My life in movies

I would love to sit and tell you that I don't watch t.v., that instead we all sit at night and read by firelight. I would love to say that I have never, ever rushed the kiddos to bed to assure that I see the first 5 minutes of a given show, so that I know just who it was that had some horrible thing happen to them. I must admit, sadly that I have, and most of the time I spend the first 5 minuted of said show thinking about the fact that it was terrible that I just threw my kids into bed and traded them for television.
I have found that when I write these little bits, I tend, at some times to sound a bit overly romantic. My sweet children who I am in awe of daily and my husband who was made just for me. It is all true. I do love my family. I am blessed to be a mom and wife. I have parents that I adore and who are always there for all of us. I am a lucky, lucky, blessed girl, and I know it. The problem is that I don't want any of you to think that I'm full of it. I am not.
Life can be as tragic as it is wonderful, and while it seems sometimes to be a hearty strong thing, it can just as easily be broken down. Like a dam that needs constant tending so that when the flood does come, it doesn't wash away the whole town, life and love need constant attention.
As my daughter, who is now home from her cross country romp, and I sat watching "Ya ya Sisterhood" the other night, I began thinking just how life can mimic the movies, or at least how movies certainly do mirror life. There is a scene where the character Vivi runs to her sick child only to find that all of her children have come down with the flu. She is holding one child who gets sick on her, while the others all cry, and well, she loses complete control. I believe that the movie goer is supposed to think that she completely lost her marbles. What a crazy lady, right? Well maybe, but there was a winter night in our house that went down just like that, and well(again) I almost almost completely lost control. I had been almost three nights without sleep as Middle Little was up with a stomach flu. Just as he was recovering Lady and Littlest became sick at exactly the same moment. There I was trying to direct littlest body so as to not get the sheets any dirtier than they were, and stepping in things on the floor that I shall not mention here, while Lady, across the house was calling for me. It was almost just like the movie. I began to cry(sob), and my husband began to look at me as if I had grown two or four heads, because who cries over vomit?(me obviously). But I didn't run off for three days of sleep in a hotel room, as Vivi does (although I really, really wanted to), instead I cleaned up the mess, started the washer, loaded a couple of unsalvageable things into a trash bag and carried it outside, set my foot on a fresh patch of ice, landed on the icy pavement and just sat and cried.
See, it isn't always marvelous here in the cove, but I am sure you all suspected that. We have days where bedtime is more like a scene from "Night at the Museum" . The directions say to lock the lions up before they eat you, you know. While we do have fairy tale days where everything goes according to plan, we also have days where there is enough tension to blow the roof off at any moment as in some action flick. There are moments when the boys throw down like a scene from "Fight Club". I have times when I can't keep up, days where I feel like both sides of Cinderella, the one who cleans and the one who runs off with her prince. If I am going to be completely honest, which is really the whole point here, I have days where I want to have a knock down, drag out, "War of the Roses" fight with my husband and I'm sure he has days where he wants to "Throw Mama from the Train". That's just life. Good and bad, pretty, ugly, and down right disgusting, happy, sad, and amazingly hysterical. But no matter how it is at any given moment I do know this, it is a gift, and it is up to all of us to make the best of the bad times and relish the good and maybe even hope for better. I loved the movie "Little Miss Sunshine". It is the perfect example of a family trying to do the best for their little girl while everything is going wrong. The teenage boy is tells his uncle how he wishes he could just skip the teenage years and the uncle replies that they are necessary because if you didn't have hard times how would you know how wonderful the good times are. That might be one of the most simple and wonderful things to take away. Life can be all of the things I said before, and so I can focus on the bad side of life, the hard times that everyone in their own way is dealing with, or I can focus on the good side, the raw beauty, and that is what I choose to do here, if not to tell you about it, maybe just to remind myself. Life is short we all know that, and have learned the lesson the hard way even though we are told. I want to be the parent who, when my children have a bad day, no matter how old they get, come to me for advice or assistance like I do with my parents. I want to be the kind of wife who my husband wants to come home to at the end of a stressful day, because I help him find peace. It is easy to let myself believe that to be that person for my family I have to be perfect, all smiles and no tears. I know, though, that is not the case at all, I just have to be real. In bad times, I don't need the candy coating, although a bag of MnM's does help in some situations. I need the ones who say,"Yeah, I've been there and it really sucks."
Life is all about the highs and lows and even the sideways. It is truly the the lessons learned in the hard times that help us appreciate the good. So, while the things I write here are true and very real, I also have things in my life that are not so rosy, like the day I shared about falling through the heat vent.
I will leave you with this, in "Sex and the City" , the girls are having a conversation about whether they are happy or not. They ask Charlotte how often she is happy and she says ,"Every day". The other women look at her like she is lying and her response is something like this,"I'm not saying that I'm happy all day every day, but yes, at some point every day, I am happy."
I think that pretty much sums it up, don't you?