It was good of dd and dss to make an appearance,
Harriet — even if the crowd made real conversations difficult. At our family gatherings (Christmas, Thanksgiving), with our 30 or so, I often feel I haven’t had “quality time” with everyone, but I still treasure the time we spend together.
And
blessed, I meant to tell you — WTG with those special dmom/grandma skills! So glad you could smooth out things for your dd while she’s visiting your dmom.
So much I want to reply to but I am on phone— about to give dgs his bath and settle this night down. Maybe I will get a fresh start tomorrow?
We went out to eat with dgs, ride around awhile... now back home. No more ta-das at this point.
EDITING to ADD --
TA-DAs!
* Already put up the bath toys (another chore I sometimes procrastinate on)
*Cleaned mirror in my bathroom (card comes up on 4th Thursday to clean all mirrors, but my bathroom is really the only one that needs it b/c both dh & I use that sink more than any other)
* Smoothed/bundled plastic bags for ladies ministry at church (They make mats for the homeless from them. You can google this if you've never seen it -- a lot of church groups do this. Supposedly, the mats are quick to dry and provide some cushion & barrier for people who would otherwise be sleeping on the sidewalk. I don't know how much comfort they actually give, but they look kinda like braided rugs when they're done.)
This took approx 10 min and it is something else that I over-estimate, time-wise, in my mind. I do it when I have a kitchen drawer crammed so full of bags that I can't get anymore in, and then it makes this HUGE pile on the floor, which I sit down to smooth. It always looks like it will take FOREVER to do it, but there you have it: 10 minutes. Good grief. Talk about "stinkin' thinking."DH is aggravated b/c I am not interested in watching a ballgame, just to see the girl in the dugout who has "40 batting gloves balanced on her head."
DGS isn't interested either; he's copying sentences about the presidents into the notes of my phone.
DH doesn't understand us...
Something else I realized, yesterday, re: family.
I have often talked about my ddad being such a horrible critic and perfectionist. I never actually realized my dmom has these same tendencies.
* Sheesh * No wonder I'm a mess.
We were talking about ds, and dmom (who honestly thinks ds is just as wonderful as can be) made some comment about one little thing that she found fault in (a song he does) -- maybe not "fault" more like "his arrangement is different than what I've always heard..." Just an innocent little comment, but out of all the good she could have said, she picked that ONE thing to comment on. It just rubbed me wrong.
Then I realized, as I was driving home, I realized, YES... my whole life was shaped by these two people who apparently always thought there was SOMETHING MORE, something DIFFERENT, something ELSE that I shoulda/coulda done.
* sheesh *
She says she never tried to put pressure on me in school; that I always put too much pressure on myself.
Hmmm... you think???
Of course, I did the same -- probably to a greater extent -- with ds... and now I have a wonderful human being who is intelligent, talented, hardworking in a job that takes him on long road trips, an amazing father, a good husband (so far as I can tell
), well-liked & well-respected by his peers and those older & younger than himself ...
but while his wife is working sometimes 40 hours a week and going to school 4 nights a week, he seems content to do the bare minimum of keeping the children in clean clothes and enough clean dishes that they don't have to starve. It would not bother him one bit if he had to use a shovel to dig through the toys, laundry, books, boxes of things they still have not unpacked after 3 years, etc...
I just apologize to ddil for not doing a better job of teaching good habits to him.
But -- I'm glad I didn't warp his thinking worse. I could have made him a nervous wreck like myself, but it seems he rebelled against my anxieties and his ddad's OCD and he's just as laid-back and happy as can be.