Sunday. A day of rest?

Baby and I went to church for the first time in 5 weeks on Sunday. (Yay!!!)  Getting ready for church is always a hairy event but with a newborn and tired mom it is nothing short of miraculous. Ironically baby was the first one dressed and ready.  Shortcuts had to be made.  I gave up on trying to fix my hair when the baby was crying.  I may or may not have gone in slept in make up.  (No really, I can't remember if I did my make-up or just touched up the previous day's wear. Sad I know.)  We managed to pull ourselves all together and actually make it a little early.  It was Stake Conference.  You know you're a Mormon when Stake Conference sounds fun and relieving to you.  Two hours of church instead of three.  No lessons to teach.  No meetings before or after church.  It is one of those infrequent "show up and listen" Sundays.  Now if every Sunday were like that I would actually be bored.  I like being involved.  Teaching lessons.  Having my children go to Primary.

As I was saying, we made it a little early in order to get a parking space.  Score.  That was a success.  Then we were all walking in and I noticed a few things.  Mira's dress ribbon had gotten untied in the back and her hair bow was a little wonky.  Calvin's shirt had something, it was either a little disheveled or untucked or had something dirty on the back.  I can't remember.  I do remember thinking, "Huh.  We did the best we could.  We're here.  It isn't perfect but it will have to do.  Oh well.  Big deal."

We then got a seat and over the next two hours proceeded to strategically tap into our arsenal.  Coloring books.  Books.  Drawing.  Holding out on the snacks as long as possible.  Allowing two bathroom/water breaks (so use them wisely!).  Everyone was doing great.  Behaving.  Staying in our section of chairs.  Keeping their voices down.  Baby even slept in her car seat for a while.  I was able to listen to the speakers and was really enjoying myself.

After a while baby got hungry so I took her out to find the mother's room where I could comfortably feed her.  It took a little searching but I found it.  Talked to a really nice mom who was holding her 5 month old, ninth child.  She was so relaxed and happy.  Model mom for sure. After I got baby fed I realized I needed to use the restroom so I brought her back to Sean and took Mira with me.  Then as I was adjusting my skirt and putting my outfit back together I saw IT.  There on the back of my skirt:  A dried up Cheerio stuck there.  Mocking me.  Of course I promptly removed it and didn't bat an eye.  It really didn't surprise me, and THAT my friends is the sad part of this story.  When you go to church with day old make up and a cheerio stuck on your backside and it doesn't even phase you.

I can't think of a title for this post.

Hi.  I'm trying out the blog thing again..Its been a while.  I have a theory about that.  Its called, "Facebook killed the blogging star." (to the tune of "Video killed the radio star!").  Instead of perusing blogs and thinking of clever posts like I did 5-6 years ago, I waste an hour with that *darn* never-ending newsfeed and then wish I had my hour back.  Which is exactly what the creators of FB hoped I would do. Except I don't buy anything or play any games, so maybe I'm not their ideal customer or client or "friend" or whatever they name us guineas, as in guinea pigs.  They must have some code name for us, especially as they are discussing their latest tactic to keep us hooked.  

The fact is, I miss writing.  I think I'm ok-ish at it.  I certainly have written a lot in journals as a teenager and beyond.  My English teachers liked my papers because I had a strong voice in them.  My worst grade on a paper was a Science paper.  Apparently I had too much fluff and not enough facts and that doesn't fly in Science.  Here's the thing:  I never was one for the rules of writing.  I learned just enough MLA technicalities to get me by on citing sources, placing your parenthesis and the likes.  I also have always been a decent speller which I attribute to finger spelling lots of  words (in sign language)..  The fallback rule in our family was and is, if you didn't know the sign, just spell it.  Turns out that there are lots of words that have signs, we just didn't use them in lieu of spelling.  I find this bemusing.  But I break a lot of rules.  I write sentence fragments.  I start sentences with 'And' and 'But.' (but I just put my period in the right place, right?!)  I change tenses as my eighth grade teacher pointed out.  I also will switch from 'I' to 'they' and do all sorts of distracting grammatical errors.  My writing reflects my speaking and I lately I don't think I'm so hot at that either.  The problem is twofold:  1.  I haven't been in school fulltime for 10 years and am a bit rusty on formal writing and B. My academic brain has been sucked out by birthing and raising babies and been replaced with knowledge such as where the pacifiers are strewn about the house, how many nighttime diapers are left in the drawer and picking up the permanent marker off the couch before the 2 year old spots it.  (That 1./B. thing was on purpose to see if you were paying attention.)

So what do I do about this?  One theory would be to practice.  The more I write the less rusty I'll become.  Like riding a bicycle.  Haven't done that one for a while either.  Another would be to go back to school.  Enroll in a college course that I'll actually be graded on.  But seeing that we have a 4 week old newborn and three other kids (see I used the numerical symbol the first time and the spelled the number the second time!), I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon.  I've read some other friends' blogs, and it is inspiring to read their full, uninterrupted thoughts.  It makes me a little embarrassed to write and subsequently post this.  But I think honesty is important.  Even if its just to myself.  I want to find my voice again.  And maybe, just maybe, as time goes by, any given English teacher will cringe less at my errors.  And my true friends won't judge me too much.