swimming with spiders...

we are back to weeks without the lord of the ring and dealing with a coughy drippy illness that seems to want to settle in and not go away...

and i'm back to having to re-learn fractions in order to teach them to the duke...i'd rather eat sashimi in asia than do this...

after a lengthy math review (damn you summer break!) we are moving beyond the fractions we learned last year and if the duke knew just how few steps ahead i am of him he would be quite nervous to be sure...

in other news i have started to tune in more and more to some little voice that apparently lives in my head that has begun to chant over and over what are you doing with your life? shouldn't you be doing something?

i don't know why it is we listen to little voices in our heads...it should basically follow the whole don't talk to strangers principle...at the very least if you have a voice or voices in your head you should be less concerned about listening to them and more concerned that they exist in the first place...

anyhow, i have these voices and PLENTY of them...when i am sweeping the floor or making dinner or going over irregular plural possesive nouns or when i sit down to read a book or don't clean the living room or watch the mother across the road wait for her son to get on the school bus and then head for work in her suit and heels, briefcase and coffee cup...when i don't leave the house for days and yet don't see any reason to...when i listen to other people describe the stress they are under with a co-worker or work situation or how they can't find enough time in the day to spend with their kids because they have so many other people who need them too...

why does it seem everyone else is doing something except for me?...why do i think this?...because i know what i do is necessary and important, and i feel pretty busy with a full schedule and concerns of completing tasks as much as the next person...is it because i don't have to leave the house and i don't have to wear shoes and i don't get a paycheck to prove that i work?...

i don't feel the need to give y'all a daily schedule, but suffice it to say that i am concerned with job performance and deadlines and finding more time with my kids...i am concerned with getting here and there in a timely manner and the hang-ups and hold-ups that occur along the way...i too dream of one day giving it all up and changing course and doing something entirely different...and believe me there are days my *co-workers* make me postal and wish i worked in a different office...

and yet despite it all, i still have that what are you doing? going on underneath like a news update ticker on the bottom of the screen only the *news* is never updated...it's the same old tired story...what are you doing with your life? shouldn't you be doing something?

i don't know, this is mostly an unfinished conversation with myself...perhaps a bit too *journally* for my tastes...

but i will say this...and perhaps it's not exactly the most popular of opinions in the circle of which i choose to swim, but how i feel about this is not entirely due to how my role is viewed by society...because in the conversation of valuing non-traditional or too-traditional work, society and what society says or wants always comes up...and ultimately is to blame, yet i feel that largely society's view of what is important work and what is *not* (based on title, income, etc.) is a projection of how the workers themselves view their own jobs...what i mean to say in a very boiled down version is that until *i* as a stay at home homeschooling mother can learn to value and honor the work that i do, fully and truly without the niggling guilt and doubt that i *should* be *doing* something, i cannot expect society to...

and believe me, i fully realize what a circular issue this is...

and really, while i wouldn't have it any other way than i do right now, and while i really am not concerned with what society thinks of what i have chosen, i am obviously shaped by it or this conversation with myself wouldn't be happening in the least...

because i too would sure love a Paycheck and a Title and Prestige, something that *proves* i have been somewhere and done something and now i am being rewarded with a *job*...

"look over there, that's sillymortalmama"

"oh, what does she do?"

"she's the queen of prussia...went to school and everything"

"wow...that's a really pretty crown"

and now because i have no more blather with which to continue on with, i will share with you a workplace related story involving me and an associate...

so i'm in the tub taking my bath and wingman comes rushing in all upset and in a panic

"mama! mama! mama! there's a spider in my bowl of grapes!!"

he puts the bowl on the floor and backs away...

"well don't freak out, he's not going to eat them all...hey, don't just leave the bowl there hand it to me"

i'm thinking i'll trap it with the hair rinsing cup and the soap dish and take it outside after my bath...

meanwhile, he nudges the bowl to the tub with his foot and then picks it up with his hands and then gets freaked out and THROWS THE BOWL INTO THE TUB! GRAPES, SPIDER, AND ALL!!!

"oops!...mama, can i have more grapes?"

the office has NOTHING on us...really, we should get a film crew in here...

moving right along i have decided to cease to be amazed that the TAO CONTINUES TO KNOW ALL...

today's $1 menu tao

shaping

(can you see where this might be going...i told you, it's creepy, really)

potter at the wheel.
from centering to finished pot,
form increases as options decrease;
softness goes to hardness.

everything must be shaped...by time or circumstance, by our own selves or those on our path, everything has rough form and must be stretched and turned and shaped...as options decrease, hard forms increase...

all that we are and do come from shaping...it is a continual process...it is the beginning of all and without end...we must take care to recognize and heed our options when they do exist and to accept the hard forms as they come...

and no matter what, there's always more clay...

x.