Martha, Martha, Martha...

No, I'm not pretending to be Jan Brady with a lisp.

I had the afternoon off, and I spent it channeling my inner Martha Stewart. Well sort of.

I am finishing up Rachel's Halloween costume. She is going to a Halloween dance after school tomorrow, and of course wants to wear her costume to school. See if you can figure out what I've been doing. I'll send a Halloween surprise to anyone who guesses correctly!








Okay, so I can't totally pretend that I'm Martha because she would be using a way cuter paint brush than mine. It's the only one I could find in my house today. I'm also pretty sure that the kitchen surrounding her projects would be way less messier than mine, too. Or if it is messy, her cleaning lady would be cleaning it up. My kitchen is a mess, I have no cleaning lady (well, I do, but her name is Rose), and I'm not going to show you pictures of my messy kitchen.

On to the next topic...

There is a blog that I read called Enjoying the Simple Things. I love it. The writer of the blog takes really amazing pictures of just every day stuff. I don't even remember how I came across it, but I found it back in the winter when she had a baby with Down's Syndrome. It's one of the few blogs that I check regularly. Anyhoo...the other day,she posted about a contest Dove was holding for women to write a letter to their 13 year old self. That post of hers inspired me, and one evening, I sat down and wrote a letter to MY 13 year old self. It was so strange thinking back on things that were oh so very important to me back in 1976. (Yikes, did I just say I was 13 in 1976???) It was fun and strange and sad all at the same time. Amazingly enough, I didn't have much trouble conjuring up an image of myself at 13. I didn't have much trouble remembering the things I liked and disliked, the things I worried about...I even remembered some of the clothes I wore. Yet I can't remember when I walk upstairs why I went up there.

So I wrote this crazy letter to myself, and laughed and cried while I was writing it.

Then, yesterday...I can't believe what happened yesterday.

I don't know about you, but my mail usually sucks and is not all that exciting. Most of it goes in the trash the minute I walk in the door with it, and the rest is bills. Which I would like to throw in the trash the minute I walk in the door. Yesterday, though, as I was flipping through the mail on my way into the house, I noticed there was an envelope from my cousin Nancy. Nancy is my mom's age, she lives in STL, but I rarely see her anymore. We used to get together for lunch a couple of times a year, but I haven't seen her in probably 8 years. We exchange Christmas cards, and that's about it. Oh, and we are Facebook friends, but I don't think she ever posts on FB.

I admit, I was pretty excited when I saw the envelope from her. Every once in a while, she sends me a card with just the sweetest note inside. I have had a challenging couple of weeks for lots of reasons, and I was thinking that one of her notes would just cheer me right up. I started opening it before I even walked in my front door.

And I was rather surprised by what I discovered. It wasn't a card. It was 3 pictures wrapped up in a white piece of paper, with a short note scrawled on it that said she was cleaning some things, found these pictures and thought I would like them. And that I was so adorable with my skinny legs when I was a kid. Two of the pictures were of my grandmother with some of her 10 kids, probably taken sometime in the 50's, and the third picture was of me, my mom, my brothers, my sister, my cousin and my great grandmother. It was dated August 1974 on the back...I was 11. And wow, what a blast from the past to get in the mail. Especially when just a few days ago, I had been thinking of myself at around that age.

I'm going to be brave and share the photo. I don't know how to use my scanner, so I took a picture of it. LOL




In case you're wondering, I'm the scrawny one on the far right.

I need to stop writing now...but before I do, I want to say that this post only happened because of my friend who wrote to me last night and said simply: "I'm waiting!" I told her at the beginning of this blog project of mine to nag me if I went too long and didn't write. (And she has followed through with that beautifully!) Last night, I came here and wrote, HATED what I wrote, and early this morning, I deleted it. And then she wrote to me AGAIN asking where my post was, and said that surely I had something good to write about. I thank her for that because I was in Negative Nellie mode, when I really shouldn't have been. I told her I would try again, and so I did.

If you care, watch for pictures of Rachel's costume in a day or so. I'm kind of sad as she is my only kid who wants to dress up for Halloween anymore. Well, the only kid who wants to dress up in something that isn't bloody and gross anyway.