Giving thanks

Today is Thanksgiving.  It is the day that we are suppose to give thanks for all we have.  I have a roof over my head, I have a loving husband & son, I have food in my fridge, I have a job that I like, and I have friends to lean on.  For this I am thankful. 

When something bad happens, like when I trip & fall down, I immediately say "Thank you God" because it could have been worse.  But  the loss of my daughter.  How can I be thankful for this?  What do I say "Thank you" to God for?  Do I say "Thank you God" because it could have been worse?  I could have lost my entire family?  When I am already in so much pain, it is hard to thank God for this tragedy...

I am thankful that I had almost 18 years with a loving & perfect daughter.  Now I only have a loving & perfect son.

I am thankful years ago I decided to leave engineering & become a teacher: this allowed us to grow closer together, spending all of our summer time together.  I am thankful that I visited her just about every weekend while she was in college.  I am thankful that we talked & texted every day, and she allowed me to share in her ups & downs.  I am thankful that she had the opportunity to experience traveling overseas, and she was well liked by many.  I am thankful that I had the opportunity to experience HER. 

I am thankful that I had her.  Thank you God, that I had the opportunity to have her.  Thank you God for my son & my husband.  Thank you God for my friends.  Without my family & friends, I don't think I could get through this.

Thank you.

Failure

Failure. 

I feel guilty that I am alive and she is not.  As a mother, it is my job to protect my children.  And I failed.  I failed the most important job out there. 

Sometimes I still can't believe it.  Sometimes I think it's just a bad dream and I'll wake up soon, or the phone will ring & it will be her.  But it's not going to happen.  Because I failed.

Most of the time when you fail, you can get back up & try again.  How many times have we heard the line "just try again".  This time you can't.  There are no "do-over's".  It is a one time shot.  And I failed.

I am so sorry that I failed.

My heart is broken

On Wednesday October 9th, I received the most devastating news ever.  My baby girl had died.

 This was the last picture I took of her.  The Saturday before.  Less than 4 days before.  She was having a tough time in college & needed some dog therapy.  I brought Blake.  She wanted me to bring Laika.  We walked along the lakefront path, listening to the owls & squirrels, and we walked out on the pier & I took her picture.  Had I known, had I really known….

I remember leaving, thinking how I just wanted to hold her again like when she was a baby.  I wanted to make everything alright.  She looked exhausted.  I figured it was from mid-terms & a heavy class load & her maintaining her 4.0…..

I thought that I was just being that over protective mother.  I had visited with her every weekend since she went to college.  She complained that other girls who live within 20 minutes of their parents haven't  even gone home yet, and there I was 3 hours away driving to see her every weekend.

She wanted to keep Blake in her dorm room with her.  I told her no.  I wish I had told her yes.  What if… what if…. what if….. I will do that for the rest of my life.

I am so sorry my baby girl.  I am so sorry.

Testing...

I'm in the process of testing something out.  I'm going to try & load something & see if my security blocks are work... well.... don't work....

You might think this is crazy, but it's just one of the fun things I like to do.... (work blocks videos!  Please don't mind the stupidity of the video!)

Clutter

Lately I've been wanting to de-clutter my life.  I feel like I have too much stuff & not enough space...  You know what I mean?

Where to start..... This is the hardest thing to figure out.

This is where I wanted to start.  My dresser.  It is what I see every morning & what I really need to organize..... but if you look at the picture from another angle.....

What you notice in the mirror is even more clutter throughout the bedroom.... the window seat if so full of clutter that the drapes can't lay nicely on it (ok, I also need to hem the drapes, but then you would see all the clutter...)

In an effort to focus on something small that can be done a timely manner.... timely = less than 30 minutes, I decided the bedside dresser:

Please ignore the unmade bed... the pleasures of weekend => an afternoon nap..

On the dresser (in addition to the alarm clock & lamp)

3 4-month old lottery tickets (hubby quickly took them to check the numbers), a DVD (we don't have a DVD player in the bedroom!), 2 cookbooks, 1 magazine, a parenting guide, 2 new shirts for work, a box of Kleenex, a calculator that needed to be donated MONTHS ago, face moisturizer, foot cream, 2 tubes of hand ointment, scissors, a sleeping mask, a gameboy game & a piece of dinosaur bone.  Honestly, why should all those things be on my bedside table?

Once everything was off & the wood was polished:

I left the lamp, alarm clock, Klennex, foot cream & hand cream.

I wonder how long it will stay this way....

Fear

Tomorrow I leave to pick up the 1st born from summer camp.  And I'm driving alone.  For somewhere between 12-16 hours.

I'm leaving 2nd born at home with step-dad.  They'll enjoy the "boys weekend".  Something tells me it'll be full of sci-fi movies & fried chicken.

Fear comes in whenever I leave my children alone.  What if something happens when I'm driving?  What if a rain storm washed out the highway & I drive off the side of a cliff?  What if some lunatic takes shots at people driving down the road?  What if?  What if?  What if?

Does anyone else have these fears?

Creativity over the summer!

I am so proud of my daughter.  She is typically an oboe player, but for marching band, she plays percussion.  Today she decided to dress up her drum sticks.  She first sprayed them with a white primer, then covered them with glow-in-the-dark paint.  While the paint was still wet, the drum sticks were sprinkled with blue glitter.  4 coats of glossy spray went over it all to keep the glitter on, with blue duct tape, she is now the fashion queen of the percussionists!

The sticks do glow in the dark, you'll have to take my word on it, as my camera did not want to snap a picture of them in the dark closet......any tips you might have for night-time picture taking would be greatly appreciated!