Just a blerb

I'm feeling the effects of the constant working so I think my blog will suffer tonight. I just wanted to mention some thoughts on today. I have to get up and work at my Dad's grain elevator tomorrow. I'm thinking about starting Dad's documentary tomorrow as well, we will see how well his workers behave ;-p
Today was my very first field trip as a mother. It was Grant's very first field trip as a kindergartner. One of the Mom's, who I rode to the pumpkin farm with, often said the things that I was either thinking or that I was in the process of verbalizing. Funny how antisocial me can find people that are so cool even when I shut myself off from the world most of the time. The comment that stuck with me was the one about dreading things before she got to them and not wanting to go, but when she got there she was always fine and ended up having a good time. Perfectly said my dear Matsey, perfectly said! I was glad to have had the chance to ride with the Mom's I rode with. I understand my personality doesn't always click with everyone's....ok I won't continue with that comment.
But I had a great time learning about these women and admiring them for who they are.
Mrs. Bear put me in charge of Grant, his best friend Massimo and another little boy who had an Armenian accent. So I had three crazy boys :-) and Two rockin' accents! Massimo is adorable and I can so how Grant and him are best friends. They walk around holding hands. I am not allowed to hug him in public but he can hold hands with his best friend. Little stinker. That's fine Grant I won't tell anyone how you still have to run your fingers through Mommy's hair to fall asleep when you have had a tough day. Opps! Did I tell it already, hehehe! Italians express love and emotion better than American in my opinion and I have always tried to help Grant realize that it is okay to express love and emotions. So I am wondering if he and Massimo are similar for that reason as well, that and their "crazy-optimistic- bright- eyed- take- on- the- world- and- ask- all-the- questions- because -I -have- to -know -it -all" type of personality. They are great. I felt like I got the greatest group of kids! At one point Massimo was talking about the Veggie Tales Pirate Movie and I started to whisper sing "We are the pirates who don't do anything...." His eyes got ever bigger and he said- "You like the Veggie Tales Too?!" Another little girl came up to me and asked if I was Grant's Mommy and I said "Yes...is that a good thing?" and she replied, "OH YES! And you are so prreeeeetttyyy!" I can't tell you how impressed I am with how well Mrs. Bear runs her class and with as many students as she has! I am also impressed with who she is as a person. She is the best possible teacher Grant could have had and I genuially feel blessed.
So, even though I dreaded the social aspect of the day. I made it, and not only made it, I enjoyed it. Jake got to play at his Tiffy's house and cried for only and hour when we left! I guess that means he had a good time and needed a nap.
Tomorrow the boys get to play on big Grant's playground because my friend Shannon is watching them while I work at the elevator. As a joke I plan on writing up a long list of rules and guidelines for her to follow to see the look on her face. Ahhhh, the time I take to screw around with Shannon. It is so worth my effort. Right now I am getting ready to wrap up a box of ground flax seed with wrapping paper and a bow b/c she always makes fun of me for being a health nut. I will give it to her and run before she has a chance to throw the box at me! MUUUUHHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAH! Oh, how I love tormenting her.
Well, off to evil things ;-p

"Penny" From Heaven

I heard this evening that the woman who taught me how to swim when I was a small child was killed on Saturday. The thing is that Penny was amazing. I can remember her beautiful face smiling at me when I was terrified to get into the water. I remember her hair, her eyes, her voice, her hands. Why is it that we remember some things in life so clearly and others fade away as quickly as they occur? Mom was going to WIU and sitting outside the pool to study. At one point, I was flailing around and basically fighting the idea of getting into the water and I swung my arm and hit her in the face. Mom remembers being horrified and Penny calmly told her that it was okay and that it happens. She remained calm. I don't think she was ever angry with either me or my brother during any of the swimming lessons or swimming adventures we had at the Aledo Public Pool. I cried when Mom told me because the last thing that I heard in my head when Mom said that she had died was an echo, almost like a movie flashback....
Penny's soft and encouraging voice says: "I've got you Turtle...don't worry, I won't let you go...." Mom was sitting on a bench on the other side of the chain-link fence and had a thick college text book on her lap. I think my swimming suit was white with swirls of colors all over it but mainly purple and red swirls. It was a one-piece swimming suit and I hated it. I was too long waisted for it. I was facing northeast and Penny was holding me tight with her arms under my armpits and her hands around my back. She was facing me. I think her swimming suit was black. Her hair was really long and beautiful. She was looking at me deep into my eyes with a promise and a confidence in me that I didn't know was even there yet. How could she see something that I didn't know I had? I don't think Dan and I would have ever been such good swimmers without Penny. Dan is amazing. He is fearless and always has been. You should have seen him on the diving board. We can thank Penny.
When Grant was traumatized by his swimming teacher because he said "please don't let me go, please don't let me go....!" and she said, "Oh, I won't!" then proceeded to take him to the middle of the pool and push him away and let go (in the only way I can rationalize it) to attempt to show him he could do it on his own....I about lunged into the water and smacked that teacher. Yep, I said that. Thank you swimming teacher for breaking my sons trust and therefore making him terrified of water thereafter. (NOT!) I can't tell you how may times I thought of Penny when we were struggling with Grant. He refused to get into the water so many times. One time he flat out ran from the pool, through the locker room straight to the car in only his swimming trunks with me trying to keep up!
We go about our lives after all the people who have molded us move on without knowing how much they affected our lives. I can't tell you how many times I think to myself, thank God I learned how to swim the right way and from such a great teacher. I remembered Penny all these years and to hear of her death was devastating. Yet, somehow the movie like echo of her voice that will forever play in my head will always be my Penny from heaven: "I've got you Turtle....don't worry....I won't let you go!"
Some people come into our lives for only a moment and change it forever.
Thank You Beautiful Penny.
October 4, 2010--A former Aledo woman has died following a head-on

collision in Warren County. 50 year old Penny McKinney-Green of Moline

was killed Saturday morning (October 2nd). Her sister, 55 year old

Mary Ann McKinney of Aledo was a passenger in the pick-up truck and

was injured. She was taken to Cottage Hospital in Galesburg. An

Illinois State Police news release indicates that the sisters were

traveling east bound on Illinois Route 116 near Roseville when a west

bound vehicle crossed the center line and collided with their truck.

The other driver, a 21 year old Macomb man was ticketed for driving

too fast for conditions. He told troopers he lost control due due to

wet pavement. All five occupants of the other car received only minor

injuries.

Topics Coming Soon:

Bullying
Cold/ Flu prevention at our house
Why I'm writing the blog
Accountability
Simplicity
Walk the Talk
The Children's Sermon Jack gave
What moves me
The evolution of family
Our twists on things: biting the bedbugs and dicombobulations with the whatnots
My Dad's farming Operation- Reinhardt Farms
Darren and I- Birthday makes me think of him
Oct. 9th Catie and my wet towels, her cookie dough, and our 9/11 tears-B-day makes me think of her
November! Amber- B-day coming up too
Nov. 21st Grandma- B-day reminds me of how blessed I am to have her in my life
Oct. 17th Jim- B-day reminds me of the evolution of my biggest "Pseudo-Brother"
Livestock and the only real thing about the farm Ted and I disagree about
God's placement of people on our lives
What I feel God "does" or "doesn't do"
Cigarettes, Alcohol and Texting/ cell phones
My newest list of favorite things
The status of our home that is in the prossess of being built
Health nut drinking mountain dew like water says what?
Anything else I should talk about hummmmmm? I'll think about it.

Dear Jo

Dear Jo,
I owe you an apology. We need to talk. I have let you down. I made you believe that your pain in this life and the trauma you endured made you less of a person. I lied to you. So now you have forgotten how strong you are. You are looking to others to tell you of the strength you so desperately want to have. Think of everything you have been through. They don't know about it all, and you can't blame them. But that's what makes you beautiful, show your true colors because they are beautiful like a rainbow... You can finally say it and you can finally believe it, you owe it to yourself after all, it has been 30 years of self-hate, time to realize that you are beautiful inside. I'm sorry I never told you enough. I'm sorry you gave your strength a second thought even for one second...Forgive me and we can conquer it all.
With love and grace,
Jo

This is the song I dedicate to you. Yet, not only to you, but to everyone who is holding themselves back from the things they fear. God never said standing for the things that were right would be without pain or suffering. But, as you lay down to sleep tonight be happy to know you can live with your desicions. I am proud of you.

You with the sad eyes


Don't be discouraged

Oh, I realize

It's hard to take courage

In a world full of people

You can lose sight of it all

And darkness still inside you

Make you feel so small

But I see your true colors

Shining through

I see your true colors

And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show

Your true colors,

True colors, are beautiful,

Like a rainbow.
(Ah ah ah...)

Show me a smile then,

Don't be unhappy,

Can't remember when I last saw you laughing

If this world makes you crazy

And you've taken all you can bear

You call me up

Because you know I'll be there

And I see your true colors

Shining through

I see your true colors

And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid to let them show

Your true colors,

True colors, are beautiful,

Like a rainbow

Ah ah ah ah...

Spoken: Can't remember when I last saw you laughing

If this world makes you crazy

You've taken all you can bear

You call me up (Call me up! )

Because you know I'll be there (Know I'll be there)

And I'll see your true colors

Shining through (I see them shining through! )

I see your true colors

And that's why I love you (That's why I love you! )

So don't be afraid (Afraid) to let them show

Your true colors, true colors

I see your true colors shining through (Yeah! )

I see your true colors

And that's why I love you

So don't be afraid (Afraid) to let them show

Your true colors

True colors, true colors

True colors, are beautiful,

Like a rainbow

Blueberries-Reminding myself again

I wrote and published this to my blog some time ago. I was just thinking about it. I was contemplating the message I wrote to myself and my kids- as all these entries really are anyway. Someday I will push the publish blog button and have the company put my blog into a hardback book for the boys. Yet, today I needed this message again. I needed a refresher; a reminder. I actually like this piece. I like how I started to write with no real intentions and no idea of what the next sentence or even the next word would be for that matter. It all came flowing from my heart. It came from that special place that helps you when you doubt yourself....that strong part that hides from you and pretends it doesn't exist. Whatever it was I wanted to read it again. I wanted to print it again. So here it is.

Have you ever picked blueberries? Have you ever seen the crazy parallels blueberries have to our lives?.... yes, I did say blueberries! OK sit back and let your mind think less literally and more symbolically for a moment:
There is a giant blueberry patch out there. You begin to walk down each aisle trying to find the best place for you to settle down and harvest blueberries. The first one you are drawn to seems too small so you move onward. The second one you are drawn to is filled with too many unripe berries, so you keep moving. The third one you are drawn to looks perfect and as you set down your bucket to pick those perfect blueberries, you realize that the whole backside of the plant is filled with a web and rotting berries. No one wants to stick their hand through a web to pull out the berries so they turn bad before they can be harvested. You are tempted to stay, but you move on anyway. The next bush you are drawn to is perfect. It is filled with clumps of ripe berries. The bush is currently in the shade while the others were being scorched by the 93 degree sun. The time is now. You set down your bucket, sit on your knees and begin to grab the clumps of ripe berries this bush has to offer. You learn your first lesson. As you were grabbing all of the largest clumps of berries, pulling off your best berries, and tossing them into the bucket to see that among those clusters of beautiful ripe berries there were tiny, unripened, berries that had now been also picked too early. You thought you were grabbing the best so you quickly grabbed without looking, and now those little berries won't have a chance to grow. Your first lesson was this:
Don't ever let your carelessness halt the growth of another.
You continued to pick your berries with more hesitance and grace than before to make sure that you didn't make a mistake like the last one. Instead of grabbing and pulling the berries off by clumps, you begin to pull them off a few at a time and holding them inside your hands until your hands are so full you must empty them into the bucket. This seemed to be working when on the third attempt your arm hits a branch and you fall backwards. You instinctively reach out to catch yourself from falling when all of your blueberries in both hands fall into the tall grass below. Your first thought is frustration at all the work that went to waste, then your second thought is all the blueberries that hit the ground would be impossible to find and that you must just move on without them. Those blueberries will have to be wasted.
You learned your second lesson:
Don't ever overfill your hands so much that you are not able to handle the load carefully. My Grandfather, whom I used to get to pick blueberries with, used to tell me that one should choose a couple of things to do. Do them well-better than to try and carry "too many loads" and do a poor job at all of the things one is attempting.
So you continue to pick your blueberries with even more hesitance and grace with growing wisdom. Things are making more sense and starting to flow with ease like the ease that comes with age.
As you continue to pick the berries careful to not overfill your hands you pop one into your mouth because it seems to look like the most delicious berry you have seen yet. The bitterness fills your mouth as you wish you could just spit it back out on the ground. You swallow your mistake and try and figure out the reason why the most visually perfect berry had the most bitter taste. The thought consumes you and you are drawn back to the thought of the bushes you had past in the very beginning when you were trying to find your first bush. You were quick to judge. You begin to walk backwards, the first bush you come to is the bush with the webs and rotten berries on the one side, yet all the perfect berries on the other side. You grab a berry and taste the sweet and sour taste of the blueberry. There were wonderful berries this bush had to offer, just because the one side was less than desirable, it did not determine the glory of the berries on the other side.
You learn your next lesson:
We are quick to judge a place, group, person, etc. by the visual ascetic's it has to offer, but will it be bitter and will we wish we could just spit and run once we realize it? Will we have passed up the valuable people, places, groups, etc, in our lives because they didn't "look" like what we thought we wanted? If we go back and accept them for their individual flaws, will we find the beauty they hold for us and the world?
You think about the bush you passed before the last one. The unripe berries may have seemed unusable to you so you walked past them. You looked down and the weeds around the roots of the bush were overgrown. You reached down and pulled the weeds out by your hands, so that they could get more of the water and nutrients that they needed to grow. While they had no berries to offer, they could teach you something.
You learned your next lesson:
There are people we pass in our lives that are underdeveloped: (children, uneducated, poor, ailing, loss of faith), while we may feel as if there is nothing we can do, maybe there is. In this case you lifted them up. You gave them nutrients to ripen.
Finally you decide that you must go back to the very first bush you past as you entered the blueberry patch. It was "too small" you thought and you didn't even try to see if it had berries to offer. As you approach the bush you see more berries than any of the other bushes. They are ripe and healthy. It is bountiful and ready to be harvested. There was nothing wrong with this bush except for your judgement of its size.
Here is you last and final lesson:
When we start out in our lives, we think we know what we are aiming for. We want something huge and grand. We want something like a masterpiece. All the small things in our paths seem too little for our attention. We keep walking past and learn through our mistakes that we don't belong where we are going and that our place is really the one we past up long ago. We thought we were going somewhere else. We come back to this "smaller" place of belonging and achievement and find that it has the most beautiful, bountiful, sweet, and glorious gifts to offer. This place, this bush, was meant to be ours all along. We are meant to be right here. It isn't that we shouldn't keep an eye on the other bushes and the health and bounty of our own, but we cannot eliminate the simplicity of the idea that our glory could be right here and right now in this tiny little bush.

What exhaustion does to Jo- If you want optimism DON'T LOOK HERE!

Too much pressure on the inside
all of the time....
This misery of mine
Makes me want to hide
Somethings gotta give....
Something will have to slide.
1st job, 2nd job, 3rd job?
And what are these crazy hours I keep?
every moment of the day scheduled out
even these moments needed for sleep.
When does it stop?
When can you see I am going to break?
Do you feel better now as I fell
down to the pits of despair?
And as I climb out of here
out of these depths of hell...
Will you reach for my hand and pull me on up
or will you turn your back on me-
while drinking pride from that cup?
Will you watch your flaming words?
I'm more fragile than a balancing act-
10,000 stories high.
What seems so small an innocent -
can make a grown woman cry.

BLAH! BTW- No it isn't a requirement that people be happy all the time or be happy just because you desperately imply they do so....Did you know that the more you push someone to be happy when they are not, makes them more resistant and often leads them to feel worse when the guilt sets in.
When my five year old son cries and gets embarrassed for doing so, I say to him, "don't feel ashamed for feeling those feelings honey, what you feel is real. Let it come right thru you and out to the other side. Sometimes crying gets all of the mad and the sad out." So forgive me please while I feel what I feel as it is real. I have to let it come right thru me to the other side. In doing so, I may say these words and they may seem harsh, but they are real and I need to get all of my mad and sad out.

The risk could simply not be worth the possible misinterpretation of my intent.

I don't understand how some people can't see who I am. I don't hide much of anything. I'm upfront and I wear my heart on my sleeve. My intentions are not to hurt anyone ever, I don't get enjoyment out of other people suffering. I don't find enjoyment in conflict. I can't stand to even hurt a bug. I find hunting to be a painful truth in my family, but I understand it. I try and place myself into situations to be empathetic to others and I try to provide sympathy and support to the best of my ability. I try so hard at so many things. I am harder on myself than any other person could ever be, yet, it never stops people from trying.
And here I find myself in yet another situation where I am someone who has caused problems. I could just melt away into the woodwork and never attempt to try anything. The risk could simply not be worth the possible misinterpretation of my intent. Yet, I cannot stand back no matter how hard I try. If I have a passion in this life that I can't subside, I follow it. There will always be haters, the misunderstanding jealous and the plain misjudgers. I can't understand how God could put such passion for things in my heart yet also such sensitivity to what others think of me as well. Why can I not be confident of myself? I know in my heart the truth. God knows the truth, why isn't that ever enough for me? I cringe when I catch other's in a lie and then as they go to bed at night thinking that I honestly believe they speak the truth...I wonder to myself why I am the one who seems to suffer now? Maybe they suffer too. Maybe more than me. Not that I want them to suffer. Why must people lie to me? I hate the lies. I see right through them. Do they think about the lies as they spew from their mouths? Or do they lie so much it becomes second nature and they pass it on to themselves as a necessity in the moment. They justify it. Or do they simply begin to believe their own lies? I said a prayer last night before I went to bed as tears rolled down my face that he would help me understand what it is that I can't see in this impossibility now. I prayed that he give my faith the strength to overcome this bash. I prayed that I not give up on a silly little dream I have had since I was younger. I prayed that he help me channel my Grandpa's grace with words, yet strength and common understanding. I pray tonight that he give me forgiveness and the ability to move forward and disregard the people who think they need to lie to me without letting them slow me down. In a moment like this I thank God for all of my family and my in-laws too and my friends the old and the new. I thank him for the people who know me and have known me for all of my life, those people who love me, trust me and have faith in me after a lifetime of knowing me, just me, but me all the same. I am important to many people and I feel their love right now, if not for them , I think I couldn't go on into this world with a passion in my heart or a hope in my soul. To those without your judgement to me, I say- thank you, to those who feel you should judge me anyway, I say- can I help you find you instead?