I'm A Bad Weekend Blogger...

So since my weekends are usually spoken for, I will catch up with Saturday and Sunday's #reverb10 posts here, quickly...

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeffrey Davis)

I hang out with kids. Namely my nephews. Okay, only my nephews. {Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a huge fan of kids... although they swear you like your own} My nephews are pretty cool... even the one that doesn't talk yet. The oldest, Paul Jr., the one that does talk, LOVES animals. Like, L.O.V.E.S. them. Can tell you the difference between a howler monkey and a mandrill (or as I call it, "the monkey with the blue cheeks from the Lion King.") Oh, and he's four. You want to see TRUE wonder, take a four year old to the science museum. Or make his birthday party an "Animal Party." Or do what I do; every Monday night, put out a handful of markers, open up an 18"x24" pad of paper and say, "What are we going to draw today?" We do one drawing a week. We're on page 13, and we haven't replicated a scene yet. We have an animal school, a farm, a jungle, a dessert, a rain forest, an ocean, a "dangerous reef" (yes, they're different), a swamp (with "bullrushes," his request, not mine), dinosaurs, and a circus, just to name a few. And lately, I don't do the drawings anymore. He does them... I might prod here and there, ("Who is the tiger having dinner with?") or help with an especially tricky animal here or there ("You draw the clown fish, Aunt Aly.") but he's the one drawing the majority of the time. And you can really see a difference from the front of the book to the back. It's pretty cool. 

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

I sort of let go of this "idea" of who I thought I was. At one point this past summer, a few months after my 1 year wedding anniversary, I had a brief out of body experience where I looked in at my life from the outside. I was loading lumber into a pickup truck, wearing paint splattered jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt, a baseball cap, with work gloves in my back pocket. As I climbed in next to my bulldog sitting on the passenger seat, I laughed out loud at the "sight." Merely a year before I wouldn't have dreamt of leaving the house in anything less than a 2 inch heel and a full face of makeup... when I was picking nail polish colors instead of paint swatches... And I realized I could be both. Now I drink beer (or at least I WOULD) and install hardwood floors, but I still go out to Aroma and have a glass of syrah (siiiigh I miss wine) all done up like a lady... I don't have to be embarrassed that I want to have a kid just because some people think they know me as "someone who hates kids... "  And one of the great things I've learned about that this year is the people who get it stick by you... 

"The people who matter don't mind, and the people that mind don't matter."