What I've learned so far (the cliff notes)

Originally posted 7/25/2008)
Since my babychick is getting older, I’ve been thinking about what, if any, wisdom I have to hand down to her. With that in mind, I present to you what I’ve learned thus far about life, love & the nature of reality (at the ripe ol’ age of 26).

Random:

You never realize how many places are not handicap accessible until you need for all of them to be.

High school does not last forever. It just feels like it.

You never realize how dirty your floors are until you have a kid that crawls everywhere.My dirty carpets are her buffet.

No one gives a crap about your permanent record, and after a year in college, no one gives even half a crap about your grades k-12.

You don’t realize how dirty the air smells most places until you get someplace where it smells really, really clean.

The spork is under-rated.

It’s hard to be grateful for uneventful days until you’ve had a few that shook your world.

Sometimes things taste better from a can than when homemade.

Even if you think you can’t go any further with something, if you push through the pain, you’d be amazed how far you get. With that in mind, if it makes you vomit, it’s time to call it a day.

College is not for everyone.

Not every vacuum is a wet-dry vac, and if you, say, suck up a bunch of water and then vacuum up, say, some cat litter--it's not a good situation.

You can be a successful, fully functioning adult and have no clue what-so-ever as to how to do anything beyond the basics when it comes to math.

French class was a waste.

The most meaningful conversations take place either late at night or around a bonfire.

We should all get one more chance to go to prom.

Avacados are good if you give them a chance.

Trick-or-treating and recess shouldn’t be relegated to such a brief number of years in one’s lifetime.

Most mistakes can be undone; The trick is to identify the ones which cannot before you make them.

There should be more mistletoe in the world, or at least more random excuses to kiss.

If you want unconditional love look to your dog or your mama. Everybody else has conditions.

Dr. Seuss was a genius.

Don't put liquid dish soap in the dishwasher.

About love:

We have a turtle we adopted from someone who could no longer take care of him (well, two actually, but this was before we got her).When we lived in the trailer park (cue the banjos) I used to let him crawl around outside in the grass on warm days. We had a pond on one side of the back yard and the turtle (whose name is Jiggy Wumpus, if you care) would always instinctually walk in the direction of the water.

Because I didn’t particularly want him to jump into the pond, I’d always start him out on the other end of the yard. There were some issues with that yard that caused rain to puddle up in a few places between Jiggy and the pond. Being that he was a small turtle and this was a large yard, poor Mr. Wumpus lacked perspective, and would often seem to think he’d arrived at the pond when he’d only found a puddle.

I’m going somewhere with this, I swear.

Some ancient peoples believed turtles are sages of this world, carrying with them the wisdom of age. Now I don’t know about that, but I do know that this particular turtle was always smart enough to eventually realize that while that puddle may look, smell and feel awfully similar to what he knew he was meant to find, it wasn’t ultimately the kind of place you could make a life for yourself. And though it meant leaving the cool comfort of the puddle, Jiggy would drag himself back into the yard and keep heading for a pond that he couldn’t see, but knew in his heart was out there.

My point, if it isn’t obvious, is that maybe sometimes love is like that. In each of us there is an instinctual longing to find that person with whom we belong. The trick is to know the puddles from the pond.

On the nature of God:

One day I was changing Kat’s diaper on the changing table when a little plastic baggy caught her attention. Enraptured with this enticing new toy, Kat struggled and pushed and fought her way around me to get to the plastic bag. Finally, after all of her efforts, the bag was so close it brushed her fingertips. Just before she grabbed hold, I snagged the bag away from her.

Kathryn screamed and kicked and screamed some more. She looked at me pleadingly, unable to comprehend why something she had worked so hard to attain and that she wanted so much had been taken from her.

I wanted to tell her that I had to take the bag because it was dangerous, and because if she played with it she could choke on it or suffocate. I wanted to explain to her that I knew this because it had happened before to other children in the world and that there is even a warning printed on the side of the bag, which she could read for herself if she possessed the knowledge of how to do that. I wanted to tell her all those things, but because she was so young and couldn’t understand the message, I had to settle for just taking it away from her. Not because I hate her, or because I’m indifferent, but because I love her more than my own life and in this instance, knew this was the way it had to be.

It occurred to me that this may be how God (whatever you may think God to be) feels.

There have been so many times in my life that something I had wanted so, so much, was so close I could practically feel it. Then, for whatever reason, it was snatched away.

"Maybe," I thought, "it is not that the universe is cruel or even random. Maybe it is just that I am –all of us are really—an infant in the eyes of something much wiser. Maybe there is a reason. Maybe it’s a damn good one. Maybe, if I could decipher the symbols. I would even see it right there in front of me for myself. But maybe it was just so far beyond me, that all I could understand was the 'no' and wallow in the heartbreak of the moment."

From that moment on, I’ve seen disappointment as a series of plastic bags on the diaper table, and am grateful for what I have failed to attain.

On blogs:
No one really reads them so it's a good place to store those random thoughts that drift into your brain while running, mowing, vacuuming or showering