Confession Saturday

I confess:

--It has been two-and-a-half months since my last confession, and it has been at least five years since my last Confession and maybe longer (I can't quite remember who was born, what I was wearing, or how I had sinned -- all pieces of data that would help me figure out when it was). I confess, I am not looking forward to going back to Confession, but I know I have to do it because The Bean is receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation this winter. I have mixed feelings about the sacrament: on the one hand, there is something healing about admitting one's shortcomings and receiving forgiveness; on the other hand, I confess, I think the world would be a better place if we confessed our sins to the people we actually hurt by our actions or omissions, and received forgiveness from them.

--The last time I bought new pajamas for myself, the year started with "19--." I am quite glad to have a new pair (pictured at right), which I found on sale at Garnet Hill. I confess, you know it's bad when the Spouse and Budget Monitor says, "Um, you really need to get some new pajamas."

--I have the best of intentions and the worst follow through on pretty much everything except cooking meals, doing laundry, and managing whatever parenting task is before me in a given moment. We had family photos taken in August and I still haven't ordered any; there are people I've been wanting to have over to our "new" house for over a year now; and I haven't sent out my Christmas cards yet. I confess, even though my kids aren't babies anymore, it sometimes seems like just doing the Musts (to wit, cooking meals, doing laundry, and parenting) takes up most of my time and all of my energy. My friend M. assures me this will change in a few more years; I'm holding her to it.

--I made plans with The Bean's teacher to visit his class once a month to talk about writing/being a writer, and I'm nervous about it. I confess, I'm kind of shy in large groups, and I don't feel confident about planning talks and lessons for second graders. But I do think it's important to give children lots of ideas for Possible Selves (let me just say that a writer never visited one of my classrooms during my school years), so I am going to swallow my fear and do it.

--I confess, I trick my kids into reading classic stories by buying comic/graphic novel versions of them. My strategy is this: to hook them on the stories young so that when they have to read them later in life they'll already be comfortable with the story and will have the capacity to actually fall in love with the text. I confess, this makes me think of my long-standing suspicion that much of child-rearing is just brainwashing.

--I confess, January has seemed like a long slog to me so far, and I've been a little off my game: the poems are coming slowly or not at all; the snow is deep and covered with muddy slush around the edges; the boys' felts from their boots smell like a deep, dark swamp; and everyone around here still seems to want to eat three meals every single day! Then I read this post over at Coolclan, and felt more settled. Do what you're doing.

I confess, that sounds doable to me.