Keepin' It Real

I’ve got three words for you….Keep.  It.  Real.  I am going to take my own advice and keep it real with you now.

For the first time since I’ve started blogging, I have hit a writer’s block.  I mean, I have ideas and I have things to say, but they’re just not all coming together.  I start and then I stop.  I write and then I don’t write.  I like it and then I hate it.

See, I usually write all during the week, spend some more time on it on Sunday, and then post.  It’s so much fun!  But this week just didn’t allow time for all that writing.  My week started off helping set up a haunted hallway one day and being rear ended another.  The end of the week was wrapped up with all of the kids being out of school for teacher in-service.  That one day somehow threw off everything else.  And surprise, turns out it was already Halloween this week.  I mean, I knew it was coming, and for the most part we had everything all together, but somehow there I was, on a Tuesday night, going from store to store looking for pink hair spray.  

The day after Halloween was a no-go for writing as well.  Of course we were all tired, but besides that, I had volunteered to cook dinner for our daughter’s JV cheer squad.  She was so excited when she told me she had been bragging on my cooking and talked about how much she loved my broccoli cheddar soup.  She said the girls all agreed that is what they would want for me to make.  I was excited, too, and happy to share that with them.  It was all good and fine until it was time to transport the soup up to the school.  Let me go on record saying soup does not travel well.  I can also report that when the soup spills out into your car, and you immediately clean it up, you should go ahead and throw those napkins out of the car. If you don’t, your husband will discover the mistake two days later and graphically describe the stench left behind and the amount of Febreeze he had to use to get rid of it!

Between the kids and the costumes, the soup and the schedule, here I am, keeping it real.  The truth is, no matter how badly we want to do something, sometimes it just doesn’t happen.  I was cracking up the other night when I was out looking for the pink hair spray.  I had gone to multiple stores and they were all sold out.  Later when I had our freshman daughter with me she told me to go to Walmart.  I told her I had already been and they didn’t have any.  She started saying, “Then you must not have looked hard enough.  You should look harder.  You obviously don’t want it bad enough because if you did you would have found it there!” I was dying laughing as we drove to the next store.

Earlier this evening, as I struggled with what to say and how to say it, I decided I would go outside for some fresh air.  I needed to really think about what was on my heart this week.  Besides the fender bender and the soup debacle, I had an amazing weekend with some amazing friends.  But somehow even that was whirling around in my mind and still not coming together.  As I am out there thinking and praying and reflecting, the back door opens.  It is my husband asking me what I am doing.  “Oh, just thinking,” I tell him.  Before I can even get my thoughts back on track, my sweet husband is right back to our earlier conversations about tile and grout, flooring and trim, and a plethora of other home improvement topics.  We finish that up, I start breathing and thinking, when the back door opens again.  This time it is the six-year-old.  “Mom, what are you doing out here?”  I tell her I’m just trying to think.  She gets a jacket to join me.  Not even two minutes later the 12-year-old pops out there.  “Mom! It’s so cold! What are you doing out here?”

I thought, here it is.  Here is my truth.  Sometimes things just don’t work out the way you think they will.  Sometimes no matter how badly you want to get something done, now matter how important it is to you, other unexpected things may slow you down.  Sometimes you just have to let go of the way you thought things would be and roll with the way things actually are at that moment.  And sometimes you just have to keep it real!

And by the way, when I came into the house to write….so did everyone else!