A Goddess in a Cave in the Woods

Feeling a little low tonight. I’m in the mood to have a really good cry, then watch Pride & Prejudice and eat chocolate to cheer myself up.

I don’t enjoy these yucky moods – I feel like I’m viewing my life through the eyes of a particularly stern instructor and finding myself failing in all areas. Sigh. I’m so glad it is Thanksgiving this week. I have so much to be thankful for, and I love this holiday for reminding me.

Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite days of the year. I love spending time with family, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (LOVE that!), and preparing and eating a delicious meal (turkey, stuffing, and cranberries, oh my!) At Thanksgiving I have the whole Christmas season laid out before me, sparkling and emitting a rosy glow, just waiting to be unwrapped and enjoyed moment by moment.

Here’s to enjoying and being thankful for each moment this season.

Max wrote his very first letter to Santa Claus yesterday. He drew a picture of Santa, complete with beard and hat, on the front of a folded piece of paper, then wrote “Dear Chris Kringle” on the inside. He’s been doing some DaVinci writing (mirror writing, he writes backward from right to left, with all of the letters backward but otherwise correct – he doesn’t realize that he’s got them backward) so Santa may take a few minutes to decipher it, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate the effort.

He then had me add the rest of the message: “Please bring me Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and a teeter totter for Christmas. Thank you very much, Max Wadley.” We addressed it to Santa at the North Pole, put a stamp on it and Max took it straight to the mail box.

He also decided to give Santa a present, since Santa gives presents to everyone else but probably doesn’t get many himself. So, Max selected a nice… pen…. and wrapped it up in Transformers wrapping paper. Daddy and I convinced him to just have the present waiting for Santa with his cookies and (chocolate!) milk on Christmas Eve, instead of shipping it to the North Pole.

I mean, he’s coming all this way anyway, right? It would be wasteful to spend all of that jet fuel to deliver a present when he’s coming on eco-friendly reindeer power. And have you ever checked shipping costs to the Arctic Circle?

Max is such a sweet, considerate little guy. He really thinks about others and finds special ways to make them happy. I’m so blessed to be the Mommy to this amazing kid. And I’m so blessed to be one of the few adults I know who really, truly believes in Santa Claus. Thanks, Santa, for helping Max remind me about the magic of this special time of year.

Max with Santa 2006.

The day-in, day-out tasks have gotten to me a bit lately. As everyone who knows me well is aware, I am generally a slob. I have grandiose organizational plans, but seldom follow them through over the long term. Instead, we follow a cleaning system that goes something like this:

house is messy – oh crap someone is coming over – mad dash around house to clean it up – promise we’ll never let it get like this again – Yay! house is clean so we don’t have to spend time cleaning it – house quickly gets messy – oh crap, house is a sty, how do we let it get like this.

This system hasn’t really been working for me lately. I’ve noticed that my emotional and mental health suffer when the house is a mess. The condition of the house, and the enormity of the task facing me to clean it, weigh on my shoulders and bring me down.

So, I’ve decided to do something about it. A while ago, I started using the Sidetracked Home Executives system of index cards to plan my daily tasks. I never fully completed the process, so although the cards seemed to work well for me, I wasn’t using them to their full potential, and wasn’t able to get back on track after we went away on a trip.

I’m challenging myself to get back on the wagon, finish my cards and recommit to using them. In the meantime, I’m going to try to find the meditative zen in my mundane, everyday tasks. Doing the dishes today felt peaceful when I approached the chore with an attitude of:

This is doing the dishes – I do this joyfully every day to help keep the house clean and take care of my family,

instead of my regular attitude of:

I’ve got to do the dishes AGAIN?! Didn’t I just DO the dishes? I HATE doing the dishes! Who INVENTED the cheese grater anyway? Argh!

Here’s to daily household chores as meditation. Goodness know I could use some more of that anyway. Now, if only I didn’t have to clean my bedroom to find my index cards.

Back to Ikea, this time with our friends Theresa, Marc and Rafael. I think today was even crazier than Wednesday, at least for me. Of course, I didn’t have to fight traffic on Wednesday, since I was already there. It took us 45 minutes to get to the store and park, once we got off the interstate. Yikes. Since moving to a “small town” part of Orlando, I really have no patience for traffic jams. I was mad, but Aaron was a great cheerleader and got me calmed down.

We had “fun.” That is, it was actual fun for me, and absolutely not fun at all for Aaron. He even said to me, “my doing this should prove to you that I love you.” Aaron does not like shopping. Hates it, even. And he also dislikes crowds & commotion and loud noises. Therefore, although he likes Ikea, this was not a good time for him.

Max loved it – he got to play in the play area and hang around with his friend Maddy and Aunt Theresa, Uncle Marc and Nouno. Emma had fun once we realized she was desperately thirsty & got her some water. After that she was easygoing. Theresa and Marc are her godparents, so it is always nice to have Thea and Theo spend some time with her.

Dinner in the restaurant and more looking and shopping until we closed the place. Actually, they officially close at 9:00, and we didn’t leave the parking lot until 10:15. We all made it home with a few goodies. I was planning to get a down comforter and I got one – a little nicer one than I had planned, but I know I’ll enjoy it. I’ll try it out tonight since it is a little chilly and we have the windows open.

Boy, it is probably not at all interesting to hear all of this blah blah blah about my day, so I’ll just finish with a few more highlights.

Can you believe it? We ran into our friends Matt and Jan, AND Heidi and Rich at Ikea! Now this is the second time we’ve run into Heidi there. It is amazing to turn a corner and see friends in such a crowded, crazy place!

And, before all of the Ikea nonsense, we had a very important event to attend today – the 3rd birthday party of our nephew Timothy. His birthday falls on Thanksgiving this year, so his mom (Aaron’s sister), Sarah, threw him a party today at Orlando’s Blanchard Park. She rented a pavilion right next to the playground, so the kids had an great time running around and swinging and wearing the adults out. It was awesome to be able to visit for a bit with Aaron’s family, and I loved watching the interaction between Max and Emma and their cousin. I’m feeling so blessed that we live close, so that we can spend this time together.

Happy Birthday Timothy!

Sometimes I push myself over the course of a few days, then crash. That’s what is happening tonight I think. I did a new class at the Y this morning that really made me sweat (good thing). Then we had a busy afternoon of playdate and running errands, then we went to Downtown Disney to visit the Lego store so that Aaron could spend his birthday money. (Speaking of my lego-obsessed husband, visit his new blog at cyberlizard.org!)

It has been a long day, with several meltdowns and a long bout of car screaming by Emma. On top of less than five hours of sleep last night, and I’m done.

So, that’s all for now folks. Too little brain power, too little sleep, too late to drink coffee and make it all better. Good night.

Here’s a shot of our campsite, with Max, Emma & Uncle Ernie hanging out.

When Daddy visited us after work, he brought the laptop so that we could watch a movie.

We spent a lot of time chasing Emma.

And a lot of time just having fun together being a family.

We Wadleys have had a couple of moments of fame recently, as reported in our local newsmedia. First, Max and I were interviewed by Florida Today when we went with Nouno and his friend Gerald to watch the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery in October. Check out the article and photo of my favorite astronaut here.

And, our camping adventure at Ikea was regarded with disbelief, horror, and simple curiosity by many. But the reporters definitely seemed drawn to the crazy lady who brought her two children to camp out. We appeared on the TV news on Fox35 and Channel 6, and you can find us in photos online at tampabay.com and other places. We were even filmed for a blog on Ikea loyalty.

The Orlando Sentinel ran this article, which doesn’t mention us in the story, but don’t those blurry figures in the background of the photo look familiar?

The Sentinel gave Ikea a lot of coverage, so you can also see this page which includes a thumbnail of Emma on the right. We show up a couple of times in the video and photo galleries.

OK, well, that’s our 15 minutes of fame gone. Hope it was well spent.

Well, I did it. They said I was crazy, but I took the kids and my brother Ernie and we camped out for two nights at Ikea Orlando to be in line for the grand opening. Yes, we did win a chair (one for me, and one for Ernie) and got some other free goodies (pillows, toys and stuffed animals for the kids, water bottles and frisbees and t-shirts), but honestly, I didn’t take two kids cement camping just for a $90 chair.

The event had its UPS (meeting other Ikea fans, and realizing how broad their demographic is, and how much we all have in common, despite our differences) and DOWNS (some over-tired children, a limit to how much fun you can have in a parking lot, and sleeping on concrete when our air mattress sprung a leak). But, overall, it was rewarding to be with a bunch of other people who are also excited about Ikea, and surprisingly fun to have two full days without TV, with only books, a couple of toys, a frisbee and each other for fun.

I think it would be awesome to do this kind of experience without the kids too. In fact, we were pretty much the only people camping with kids. We were interviewed by lots of media – and apparently we showed up on the news a few times. I’m glad I didn’t see those.

The opening was AWESOME! And, Max got to be the first official child in the play area – the first jump into the ball pit! He was so excited about that!

Now, I’ve got to cut it short because I am running low on energy after the last two days. I’ll try to post pics tomorrow.

This entry is being posted by proxy. I am currently camping out for the grand opening of the Orlando, FL Ikea store! If you were lucky enough to be watching the 10pm news on Fox 35, you would have seen my amazing interview. My extremely wonderful, enormously supportive, amazingly handsome and incredibly intelligent hubby is making this post for me. [ed. These are her words, I swear.]

I’ll return with a full update after the opening tomorrow.

Happy camping!

As I promised the other day, here are a couple of photos of the robot that Max and I made for Aaron.