Are you up to the Five Word Challenge?

Hello all!

Our computer still isn't working, but I am borrowing my mom's laptop (thanks, Mom!) so I can keep feeding my addiction.

On my mom's blog, Life Not Wasted Or Lost, she had a post about the five-word challenge. It is a deal where someone in the blogosphere sends you five words and you have to write a little sumthin' sumthin' about each word as it applies to your life. So, I signed up!

But, being that Janie B. is my mother and knows me very well, she gave me five words which have deep significance in my life and it will be very hard for me to keep each word to a paragraph. Again, thanks Mom! But, I am up for the challenge...

1. Motherhood

Yikes. That's a big one. All I ever wanted to be growing up was a mother. No career aspirations outside the realm of domestic goddess. I didn't get to be a wife or a mom until my thirties, therefore my twenties were somewhat torturous as I yearned for a settled life with a family. And having a child wasn't easy for me. We tried for 13 months before I finally went into surgery for three different kinds of endometriosis. My birth experience was brutal and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And then I settled into post-partum depression for about six months. It was rough and a far, far cry from what I had imagined motherhood would be. Motherhood has been a well worth it challenge that has reduced me to screaming tears sometimes, but I wouldn' t have it any other way. It has left me emotionally raw with searing wounds that may never go away. However, none of this has stopped me from wanting to do it all over again! I can't imagine my life without my son. He is a dream come true.

2. Poetry

I have a love/hate relationship with poetry. In college, one of my bachelor's degrees was English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and Poetry. I wasn't half bad at it. It was also humbling and full of literature-type-I'm-better-than-you- know-it-alls who drove me crazy. I love poetry for its grace and metaphors and genius, and I hate it for the ache it gives me in my gut. Poetry gives me anxiety because people expect me to write it - I was good at it and was accepted into the master's program (although I turned it down). And it gives me anxiety because I wonder, "Should I be writing poetry just because I'm good at it? Even if I'm not drawn to it?" I love to read it, I hate feeling guilty because I'm not writing it. I don't yearn to write poetry. Therefore, I have a love/hate relationship with poetry. As soon as I can rid myself of the guilt of not writing poetry and disappointing everyone, then I can once again enjoy reading it.

3. Music

Love it. I've always been musical - I grew up playing the piano and was in Choir all through junior high and high school. I miss my piano - it is at my mother's house because we don't have room for it. Someday ... someday. I do yearn to play the piano. I was never a prodigy or anything, but I did enjoy playing. I took lessons for 12 years and stopped when I went to college. I'd like to take lessons again someday. For now, I get my music fix by singing to my son and listening to my faves, like the Indigo Girls, Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Brandi Carlisle, and Fleetwood Mac. I had my son's birth cards read when he was born by my friend, Marianne, and the cards said he would be musical, as well. Which is already true because he dances and moves his head around at the slightest note! My husband is also obsessed with music and can beat out the rhythm like a drum from almost any song.

4. Christmas

Love it. Obsessed with it. So is my sister. This is probably because our childhood Christmas's were so great. I love everything about it - cookies, carols, Christmas trees, ornaments, house lights, giving gifts, bright wrapping paper and pretty bows, decorations, hot chocolate, and the coziness of the whole month of December! I freak out over hearing Christmas carols when I go into retail stores and I listen to them in my car beginning in November. I also put my tree up the day after Thanksgiving. I would put it up sooner if my husband would let me. The ironic thing is that my sister and I both married men who grew up not celebrating Christmas. It was new to them and not exactly welcomed at first. But, once my husband celebrated his first Christmas with us and he received all those gifts, he started believing that Christmas isn't so bad after all. Bribery. It works every time.

5. Education

Love it. I got two bachelor's degrees in college because I love learning so much, one after highschool, and the other when I turned thirty! I have no doubts that I will probably get another degree at some point in my life, whether it be through correspondence or attending a university. I love to read almost anything and everything, including classic literature, fiction, memoirs, mystery, humorous books, textbooks, but excluding romance novels. Yuck. I would like to work in a school setting someday, although I don't think I want a classroom of my own. My ideal job in an ideal world would be to work in a library. Aaaaahhhh, I'd be in heaven all...day...long.

Well, that's the five word challenge! If you would like to do the five word challenge, just let me know in the comments and I will send you five different words, too! It's fun!

Stay tuned for my next entry which will be an awards ceremony!