Scattered Thoughts

These are my ramblings for today.

Life seems hard to to keep up with lately. Work is great, but busy and sometimes overwhelming. Life? Ditto. I made it through my step aerobic class today, and felt really proud of myself for slowly starting to get back into my workout plan. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Sigh. That was a very hard moment. Cue self-loathing. What I wouldn't do to exorcise the demon inside of me that insists in seeing only the flaws, only the fat, only the dark. I had great plans for a fun day with the girls, and Emma is now in her bedroom crying after having her DS and dessert taken away for the day for backtalking. Such is life around here sometimes many times. Sophie is playing a game beside me and periodically telling me she loves me. She is the chosen child for the moment, and she knows it, is reveling in it. The girls play the "flip-flop" game a lot, taking turns being the "naughty" one and the "favored" one in any given situation. I suppose I should be grateful that they rarely lose it at the same time, but the manipulation of the whole love-me-see-me-I-am-the-"good"-one is sometimes startling. I vacillate between wondering if I expect too much of my children and wondering if I do not expect enough. I worry that I am raising brats, which is an all-too-realistic fear since I can often be a brat myself. Monkey see, monkey do. What a balancing act between trying to accept your kids as they are and encourage self-expression while also raising polite, thoughtful, considerate human beings. I don't think I'm a bad parent, but I recognize that I am often an ineffective one. My husband and I are starting down the long, scary road of home ownership. We just started looking, so it's early days, early days. I have a tendency to fixate on something and want it NOW NOW NOW, so I'm trying my best to turn off that side of my brain. My new mantra is slow and steady, slow and steady, Slow And Steady. I have no idea where we will land, or when we will land, but it's exciting to think we will land somewhere sometime. Until recently, Chris and I didn't think we'd be able to ever buy a home for our family, so knowing that we have more options than we thought is a giddy relief. The trick is to be patient, wait for the right fit, and trust that whenever it happens is when it is supposed to happen and we will end up exactly where we were meant to be all along. I am better at that in theory than I am in practice, unfortunately. I feel somewhat lonely lately. I have many acquaintances and a handful of friends, but very few people to whom I feel comfortable revealing myself. I imagine this to be a relatively common thing - or at least, that's what I tell myself. Who knows the truth of the matter, because no one really tells the truth anymore...at least not the truth of how they are truly feeling. Why is that, I wonder? I find bluntness and forthrightness in others so incredibly refreshing. Alas. As for me...I think, right now, in this moment, my true feelings are hard to isolate and identify. I feel a little lost, a little sad, a little optimistic, a little loved, a little spoiled, a little scared, a little grateful, a little ungrateful. A lot self-involved. :)

I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, that ain't too bad.