Feeling off Track

I don't know what's been going on with me lately.  I've finally figured out where I want to be and what I want to be doing, but I feel like I'm totally missing the point.  I'm being sidetracked by things that really are important, but seem to be taking away from my goals.  It seems like I've somehow lost touch with the kind o person I want to be and somehow this stranger has intervened to take it's place.

This past week has been spent largely cleaning and organizing my house.  I've got all the science and nature books put on one shelf.  Another shelf is half history books, half coloring and craft books.  That frees up more room in my daughter's book shelves to keep the books she actually wants.  I'm hoping that will mean she can fit all of her chapter books and everything else.  It's amazing how much space is freed up just by organizing the books.  It helps to have all the books that relate to school in a place where they can all share them.

The living room book shelves started the journey.  I've been cleaning them from top to bottom.  The whole room looks so much nicer without all the crazy clutter, which means once I get all the books up off the floor and into the places they need to go, I can finally feel a bit better about having people over!  It's also nice to be able to find the books I want to read when I want to read them.  I've been doing a decent amount of reading lately.  It's nice to feel like I'm expanding my mind.

The reading I've been doing lately is different too.  I've been focusing on non-fiction reading.  I'm trying to develop a focus on things that relate to my life, spirituality, diet, parenting, and those sorts of topics.  It's been refreshing to sit back and read for a while without feeling guilty about it.  After all, reading isn't a guilty pleasure.  It's expanding my mind and helping to set a good example for my children.  It's a great way to relax too.

Still, in all of this I'm starting to feel like maybe my life is starting to get off track again.  I'm cleaning, reading, and taking care of my home, but what about my spirituality?  What about changing the patterns in my life?  What about becoming the person I want to be?  Am I going to lose some of that in my quest to get my physical surroundings up to par so we can maintain the status quo?  Or does that somehow relate into it all, that being a more "normal" family somehow will help me on my way to accepting my new life as Mommy above all else, putting aside any other labels?

It just feels like maybe I'm losing a part of myself in all of this, that somehow I'm missing something that's incredibly integral to who I am.  I just wish I knew what it was so I could take a step forward and truly embrace that part of my life.  I am who I am.  I just hope I'm not starting to lose sense of that.

Happiness Is a Houseplant

Most of my friend's houses are pretty barren.  They've got furnishings, sure.  They may have toys for their kids, pets, video games.  They've got plenty of noise with televisions or radios playing.  The homes have a lot of stuff, and sometimes even a lot of life, but they're still barren.  They're still kind of, well, lacking.

When I was a kid we used to spend a lot of time outdoors whenever we could.  In the winter it was much more challenging, but come spring there were plenty of things to do outside.  My mother helped us keep our own garden.  She would clip roses for us off the rose bush climbing up our porch.  We would disappear into the forsythia bushes and pretend to be bunnies from Jim Henson's Bunny Picnic.  The summer would bring trips to the beach or the reservoir, summer camp, and bike rides.  The fall would bring camping trips with our Girl Scout troop at Camp Cedar Hill and tons of Halloween adventures.  As I got older just going for a walk was plenty of reason to go out and get fresh air.  The world was so vibrant, green, and bright.  It was truly beautiful.

When I was little I remember not having many house plants.  My mom would certainly try.  We'd get poinsettia nearly every Christmas, but they wouldn't survive for long after the season was over.  I never knew if it was simply because they weren't a long-lived plant or because they just weren't getting the right care.  At one point we went over to Christmas cactus, but they didn't fare well either.  They were forgotten and dried up.  I brought them back from near death three times, but eventually I just stopped trying.  I even remember an ivy plant that grew in a goose planter.  It was pretty small and the neck curled around to it's back where the plant was potted.  I think I remember my mom loving ivy, but even that didn't last long.  We seemed to have no luck with house plants.  I just figured it's because we were so much better with plants that lived outside.

When I got out on my own I tried a couple times to have houseplants.  For a while when I lived with my two male room mates and our small collection of cats in Sutton I had a small African violet plant that sat in the kitchen window.  I made sure to pick the most hopeless looking plant.  I told them it was because I was a miracle worker at bringing plants to life, but in truth it was because I was afraid it wouldn't last.  I would feel a lot less bad about killing a plant that was already dying than I would about killing a plant that was so vibrant and full of life.  I was pretty well a miracle worker for plants, much like my mother could be, but plants take dedication and care.  They need to be watered.  They're harder to care for than pets as far as I'm concerned because pets come and bother you when they're in need, but plants never do.  They sit there and silently suffer until they wither and die.  It's just their way.  Many don't need constant and daily care either, so they are that much easier to forget about.  My little violet thrived for quite some time, but it was the move out of that place that killed it.

A few years later, after the birth of my daughter, we got another African violet that also lived in our kitchen.  We lived in a beautiful, sunny third story apartment in Cambridge.  I didn't pick it out.  My fiancee at the time had decided it would be the perfect housewarming gift for us.  Our room mate didn't much care for the plant, but I adored it.  It was the perfect addition to our little home.  Unfortunately, that room mate brought with him a plague of bed bugs, so we had to leave, leaving much of our prized possessions behind.  As much as I didn't think the bugs would infest my house plant, but it wouldn't have survived the house we were staying in while my husband went into the military.  African violets aren't terribly known for thriving in a house that's kept at a standard temperature of about fifty to sixty degrees.  I left the plant with my room mate who promised to care for it.

When we moved to Texas I tried several times to keep a house plant.  In our first home we had a couple of kalanchoe plants, but they didn't make it.  I picked up a couple more after our first move, but they suffered the same fate.  I know I could have thriving kalanchoe plants.  When I was in biotech in high school my kalanchoe plant and my African violet were my babies.  Those were the plants I used for my particular projects, growing plants in culture.  They all did very well until their final transfer into soil in which they got infected with mold.  I guess I didn't get enough of the agar off when I transplanted them.  I was beginning to think I just couldn't raise house plants.  Maybe, much like things seemed with my mom, I would be better to have an outdoor garden.

Recently I decided it was time to try again.  Much of the reason I didn't have successful houseplants in the past was all of the other distractions I had in my life.  How could I remember to water a plant every couple of days when I could barely see the house under all the clutter?  How could I properly care for a plant if I was so wrapped up in all the things I needed to get done?  Then again, I'd have a bad tendency to put my blinkers on and go.  I'd focus on what I needed to do and forget about everything else.  It meant my poor plants got overlooked in the bustle of it all.

Off I went to the local garden center of Walmart.  I know they don't sell the highest quality plants, but I was just looking for a cheap house plant.  I wasn't looking for something fancy, and they were having a lot of sales.  I was certain I could just run in, pick something up, and go about my day.  It was harder than I thought it would be.  I live in a fourplex that faces west.  There aren't many windows, which is sad because I love rooms with lots of light.  This presented a challenge because most of my favorite plants required full sun.  I finally decided I would just pick a plant to put outside on our front porch, that way I could have some flowers with some color, even if I couldn't find any good ones to put up in my house.  I found a nice partial sun plant for our west facing front porch, then went on to pick out some pansies for our living room and a hanging ivy plant for our dining room near the window.  Plans changed when we decided to get it a nicer planter, which was too big for our small ivy plant, so I splurged and got two more ivy plants to hang it over the bar top between our living room and dining room.  It was a wonderful choice as our ivy is perfectly placed there.  The finishing touch was a small "lucky bamboo" plant I stumbled upon while looking to pick up the second and third ivy plants for our planters.  I gave that to my partner because he's not very good with green things.  He doesn't have the dedication to care for a plant.

As I was looking at my ivy, I had seriously considered a different plant instead.  As I walked up on the spider plants I remembered my grandmother's kitchen.  They had spider plants hanging between all the windows.  I remember sitting in their kitchen with the sun streaming in, looking at the spider plant babies that were jumping down from the mother plant.  I thought they were the strangest looking plants ever.  I remembered the kids in the environmental class in my high school growing up spider plant babies hydroponically.  Spider plants hold fond memories for me.  They're almost as dear to me as African violets and kalanchoe.  The only reason I didn't go with a spider plant was the cost.  The ivy was cheaper.  Since then I've decided that we need to get two spider plants, one to hang on either side of the window in our dining room.

I'm now starting to understand the benefits of having plants in the house.  It's kind of nice to see something green and alive in the house.  The whole house, as much as it still looks like your average poor family's house in a neighborhood that isn't the best, looks a little less low class now.  The front porch has transformed from looking like somewhere we simply store our recycling with an old beat up outdoor love seat and a couple camp chairs.  It still doesn't look that classy, but it's a step up.  When our kitchen and dining room are clean the ivy and small bamboo make a world of difference.  Plants are known to be calming and are thought to lower blood pressure, which is also wonderful.  On top of that, they purify the air you breathe and provide more oxygen.  It may sound strange, but the house has seemed a whole lot less stuffy since we've introduced plant life into the house.

Now that I have a couple of plants, I'm starting to wonder if this is becoming a new addiction for me.  I have to admit, just the act of doing the rounds to check on all the plants is so incredibly calming.  We've had these plants for at least a couple of weeks now, and the whole process of caring for them has been wonderful.  I've already been thinking about putting plants up to frame our dining room window as well as our living room window.  I'm more excited about saving up for new plants in the house than nearly any other item of decor, such as curtains.  It's amazing how something as passed over as plants can make such a drastic change in mental perspective.

Going to other friend's houses I'm starting to notice that void.  When I see a house that doesn't have any plants it seems empty.  It seems like something is missing.  The whole house seems so much more dead and stale.  Yes, I've got house plants now and I'm never going back.

Preconceived Notions and Perfection

So all the mosaics went up and the kids are happily able to display their art.  I have to admit, I used to say I never wanted to be one of those moms that had their kids' artwork everywhere.  I had some strange image in my mind of having a house with all the right decor and everything looking just so.  There were going to be couches, end tables, and a television stand in my living room.  The dining room would have a fancy cabinet just for dishes.  The kitchen would be fairly barren aside from appliances.  The bedrooms would have their own perfectionist style to them, my daughter with a girlish metal framed bed in white with a white matching dresser and night stand set, perhaps a matching white desk to work on.  There would be pretty curtains that would match the linens on her bed.  My older boy would have his own room done up in something he enjoyed, probably in natural woods with some kind of theme like space.  The baby would have a room all done up in animals.  Their rooms would all match up just so.  My own room would have a beautiful matching bedroom set.  I had all these great ideas, ideas that wouldn't allow for a child's artwork.  It would take away from the fancy perfectionist look of the whole house.

Looking at my son's bird mosaic sitting up on the wall, I've come to realize that I've been missing out so much in life.  My attachment to perfectionism has limited myself and will undoubtedly be limiting my children as well.  I shouldn't forbid them from displaying their hard worked on projects throughout the house because they're not good enough by the standards I would hold an adult too!  Of course I can't expect my daughter to paint a masterpiece!  She's only seven!  I can't expect my son to create some beautiful drawing worthy of a museum!  He's not even four!  I can't even live up to those expectations!  If I were to continue on that vein, I'd never have artwork on my walls, not ever!  I don't even have a single photo on display.  It makes me realize just how impersonal my house is.  Even if I lived up to those home decorating standards of perfection, yes, my house would have a dramatic sense of style and would be something to put in a magazine, but who needs a show house?  Wouldn't it be better to have a home that looks lived in?  Isn't it better to show some sense of personality, to allow for things that my perfectionist side wants to rebel against?


I think this is one of the conflicts my partner and I have had.  He wants to put up band posters, movie posters, license plates, and other things on the wall.  I look at it all up there and want to scream.  It looks like a teenager's room, not an adult's living space.  Yes, we have my masks up on the wall, but now I also have a set of fairy wings I wore for Halloween a couple years back and a couple butterfly ornaments.  We've got a beautiful dragon picture that I bought years ago, but we've also got a stack of stuffed pandas that my partner gave me and a miniature from his favorite video game series.  The wall next to our television has our game controllers and accessories for EA Sports Active hung there for easy access and to get them neatly out of the way.  We've got pink Christmas lights strung up around the ceiling.  I have to admit, it kind of looks tacky, but at the same time, it's got a lot of expression.  You certainly can't say our home doesn't have personality!


I've come to realize that as much as I love my idea of self expression and have no problems dying my hair wild colors, I really have this sense of conformity.  I have this sense of how things are supposed to look.  I can't just wear clothes I like.  They have to fit with an aesthetic style and they have to match with my hair color and style of the season.  I can't just put whatever I want up on my walls.  It has to fit some preconceived notion of the way things are supposed to look.  I can't be happy with crazy, miss-matched stuff.  Everything is supposed to fit into a particular aesthetic.


I guess one thing I've learned from my children's art is that I really have to release myself from the expectations others have put on me.  Go crazy every once in a while!  Be bold!  Be dramatic!  Throw a random splash of color into things!  Be free to clash!  Who cares what the rest of the world thinks?