grateful friday becomes grateful monday!

all weekend, i intended to write my grateful friday list.
and now,
its monday....

i may have to rethink doing grateful friday
on friday.
maybe i should do grateful sunday...
then when i forget,
and don't do it until
monday,
it won't seem so late....
heehee

how's that for twisted logic?

grateful for:
-the grace
-the garden progression

-six's badly needed haircut (heh...and all that hair is from my son!)
-spending all day saturday with my husband planning a flower garden
-spending all day sunday with my brother's and their families planting
a "community" garden at my mom's with the kids.
-baking banana bread for my first time and having it taste like banana bread!

sunday scribblings eight

The Definition Of First Love.

What I thought was my first love was
not my first love at all. Even at the time,
some hidden away secret silent part of me
was certain that this was not my first love,
not because I had loved before, but because
this could not truly be considered love.

Unless love consisted of fear and anxiety,
impatience and mean words, spite and degradation.
Unless love held you captive and silent and resentful.
Unless love made you hate yourself.
Then, perhaps, this was love?

But somewhere, deep inside, a serious-voiced girl
told me, this is not love. This is making due.
This is being hopeful. This is making concessions
and one-sided contracts and deals that if I would
only be good, be sexier, be thinner, be funnier,
be quieter, be happier, this would all be better.
Then he would love me.

That is not love. It is a poor excuse for love...at best.

The time span in between that first mistaken, heartfelt
yet clumsy stab at love held many more attempts. Drunken
shots in the dark. Obsessions. Passing fancys and
possibilities. Killing time. And yet, none of them, love.
Being rendered powerless for so long caused me to beleive
that in order to not be controlled meant that I had to
become the controller. From now on, I would call all
shots. I would pull all punches. I would take all they
would give and give as little as I possibly could, in return.

It worked, but none of that could be considered "love".

When love found me, I was a bit of a mess. Drinking too
much, dating too often, too busy trying to win the game
to care what the consequences might be. Love challenged
my thinking without controlling it. Love cleaned me up
and beleived in me. Love listened.

As it turned out, my first real love played no games.
That was established the first night we met. At the bar,
I thought as usual, that I held all the cards and he would
follow my lead. I took him (as I did all others) to the
Parkade, where I would walk drunkenly around the
outside edge, balancing precariously, while the others
begged me to come down. But not him. Instead,
he picked me up and held me over the edge until
I was the one wanted to be on safe ground.

And yet, the true test still waited. The church by
my apartment was a magnet for me in its vast
beauty. There was staging built for renovations
that whole summer. I desperately wanted to
climb that staging but no boy was willing. Except
this one. Drunkenly, we climbed the entire staging
and at the top, he kissed me.

And that was where my first true love began,
almost twelve years ago now. And that, for me,
is my first real love.

more sunday scribbling here!

spur-of-the-moment-poetry-thursday...

was not sure of what to write.
faltering and slow...
analyzing and consumed
with wanting to put my best foot forward...
when suddenly inspired
by a song...

caramel by suzanne vega

today
i am me
and
happy
to be...
my favorite capris,
tip-toe-dancing across the floor
to your caramel coated
siren song...
limber and quick,
silently strong,
sultry and sexy
(not caring if i
ever
belong.)
giddy with the melody
that is
me.

more poetry thursday here

and because i am such a keener
this week (heh) my
attempt at sunday scribbling
can be found here....

heh. she got me.

unbeknowst to me,
my sign in name on MSN
has been
"i wish i was as kool as my (sigh) daughter"

heh.

what she doesn't know
is that i do wish i was as cool as her
when i was her age...

i bet i would of have had alot more friends...
:)

i'll have a poetry thursday/grateful friday combo, please...

first of all,
a generous helping of poetry thursday...

this will take you to
the first poem
i ever fell in love with.

i was in grade 5 or 6.
this poem was in one of texts
that we didn't have to read
but being the geek that i am proud to be,
i usually read all of my literature-type texts
from cover to cover...
heh.

i used to sit on the floor in the upstairs hallway
and read this out loud
in the most dramatic of voices.
in my head, i still read it the same way.

and finally, some gratitude for a
sweet dessert--

• a new mary engelbreit magazine waiting to be read
• my mom's confirmation that what i wrote in her
  mother's day card did indeed make her cry a little
  (mission accomplished, heh heh)*
• canned diet coke
• the hippies won!!!!
• mojo lost (heeheeheehee)(i despised mojo)
• this version of somewhere over the rainbow,
  thank you, liz, for sharing this :)
• freezie season!!!
• the freedom to stay home guilt-free which i
  have already gushed about
• memoirs of a geisha, which i watched last night
  and loved...i could not stop staring at the main
  character, she was that beautiful.
  

*just to clarify...i love my mom...i didn't make her cry
out of spite...just out of sweetness...heehee