Blown away...

A friend of mine sent me a card with Christmas.
She is about 6 months older than my little brother, and I’ve known her since she was very young. She was part of a singing group I set up in my late teens, she was a member of the youth group in our church when I was leader, and when I left, we stayed in touch.

She’s a scatterbrain of sorts, with her own timing to life and always busy with her personal(ity) development. Once in a while we meet up, talk for hours and hours and then go about our own lives again. She has a beautiful, creative and unique personality, that she's 'growing into', and I love talking to her, cause she speaks as she thinks and that leaves no space for pretence or ego.

As I said, she sent me a card with Christmas, wishing me and my family the best for 2009 and then she added something along the lines of: “I hope I won’t blow you away with this, but I really see you as “A Master of Life Art” (een Levenskunst Meester)
At all the important moments in her life, I had been there to help her through them…

……

Needless to say she blew me away….

The compliment was so big, that it had me off balance for the longest.
How do you deal with such a beautiful statement.
In flashes I feared that she’d greatly misjudged me and expected something from me as a person that I could not live up to. I went down the mental lane of…. I Haven’t Done Anything! We’ve had great conversations about all kind of aspects of life, it felt good to know each other, but ‘Levenskunst Meester’…. Pfffff…. All we do is talk!!
In a way Ialmost feel ashamed to write about it, cause it meant so much to me…. but feels so BIG.
I’m all for complimenting people, but this….. was just a little too BIG to just gracefully accept and say: ‘Thank you darling, you’re too kind.’
You know?

On the other hand, I was very passionate about that youth group and their development when I was their leader. Even though the age difference was no bigger than a few years, they kinda felt like my kids, and I put a lot of energy into our time together.

So when you get that kind of feedback, I guess you really should just smile, give the darling a big hug and thank her…. If you’ve made such a difference in someone’s life, and they see you that way, It’s only beautiful, even if it is a bit overwhelming…

zo moeder, zo dochter....

Every once in a while at a family gathering, we go down memorylane...
A family member is chosen, usually due to a comment they make that serves as a trigger, and every crazy, stupid, cute and funny thing about them is called back to life.

Thanks to these 'get togethers' I remember that my first songs were based on the theme of "Mariannetje zo zwart als roet" ( I just googled that... it's "Moriaantje zo zwart als roet" it's a very short song, but my version had a gazillion verses... I could spend my sundays trotting through the house making up verse after verse after verse after verse and driving my sisters MAD) and the tune of the 'Bounty' advert that was on TV at that time...possibly in the days of 'Sky Channel.... (remember Sky Channel????) all I know is, it sterted with "When I look into your eyes, I can see Paradise...." after those 2 lines I was offf... making up al kinds of sentences that I felt fit with the song. And as with "Moriaantje" every time I sang it, the story would be different.

Round about those same years, my sisters and I would make up stories at night before going to bed. The eldest one would begin, and tell a really exciting one, then the second would follow, and then they'd brace themselves for my story.
They tried to listen for about 5 minutes max. then they'd be asleep. This wasn't because my sisters were extremily cruel and didn't want to hear my adventures, but because my stories (as my songs) went on FOREVER.... all glued together with the phrase "En Toen..." which I used very very often, hoping this would keep the story interesting..... it didn't...

Terribly sidetracked... the reason I brought this up, is because even before I could talk and make up songs, I was forever humming. All day, everyday I would hummmm....
And, last night, I heared my little girl hummmmm... for the first time.
*smile*

so how do you like being a mother, then? :-)

Easier to reply here as my answer was getting longer and longer....

It's life defining..., It's like the biggest project I've ever started, and every second is thrilling.
It's challenging, in many ways. Giving people space to take a part in her life for instance isn't easy at first. You have an opinion about, well... everything that happens around her.
The first few days I had to stay in the hospital, and was surrounded by nurses and other moms, and I had little privacy to settle into my new family.
Ed was only aloud to be there at visiting hours (we broke that rule almost immediately) and even though there were lots of people there, checking if you ate well or changing your baby's diper, not much was really explained, the nurses were always busy, so I felt very lost.
They did have time however to open my curtains ever so often, so I could 'mingle', and comment on how chubby & big our little girl was....
With all the eating disorder in our world, and the gazillion people with some form of a physical complex, the last thing I want is for people to go on about the chubbiness of our new born.
However, as it happened regularly, I had to get over it, so I did.
As I had to get over a nurse arguing with a mother in our room while holding my daughter.
As I had to get over the ever famous comment: "Let her cry a little, it's good for her".
People will always have advise, and I will always listen & even give things a try, cause I don't know everything, & people mean well, but it's not always easy.
Now that she spends lots of time with family and at the creche, you have to let go, and be less of a control freak. Trust that people know what they are doing, and that if something is done different to your own ideas, that it won't cause everlasting scars, and if it does, then that's ok.
As much as I want to protect our daughter from any form of unnesseccery discomfort, she's gonna experience a few, some by my own doing, even if unintentional... and that thougth (stupid as it may sound) is tough.
Thank goodness I seldom dwell on these thoughts, most of the time I am enjoying her smile (she smiles a lot) or her new sounds (she was hocked on "huuuuuurrrrrrrrrr" for a while, but now everything starts with a 'bff' or 'pff' accompanied by lots of drooling), or the changes in her face.
The hide and seek she likes to play with one parent, while in the arms of the other, her long conversations with 'whom ever will listen' in the dark while the rest of SweetLake is sleeping.
Or the warmth I feel when I simple hold her close...
She's beautiful....

I'm Back!!!!!!!!

I'm afraid I'll never be frequent, but....

It's a new dawn, It's a new day, It's a new year.....

So I'll try.

I HAVE THE COOLEST DAUGHTER ON EARTH....

Yes, I'm the typical mom, my daughter is the cutest, sweetest most adorable little angel ever...
Chances are, all I'll write about is her LOL.

But yes... I'm back at work, so in my break I have time to blog....
And so far I love being back... however, leaving the house for the first time after D was born was the weirdest. I truely felt like the world had changed. Everyone was odd. And manouvering among 'the living' with a buggy in front of me was scary! Certainly if she'd start to whine.

I'm over that now. I'd love to say that everything is back in balance, but it isn't.
Nothing is more comfronting to your character and life style than having a kid.
It starts when you're pregnant... you change!
I look back at my last blog & think... Who Was That???
The crunchy sound of sand makes you want to eat it????.............. Right......
So most of that is back to normal. I'm back to my old size (with a slightly bigger belly). I have no longings for sand, salt or Rennie for that matter, but one thing stuck....
I still speak my mind.... Frequently.... That little bit of subtleness I was hoping to get back after pregnance has evaporated. I'm not rude, in fact I'm still very polite, but, its more like 'when something buggs me, someone's going to hear about it'...
Life is too short to keep it all in, and some people just take too many liberties.
(b.t.w. this computer has no spelling check on it, so forgive me if you find a gazillion mistakes)

Funnily enough while I was being blunt and quarrelsome during my 9 months, lots of friends and family pointed out that they actually liked this version more.... It was more, well ballanced.
However, I still feel far from ballanced.
It's like you are forced to be 'more real' and closer to your feelings when you have a kid.
I had forgotten how riggid I could be, or how emotional ... I'd tucked al that away, but I'm so passionate about my kid that I've become more passionate about my life, myself & everybody else. You become very protective of your 'happy home', your kid, your man, & yourself.
I don't know to what degree that effects my surroundings, but another thing I've got is: It's ok.
No need to stress or worry about those things....
I guess some of my hubby's 'Leo'-ness is rubbing off... He worries very little about the thoughts of people around him, and yet he's the sweetest guy I know. So not worrying about those things doesn't nesseccerily make you 'less of a beautiful person' it just makes you more human & more real.

Oeh... breaks over, gotta go...

My pregnancy weirdness

I thought I was doing really well,
No desire for sour food, or chicken & chips everyday (like my sister)
Nope, I was really normal....
Till about 3 weeks ago...
I tried to deny it. Ignore it... but it keeps getting stronger...
I love.... sand...
Yes... I said sand....
The grainy stony stuff, that sound Delicious under your feet,
and makes me desire something, though I'm not sure what...

It started with heartburn... I have a tablet for that called 'Rennie'... you can have about 16 of those per 24 hours, and although I keep it at a minimum, it's a delight everytime I taste it. Cause it's crunchy, and grainy and stony like sand. It has a mint flavour that's good too, but it's not the mint, cause peppermints do me nothing...
So then i figured it was a lack of calcuim, my mom had a fettish for calcium when she was pregnant.... so she got me some chewy calcium tablets, but they didn't do the trick either...
Then one day, after work I was standing outside the backdoor, and I saw a pile of sand on the floor. So I impulsively stood on it... then I started doing the twist, almost unconciously, and I felt delighted! It felt so good!... Since that moment I've been dancing on sand when I see a tempting anount on the street, or I stamp in the sand in our garden barefoot (before my hubby puts tiles over it... he's rebuilding the garden). I love it dry or wet... both versions have their own sensation... and whenever I am crushing sand under my feet I feel like I wanna taste something, but I don't know what. Whatever it is.. it's in Rennie.
Besides the sand thing, I've also fallen in love with nature... I LOVE this summer, due to the amount of rain that falls, the way the garden smells, the smell of the ocean when it rains at work... It makes me want to go outside and dance around... Then there's the wind... It feels so good! It always did to me, but it's stronger now.
I still don't like insects though, but they don't bother me (besides the spider, naturally, and even those I can catch and set free in my garden, as long as they aren't too big).
I seem to be in love with life more... Somehow it feels special in a mysterious way...
And due to a challenge I've set for my self, I'm more within my own life, so to speak.

See, I had this talk with my soulsister Vera, and she has (practically) mastered the art of letting go. While we were talking I was inspired to reach the same goal, as so many things bug me lately.
As she puts it, the moment you get that frustrated feeling, you're simply holding on to something... find what it is, and let it go...
Well, in trying to put that into practise, I'm letting go of words I usually hold back. So now if something bugs me, someone, somewhere is gonna hear it... I try hard to let it be the person that's bugging me, and otherwise it's my mom or my hubby.
I figure that in explaining my frustration to the inflicting person, I give them the value they deserve. It's a form of respect for me. Usually I don't 'waste my energy' on making my frustration clear, I just mentally dismiss you, but not before I fire up inside.
Not very nice... but it works for me... worked...
I expect that after I learn to voice what I dislike, the next step is to not even let it bug me... but I'm not there yet...
Naturally I also say all the nice things that I hold in, even though that can be as scary.
On the whole, I'm showing more of myself to the people around me...
Challenging... Sacry, but in my opinion a step in the right direction...

Officially Engaged!

My delicious hubby (to be) asked me to marry him while we were on vacation.
It's a whole story, that I don't have time to share... (break's over)
But I'll tell you some time when I see you. (then I can also show my beautiful ring that goes with it).

As for when the big day is.... not any time soon.
We're talking years from now.
We both desire our little one to be aware of what's going on, be able to show of her cute little dress, and verbally share her opinions of the day.

So no hurries...

Oeh... I'm late... gotta go..

Thoughts on life....

Oeh,
Just got back from Greece (Kos), and read a lot of good books there.
One of them was 'The Witch of Portobello' and Paulo once again had me hooked.
But the one that left a bigger impression was 'One' from Richard Bach.
My Saggi/Horse collegue once advised me to read it, and so I bought it a while a go.
It's great. It's not so much the contence as it is the concept.
It discribes the matrix of different worlds all co-exsiting 'now'. It's done in a novel type way and it got me thinking about the world we live in at the moment.
A lot of people say that things in general are getting worse. And 'terror' is being spread all around to imply that these people are right. But some how I don't believe it anymore. I think we are doing a lot better. It seems like Humanity is rediscovering it's mind. In the past there have been 'genious' ' that influenced our thinking, but now it seems the doors are opening to all of us.
There's a lot of distrust towards different cultures and different parts of the world. But if you think about it, how long have we known these other cultures? In the past there was a lot of civil war in the now so called developed countries, but now we're learning to understand each other.
Wars within the West has now shifted to West vs. East wars. The west among each other are getting along a lot better now... 'we know what we can expect from our neighbour'...
Somehow I think we'll one day 'know what to expect from the East' and the whole 'terror-campaign' will fail to work.
I saw a film last night 'Mighty Heart'. Great film. It taught me a very valuable thing.
Where ever there is conflict, there will be 'terrorists', people that feed on the conflict and exploit it in various ways. I've never heard a better definition of the word. It's become clear to me who I consider a terrorist, and what the word means.
It also combined with this new look I have on wars, has given me the reasurence that it can't go on forever. At some point I expect a solution, new understanding, harmony, peace....
Nice thought.
I'd love to say more about the book One, cause I didn't really go in to it (kinda side tracked) but that will have to wait till some other time.
My break's over :(