don't break your thought by wondering if it is a good one.

Anywhoo...I kind of thought it would be fun to free write every once in a while. If you are not interested in the day by day stuff that is going on, you may want to stop here. But if you are up for a funny little drive through my memories, read on. I think in the original instructions for free writing  said not to worry about paragraphs, spelling or even punctuation but that bothers me so I will include said helpful reading tools. I may not capitalize, sorry about that.

Here goes:

January, what day is it? 17th, Sunday. I am normally at church but three of the four kids are sick so here I am, at home again this Sunday. Samuel so happily declared himself to be feeling better as he chugged half of a water bottle downstairs, then proceeded to vomit the entire contents immediately. best part? he did the deed then kept walking right on top of it as though it never happened. that child is irrepressible.

alina went to church with her dad, she is a quality time kind of kid so that is a treat for her. at last text, she was quite happily climbing all over shawn revelling in his entire attention span. he of course is trying to participate in worship, but that is not going to happen. emma has dandruff.  i don't know how to treat that in kids, i will look it up after i am done here.

i have much on my mind these days. i am actively working to rout out discouragement from my life. i really dislike how it gets under my skin and robs me of everyday function. I will spend some time on that soon and try to plan out how to fight it more effectively.

right now the kids are fresh out of the bath. my favourite, or my fr-ave-rite if i was isaac. they love the tub and i appreciate its wet-play-pen affect so i can get some things done. also they have been sick so this is a nice reset to the smell in our house. tomorrow we disinfect.

it cracks me up how involved isaac gets in shows. Wild Kratts is on TV right now, some whale chasing some shark and isaac is up on his knees yelling at the tv "NOOOOOO!" when one of them is about to get eaten, I forget who is lower on the food chain. oh, the orca. they just said it. it cracks me up that we talk about the food chain in our family. actually many of the things we talk about in our family crack me up. This is my key to enjoying parenting, humour. kids are hysterical or annoying, depending on how you look at it.

alina has decided that yelling will be her weapon of choice when it comes to fighting with the others. this often backfires. the kids push and push her, then she cracks and they just look at her like "whatisyourproblem?" then she becomes the problem. i totally get it. how is it that i apologize when someone else blows up? I don't know, but i do it all the time. me and alina, we get each other.

i sat down to watch videos of the kids the other day. the beauty of videos is that i am not as tired as i was when i filmed them. it is pure nostalgia and i wish i could reach through the screen and squeeze those little faces and kiss those little cheeks. but it is still fresh enough that i remember being crazy with sleep deprivation. i am glad for the look back but i sure appreciate being well rested.

it also makes me love my little tribe so much. they were all so little. emma was not even three when the boys came, alina a little 17 month old, they were babies and i thought they were so big compared to the boys. those boys sure made some good big sisters. even now they lavish them with kisses and talk to them like they are babies and try to nuzzle their necks. this is not welcome to the boys but it makes me smile.

smiling. i love smiles. i love secret smiles caught on strangers faces. one day we were at the grocery store and when i put ice cream in the cart both boys put their arms straight up in the air like they had scored a touchdown and yelled "ICE CREAM". I giggled of course but so did about three other ladies in the frozen food section. i feel like these are the little ways that we all help each other get along in life. we share our communities together, we will never see each other again most likely, but today we share a funny little moment.

i love it when couples go grocery shopping together and they are teasing each other. it reminds me of when shawn and i went shopping for the first time after we got married. our house didn't come equipped with cleaning supplies, an ironing board or scotch tape, so we were off to the store. while at the store, shawn decided to make the most of it by annoying me, since he DOES NOT LIKE THE STORE, that is his emphasis not mine. so my cart was slowly being filled with essentials, flour, windex, etc... his was being filled with marshmallows, and an ironing board. while wandering the aisles he would yell two rows over at the top of his lungs "KERRRRRIIIIIIII - DO WE NEED NOODLES???" I would look around innocently and make a face like "someone's husband is cray cray". When we met at the front and paid out our $375.00 I looked in his cart and he had not one, not two, but three kinds of HOT DOG RELISH. I don't even eat hot dogs. I couldn't imagine on what planet we would need three kinds of hot dog relish. His response? Well, my parents always had three... it made sense, so three bottles of hot dog relish it was. these same bottles of relish made it to the move out of our first house four years later. i actually had a hard time throwing them out since they made me smile everytime I looked at them.

I love that guy.

I need to pay attention to my children and the laundry so off i go. Thanks for stopping by.

Meanwhile here are some fun pictures of when we were first married:

my favourite picture from our wedding

he is tolerating me here

It is blurry, but I love this picture