Your Inner Kid

I never get tired of seeing kids playing in the mud. See mud piles are the one thing I make

best! It is the one recipe I can’t mess up! Personally I think they even look good. And it is so refreshing to see how a child can be so content making them over and over again. They can dump them over and over again without feeling stress. Adults freak out over a pie spilling and yell nasty words. Why aren’t we more like kids?

Remember the days when making an apple pie only involved picking the apples from the tree?  Wow, the work was done by somebody else. I think we should still do that. Find one of those women on Facebook who loves posting all the recipes and lives to bake. Pick apples to our hearts delight and leave a note that says “You don’t need to thank me, just bake me!”  And don’t forget to leave your address!

Ice cream and watermelon, even as an adult we are allowed to enjoy both but not with the same gusto. We would be laughed at for spitting seeds and having contests for seeing who can spit them the farthest. Such a shame when the cost of competitiveness is nothing I do not remember one fist fight, snarly word or any bullying over watermelon seed spitting. And somehow I think if I suggested it to my female friends they would think my slice had been soaking in alcohol. And when the ice cream truck comes by, I miss screaming. I am not afraid to admit I love it and why not shout about it?  Repression is a bad thing.

The fascination with bugs, clouds, outer space and wild animals seems to fade. Why? The wonders of nature should hold our fascination always.  God’s miracles are reminders we are not in control and something is much bigger than us that is good and beautiful. For some reason we get colored and start seeing the world more musty instead of in living color. This is something that should never be lost.

Does society force you to fit in to some norm of what an adult is when in God’s eyes we are all his children? If you lived only one day, would you be concerned if the actions you took were mature enough to fit adult norms or would you just let go of expected standards and have fun?    I hope that the answer is you would seek the freedom to let your inner child shine through.

The reality is there is a way to balance being an adult and still allow your childhood to be an active part of your life. Joy is ingrained in freedom to be you and not be so caught up in fitting in and losing the ability to express yourself and discovery. You can set the stage for others to follow. If they don’t, let them wonder why you are different and live in their straight jacket of conformity of adulthood. You were, perhaps, born to make mud pies, like me!   

I Am Not my Weight

Weight follows me around the older I get. It doesn’t matter what I eat, it climbs up my legs and settles in my mid-section. I can’t shake it off no matter what I do. Ah, for the days when I was young and too skinny!  Do I want to go back?

Well, I remember getting teased as a kid for being thin as a toothpick. Hell, I could hide behind a tree trunk, a skinny one. I could be lifted overhead, parallel to the ground. I was anorexia-looking before it was cool and I wasn’t even in to fashion or ballet dancing. I was just plain active and living life to the fullest, an outside kid.

I hit my teens and realized Mother Nature is mean to girls. Hormones kick in and I am still trying to figure out what is so grand about it.  I mean really, hormonal is craving chocolate, feeling emotional and a swollen abdomen. Just what exactly about that is fun? 

We use to have to read books in school about “the upcoming change” menstruation entitled The Art of being a Women. I am still shaking my head over the word art that is not my image of art. And then there was the saying Beautiful Me! Who feels gorgeous on the rag?  Nobody I know. It is a royal pain and that has nothing to do with feeling like royalty.

Changing means weight starts coming on to your body easier and as you age, easily. Bah humbug. In a society that prides on tone thin bodies, some of us do not have the innate ability to be trim and thin for all of our lives. So we have to settle for being beautiful inside. If you could see the inside of me, God I am gorgeous!  And so are you!  Don’t be fooled by the fat rolls you see outside. Mother Nature might be tricking you, testing you to see if you can see below the skin. 

And so it goes, another year, another 5-10 pounds of discouragement or possibly adventure. I say enjoy it, live life, eat to live and don’t live to eat. Then you won’t be obsessively overweight, will be happy but not obsessed with trying to be a body you just weren’t made to be!