A FOOT INTO A NEW WORLD... for BOTH of us.

Today is a poignant day.  It's 20 year mark of when I went into labor to deliver Girl.  Something about 20 hits a little differently than one, or 10 or 13, or sweet 16, 18.

I've empty-nested for a little over a year now.  It was less of a nest situation than it was a ship I was tossed overboard from, tumbling in the water and finding which way is up.  The saying goes that the only thing that is constant in any situation is one's self, so I clung to what I knew and that was my creativity. At the same time I opened up to applying that to new scenarios to grow with.  It's been a year of incubating. 

A dear art licensing friend is escaping to Florence, Italy for 2 months (see FiftyJewels.com blog - Kimberly is grabbing the next 50 years by the jewels and living intentionally beautifully and she wants you to as well!)  She made the mistake of inviting me to visit during that time - if you follow my Instagram or FB you know I say YES to travel! The creative inspiration will be off the charts.

When booking my trip and zeroing in on dates, today, this 20 year anniversary of going into labor seemed like the appropriate way to mark my own 'rebirth' if you will.  I will be 'laboring' on the plane tonight, and will land on February 22, my wonderful daughter's birthday, marking my own rebirth-day into the next stage after Stark Raving Motherhood (with a svelter body than my 9 month preggers.)

Like a new baby, I don't know exactly what the journey will be like but I know she will look like me and she will be creative in her approach to life.  She will take whatever is in front of her and make it work, she will create something from nothing and from all of the inspiration that is in her path. She will share it with the world with the end goal of making the journey better for everyone.

By the end of the trip she may look 9 months pregnant again from all of the Italian eating she is about to do...

Once a mother, always a mother, but the Stark Raving part seems to have graduated. (The Stark Raving Motherly Worrying remains a permanent fixture as all mothers will attest to.) So it seems appropriate to conclude this blog with this post, which will also be the first post of my next blog reflecting the next phase of life. I'm ready to call it that and embrace it, thanks in large part to Kimberly, who really walks the 50 Jewel walk and is showing that it's a "buona cosa", a good thing! 

THE ROAD TO THE DOG BED IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

Husband on travel, daughter at away camp, animals doing their usual 23/7 snoozefest. All I can hear is the whirr of the refrigerator, the occasional muffled clunk of the ice-maker, a 17-year locust outside that is either early or late by 8 years....

AHHH, my chance to live the life of a single gal with nothing but time. I had an imaginary list of how I would spend my day playing, floating on the wind, wherever it wanted to take me. Isn't it what we all fondly reminisce about....

In reality, my big plan was to attack all of the things I can never get to while I am on task when everyone is in my face (and I say that with all the love in the world.)

Tidying a room is not like painting a room that will stay painted for 3 years. It's good for 15 minutes if you are lucky. I was relishing in the concept of cleaning up the house, and then watching it keep acting clean each day until the Category 5 storm returns.

I was going to rip everything out of Madison's closets and reorganize .... I've gotten as far as plunking a laundry basket in front of her closed door. It now feels like there is a drooling, fire-breathing, pointy prickly scaled, bloodshot-eyed gurgling growling monster on the other side of that closed door. I can tell you now, I've already given up.

I was going to wash & fold every stitch of errant dirty laundry in this house. I've gotten as far as making three piles on my bedroom floor. The thought of carrying a load down, finding a holding pen for what's been napping in the dryer for 4 days until I am in FOLD-ALL-IN-FRONT-OF-TV mode.....it just makes me TIRED.

I was going to clean out my closet, declare things 'graduated' that I know I will never fit back into, and if I did, do I REALLY want to be wearing a yellow leather mini skirt at this stage in my life? I did have the distraction of gabbing with my friend on speaker phone while I tossed and sorted & rehung. I found a total of $23 wadded into various jacket pockets, which was magical. Manicure pennies from heaven, I say.

I was going to clean out the garage, go to Goodwill every day with a new load of things I know I will never use, acknowledge that their Garage-Purgatory days have concluded and be rid of the clutter finally. EUchh...maybe another time. God forbid I ruin the manicure.

I was going to wash & shine the kitchen floor. Full of fresh gusto, I cleared out the table, chairs & stools into the family room, mopped like I was getting paid by the stroke....and... then... while admiring the 'ballroom effect' of a cleared out room and appreciating the vast uncluttered tidiness... I lost my spell of motivation.

So here I sit, on the dog bed that I've tossed into the corner, on a pristine floor that I don't want to cover up, OR shine, OR think about any more...I'd much rather be writing because so much ELSE that needs to be done!

Productive procrastination at its best!