Author: LadyCygnet

(If you have a weak stomach, skip to the next entry. I won’t mind…really.)

(Still here? Okay, but don’t say that I didn’t warn you.)

Being a parent is hard work, and it isn’t always pretty. This is especially the case when a child is potty training or sick. I’ve been pooped on, peed on, vomited on, snotted on…the list goes on and on.

In fact, at this moment, my daughter and I are both fighting raging colds. She’s asleep, thank goodness, but I’m not. You see, my throat is irritated with the rest of my body, and until the ibuprofen kicks in, I’m up drinking hot tea and wishing that I had a less wimpy immune system.

My daughter hasn’t figured out blowing her nose yet, which adds to the risk of catching whatever delightful bug she brings home from school. She tries, but she often forgets that a tissue is what she should blow into, and she often comes to me with a hand full of mucus.

Like I said, G is for Gross. It takes a special kind of love to take care of a sick child. I applaud every parent who is able to do so without headdesking or crying into his or her juicebox.

I’ve grown up in a family where negativity was a hand-me-down that came from generations of shattered hopes and failed dreams. It’s hard to maintain anything resembling hope in the face of that; fortunately for me, I’ve had a few things that have helped me rise above the negativity that comes with being born into poverty and raised in an environment with people who see the glass as half-full, and I’ll be happy to share them with you.

Faith: My dad and my mom were both faithful in their own ways, and they taught me to believe in God. While they taught me to read the Bible and pray, I felt like when they asked for things from God, they didn’t really believe that they deserved them. The only thing that really seemed to be going for either of my parents were the moments that they felt like everything was going to be all right, in time. Even when they quashed that feeling with pessimism about life circumstances (and with the childhoods they had, I certainly couldn’t blame them for seeing the gloomy side of life), there was always that underlying current that things could only get better. I’ve clung to that current for dear life, and faith in God and believing that everything will work out in its own time has helped me to fight the gloom that threatens to crush me. Even now, though, when I ask God for something, I usually don’t feel like I deserve it, and I rarely get it. It’s been a slow process, but I’ve been working on retraining my brain to ask for something, and then have faith that my request will be fulfilled and let it go.

Self-Knowledge: The best counselor I ever had, Erin, taught me to look at the truth of a situation and see how it really applied to me. This has helped immensely when I’m inadvertently involved in a conflict that has nothing to do with me. I can step outside of it and realize that the person who is yelling isn’t yelling at me so much as he is yelling at his own situation. She also helped me to be better able to understand myself and others. Through her work, I’ve developed a better understanding of myself and others, and it has helped me considerably.

Acceptance: Another resource that helped a great deal was the philosopher Epictetus. I learned about him from a friend, and then I picked up his work and read it. Something that Epictetus said really stuck out when I read it. “Make the best of it,” he said. That sunk deep into me, and I began to really change my attitude about my life and living situation. My current living situation is less than ideal, but I can and have started to make the best of it, and I’ve discovered immense magic and beauty (not to mention blackberries, gorgeous wildflowers, and a beautiful rustic mural I’d never noticed before) in the area around me since I adopted “Make the best of it” as a way of life.

This doesn’t mean that I just stay stagnant, however–making the best of where I am now gives me the ability to enjoy what is here while striving for what I want and pushing to become what I want to me.

…and I just barely missed the deadline for the 9/4/2011 entry. Whoops!

I’ve recently developed a fascination with photographing clouds and sunlight. Fortunately, since my camera has a preview screen, I can take pictures of the sun without directly looking at it, and the results have been pretty amazing. However, my big love has been clouds. Clouds are like snowflakes–no two are ever the same. Unlike snowflakes, though, the clouds are constantly changing shape under the force of wind, heat, and humidity.

While I wasn’t sure what good photographing clouds would do, I was able to use some of my work in a video for Martin Page’s song, “Count on Me.” Here’s the video, just in case you want to see what I’ve done:

I’ve taken many more cloud photographs, but I’m not sure what I can do with them. They’re beautiful, though, and I’ve noticed interesting things about sunlight behind clouds, and it’s been fun spotting different clouds and finding imagery within them. Perhaps one day the cloud photos will be something of use for something besides a Martin Page video. We’ll see.

My parents told me that I started reading when I was four years old (which wasn’t unique, as my brother and sisters were also reading by the time they were four). My earliest memory from a book was the line “Bill caught a big fish.” A kid named Bill was fishing (with his grandfather, if I remember correctly). I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the book, but I remember reading that line, and I remember seeing Bill, a young, dark-haired boy, holding up a fishing line with a big fish attached. It was illustrated in the style typical to the 60s and 70s…it was a sort of ink drawing with impressions of color here and there instead of the characters colored in fully. I remember reading it while I was being watched by my dad’s parents. Grandpa Tom was watching something on TV, and Grandma Anemone was working on some sewing project, most likely doll clothes for me and my sisters and her great-granddaughter, who was born a little less than a year after I was.

Ever since that early memory, I have been reading voraciously. I remembered trips into the Hannibal Public Library (also known as the Garth Memorial Library) as a special treat. It was always so hard to decide which books to check out, since the library had a limit. Nancy Drew books, fairy tales, mythology, and nonfiction were among my favorite things to check out. My parents were big on reading, and my siblings and I were constantly wearing out our library cards, and we lived in fear of the dreaded fines for overdue books.

Thanks to my parents’ nurturing and teachers and librarians who encouraged my habit, I started reading Shakespeare when I was seven years old. Unfortunately, because I lived in Hannibal and every single little thing was suffused with Mark Twain, I eschewed his work until I was older and HAD to read it, which I hated…up until I attended college and realized that he was a good writer (and a snark pioneer), and he most likely would have something snarky to say about Hannibal’s obsessive adoration of him, especially when so many other phenomenal people came from Hannibal, too.

My passion for books grew and grew, and every time there was a book sale and I had extra money (or there was a consignment shop or bookstore within walking distance), my collection would expand. When I lived in a town where the library was far too far away to visit on a regular basis, I would instead visit local bookstores, thrift stores, and consignment shops and buy TONS of books. By the time I met my daughter’s father, I probably had well over 1000 volumes. Donating a large chunk of them when I moved was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

Now that I live in Columbia (and unfortunately don’t have a ton of free money to spare), I am a frequent visitor to the Daniel Boone Regional Library (which is, but some strange coincidence, on Garth Street). They don’t have a limit on books one can check out, so it’s not uncommon for me to have 40+ books in my possession at one time.

It has taken a lot of time and soul-searching, but I believe that the library is my true calling, and I will be moving forward with my plans to obtain my MLIS and become a professional librarian. Perhaps I’ll be able to inspire future bibliophiles who will come to love and cherish books as much as I do!

My parents told me that I started reading when I was four years old (which wasn’t unique, as my brother and sisters were also reading by the time they were four). My earliest memory from a book was the line “Bill caught a big fish.” A kid named Bill was fishing (with his grandfather, if I remember correctly). I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the book, but I remember reading that line, and I remember seeing Bill, a young, dark-haired boy, holding up a fishing line with a big fish attached. It was illustrated in the style typical to the 60s and 70s…it was a sort of ink drawing with impressions of color here and there instead of the characters colored in fully. I remember reading it while I was being watched by my dad’s parents. Grandpa Tom was watching something on TV, and Grandma Anemone was working on some sewing project, most likely doll clothes for me and my sisters and her great-granddaughter, who was born a little less than a year after I was.

Ever since that early memory, I have been reading voraciously. I remembered trips into the Hannibal Public Library (also known as the Garth Memorial Library) as a special treat. It was always so hard to decide which books to check out, since the library had a limit. Nancy Drew books, fairy tales, mythology, and nonfiction were among my favorite things to check out. My parents were big on reading, and my siblings and I were constantly wearing out our library cards, and we lived in fear of the dreaded fines for overdue books.

Thanks to my parents’ nurturing and teachers and librarians who encouraged my habit, I started reading Shakespeare when I was seven years old. Unfortunately, because I lived in Hannibal and every single little thing was suffused with Mark Twain, I eschewed his work until I was older and HAD to read it, which I hated…up until I attended college and realized that he was a good writer (and a snark pioneer), and he most likely would have something snarky to say about Hannibal’s obsessive adoration of him, especially when so many other phenomenal people came from Hannibal, too.

My passion for books grew and grew, and every time there was a book sale and I had extra money (or there was a consignment shop or bookstore within walking distance), my collection would expand. When I lived in a town where the library was far too far away to visit on a regular basis, I would instead visit local bookstores, thrift stores, and consignment shops and buy TONS of books. By the time I met my daughter’s father, I probably had well over 1000 volumes. Donating a large chunk of them when I moved was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

I’ve always been something of an anxious person. Even when I was a little girl hiding behind my mother’s skirt (which is something I can’t do now, both because my mother rarely wears skirts and I’m much larger than my mother), I was worried about…well, everything.

I’m still anxious these days because I want everything to turn out well. I’m somehow managing to take care of myself and my daughter, even though we have very little money, and, as I’ve said previously, I’m looking for steady work.

What makes me anxious? The answer to that lays in my thought processes. I am someone who considers every possible outcome, and I have a very vivid imagination. While being able to see multiple outcomes is sometimes an asset, it does make it more difficult for me to make decisions or to get through my day without biting my nails.

What I need is to slow my thoughts down and process them. Emmy Rossum’s “Slow Me Down” seems to suit my feelings perfectly. If you’ve never heard it, here it is:

I think the biggest thing that would help me calm my anxiety would be to slow down my thoughts through meditation. It’s hard for me to tell myself to slow down when I have so much to get done; however, I’ve spent so much time panicking in the past that what I need to get accomplished doesn’t get accomplished as quickly as I’d like anyway. As I progress in learning to meditate, I’m sure my anxiety will ebb and I’ll accomplish more than ever.

If you’re reading this and struggle with anxiety, please know that you’re not alone. There are plenty of us out there, and we’re all seeking ways to ease our anxious thoughts. I’m going to overcome my anxiety, and you can, too!

Since I’m job hunting and I want to challenge myself in the meantime, I’ve decided that today will mark the beginning of a challenge: I will post at least once a day on this blog for the the month of September. Perhaps by the end of this exercise, I will be back to being able to write regularly, with or without a writing prompt.

That being said, I am going to make things semi-easy on myself by doing the alphabet meme. For those who don’t know what that is, I’ll be going through the alphabet, one letter at a time, and the letter of the day will dictate the word I use as a writing prompt. If that’s not clear enough, you’ll see what I mean with my next blog entry.

Wish me luck!