Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Tales of a Pout Pout Fish

I'm not a very good blogger.

It has been a long time since I took the time to write something. I love writing. It is like therapy for me. Writing and music. I can't write music so I am content to write and listen to music.

The problem is that when I sit down to write a blog post I end up spending hours on it. Partially because I'm long winded and partially because I read and re-read and want someone to edit it. I check grammar and punctuation. And I still end up with a lot of dumb mistakes. Also, I tend to be a perfectionist, I don't want to do it half way wrong, so I just don't do it at all.

No excuse. I just need to suck it up and make time for a post. So here I am at 11pm on a Monday night trying to just write something.

I have been posting stuff to my blog Facebook page, so there's that. I hope y'all follow that so you can see my effort.

I have missed it, putting words down on...not paper...a screen, is good for my soul. Sometimes the words come out and they surprise me. I go back and read it and think, "Hey, that's what I needed to hear. It makes sense." and then realize it actually came from my brain and my fingers. Then sometimes I read it and think, "What idiot wrote that?!" Yeah, that would be me. Oh well. We can't all be perfect all the time, right?

We live in a crazy messed up world right now. I feel like we've been thrown in a cup like a bunch of dice and someone just dumped it out and said, "Alright, alright, alright. Let's see what kind of mess we've shaken up today." (Admit it, you said that in Matthew McConaughey voice.) I don't feel like there is a Yahtzee happening. It is the turn where you roll 3 times and the third you're like, screw it, I'll put one on my ones. Maybe mark out the "chance." Does anyone know what I'm saying?

It is entirely to late for me to drag out my soap box so I'll just continue on with this train of thought. It might derail and leave mass casualties pretty quick, but "Choo-Choo! All aboard!"

I've noticed a lot of division. Just all over. About all kinds of things. The hot topics for sure, but also just in daily life with people you see all the time. I see it in the oldest Milkmaid with her school people. And with it, there is a trend I keep noticing. A lot of times the reason there is division or a feeling of "left-outness" is because we draw our own lines.

We get our stick and we shove it down in the sand, and we drag it long and slow until that line is drawn. Sometimes we stand behind it and just dare someone to cross it. And we glare, "don't you dare even think about coming over here." We seclude ourselves. And then we get our panties in a twist because nobody is playing with us.

There are the times that we get our group together. Form our gang, our clique. And we are marching with a "we have been wronged" attitude. And we just dare other folks to try and join up. "You don't know what they've done or said or didn't." "Don't you dare come over here like you know what we feel." And once again, we have secluded ourselves.

And my favorite. The littlest Milkmaid is this one. We're gonna stomp off and draw our line with our lip stuck out. We gonna draw the pout line. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? The "if you aren't gonna do it my way I am not your friend anymore" line. And we tell everyone to go away because we aren't getting our way. The justification comes with, "I was GONNA play with you, but you wouldn't give me all your toys." And in my household it becomes the line of, "Sissy wins all the time and I'm not playing with her anymore." Guess what. We have once again managed to seclude ourselves and look like a turd doing it.

We need to grow up.

Milkmaid #1 is the oldest child. She is the mother hen, the rule maker. She has some OCD tendencies that just won't quit. She likes to boss. We have accepted this as her personality. She is a great leader and a great giver. Sometimes she gives too much of herself, and I can relate to that.
Milkmaid #2 is the baby. She is the pusher of the boundaries. She is the, my way or the highway child. Stubborn and irrational. No logic applies when she is mad. Since she's only 4 we are hoping to not accept quite every trait, but realistically, she belongs to The Milkman. If he had been a cute little redheaded girl, he would have been this exact Milkmaid.

At the book fair last year the biggest Milkmaid took her very own money. She bought herself some books and her sister a book. It was "The Pout Pout Fish Goes To School." THE perfect book for the littlest Milkmaid. We now call her "Pout Pout Fish" on a fairly regular basis. She is a pouter and she can draw some pretty mean lines. We love her anyway.

Sometimes we have to draw a line in the sand to prove a point or to make sure others can grasp the seriousness and depth of an issue. There are legit circumstances that call for a line drawn in the cement. A line that cannot be erased. A line that says, I will not cross back, this line won't be blurred, this line will define me and everything I believe in. And there are times that we draw a line that we should cross back over and erase.

If you have drawn a line in the sand, crossed said line, but feel like you are being left out of what is happening on the other side, have yourself a little self-evaluation. You might just be causing a division and secluding yourself. Don't make people decide if they are happy on one side, but have to leave it so that you don't feel all alone. Not everything is black and white, one side or the other. Not every situation calls for a point of no return.

I have to teach the littlest Milkmaid that secluding yourself because you are a Pout Pout Fish doesn't mean that nobody wants to play with you. Let's be real though, it might, because who wants to play with the pouter. But removing yourself from the game just to see who will follow you is not a nice way to play.

I know people that will march across a bridge, draw their line with black powder and then set it all on fire, burning down any opportunity for the people on the other side to visit. I have been this person. I have been the hot head, the fighter, the one that walks and burns. That is not the person that I am anymore. That person...friends, that person is too full of emotion and too low on rational. That person is a destroyer of themselves.

I will burn a bridge, yes, but not if there is any chance that I might someday miss the people on the other side. I have Jesus, y'all. And He has forgiven me when he should have just set a fire. I try to be a person that doesn't jump to bridge burning. I try to take a walk and refrain from line drawing. I do not always succeed, but I give it my best effort.

There are times in life when we need to draw lines. All the different kinds of lines. The sandy lines that a wipe of our hand can erase, the ones in concrete, and sometimes the black powder and dynamite meets matches lines. There is a time and place for each one. Just make sure that whatever line you draw or find yourself up against is worth crossing. Usually you can come back. Most of the time whoever you locked behind your line will come knocking. But sometimes, we are just being a Pout Pout Fish in need of some attention. Don't draw lines you can't justify. And don't seclude yourself to sing, "Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me." You'll be eating worms all by your lonesome.







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