Later today, I will be having some minor, outpatient surgery on my girly parts. Just because it’s minor, doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.

I have only had surgery three times in my life. Two of the three were c-sections, for which I stayed awake and the third was for my wisdom teeth. That is the only time I have ever been put under sedation. I’m not going to lie. I liked it.

But, I was only 19 years old then and delving into blackness was kind of cool. Now, I’m more than twice that age…and I can tell you for certain that today’s surgery won’t hurt nearly as much as typing that did.

Given that my eight year old son has had a lot more experience on the operating table, I asked him for some advice. We were counting his I.V. scars last night when I said, “I’ll be getting an I.V. tomorrow and I’m not sure, but I might have to use a mask to go to sleep too.”

At this point, I thought he might tell me what to expect. At the very least, I imagined he would tell me not to worry.

Instead he said, “I sure hope the hospital has big masks, because you have a big head.”

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One way I can be sure that summer is coming to its beautiful end is the addition of socks to the laundry.

My son has run around in Crocs since school let out. Actually, they’re the same pair of Crocs he wore last summer. He’s a slow grower. He wore a pair of 3T shorts the other day. He’s eight.

My daughter wore her black, hand-me-down sandals all summer. She most definitely did not wear the cute, brown-leather flip-flops, for which we went back and forth to the store because the size wasn’t quite right. You know, the ones that cost actual dollars.

I get used to laundry sans socks when the kids are out of school; other than softball and baseball socks, which are knee-high and black or knee-high and red. Meaning…the pair is easy to make.

My kids wear uniforms to school and their ankles have to be covered. So now, I will be carrying around a lot of socks until next June. I tote them up and down the stairs because I can’t find the mate and keep waiting for it to turn up. This is my laundry basket and the socks I carry around week to week.

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My daughter starts middle school today, which makes perfect sense because about eight seconds ago she was a 2 lb. 9 oz. preemie who fit in the palm of her father’s hand.

Two seconds after that she was wearing pigtails and skipping and making me recite “The Three Little Pigs” over and over. Then she started reciting “The Three Little Pigs” and, somehow, even though it was only about five seconds ago, I have a 30 minute long video of her telling that story.

Oh my goodness, did that girl like to talk! One day, my left ear fell onto the floor and she just kept going…like she was waiting for the right one to do the same thing. Okay, I’m exaggerating. Slightly.

She was so smart. She still is. But, smart when you’re a toddler is different than smart when you’re eleven. She sang God Bless America in front of huge groups…hundreds of people…when she had just turned three. So, yeah, that kind of smart. Now, she knows geometry, which makes her smarter than I have ever been.

She has always had a big heart and a sensitive soul, but about one second ago she got kind of hormonal. That means that she’s SUPER sensitive, but doesn’t always show a sensitive side. So, she has no problem being mean to her brother and making him cry, but when I tell her to stop it? Her tears could fill a bucket.

I used to think we were so much alike, and we are in a lot of ways, but more and more I see her becoming her own person. Which scares me a lot. I knew what to expect when she acted like me. I even knew what to expect when she acted like her father. *cough* button-pusher *cough*

These days, she does her own thing a lot. It’s her music, her posters on the wall, her choices, her decisions. I hope she makes the right ones. Just saying that makes me want to lock her in a room forever.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s only eleven. She doesn’t have a cell phone, she still goes to bed at a decent hour, she can’t see PG-13 movies…except for Transformers because, duh, it’s Transformers.

She still needs her mommy sometimes, but I’m 39 and I still need mine, so that doesn’t make me feel much better. And, when I think about how dumb I acted when I started driving and then when I went to college…well, she’s just never driving or enrolling in higher education. That’s all there is to it.

Of course, that’s not true. She will grow up, despite my best efforts to keep her a child.

All I know, is that in a few more seconds my baby girl will still be my girl, but she won’t be my baby anymore. As much as I love seeing her grow, I really wish I could stop this clock.

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A few nights ago, I had a dream that I hopped on a plane back to New York. I had my kids in tow and after our arrival in the city, we ended up in a cavernous ballroom with an ornamental ceiling and chandeliers above our heads. The room was empty, with one exception.

On the floor was a long piece of paper, plain white, roughly the width of a roll of wrapping paper. It extended about 10 feet and at the foot of it was a set of brushes and a painter’s palette. Someone, a faceless someone, told us to begin painting.

At first, my kids and I stared at one another and shrugged our shoulders because we had no idea what to put on our blank canvas. When we finally began to paint, we crafted our art separately from one another. A swoosh here, a dab there, we mixed colors and techniques, blending into each other effortlessly, yet creating our own unique pieces.

We were there for quite a while and though we had worked as three individuals, we stood to find that, together, we had painted a beautiful picture. A picture that looked just like the one I’m standing next to here…

This is the artwork that was inspired by my post for the BlogHer Voices of the Year Art Gala and Auction. My friend, Melisa, snapped the above picture before I got dressed up for the evening (because, right now my friend Jill is all, “She wore jeans?”) and just seconds prior to me crying so hard that my nose turned bright red.

I cried because the photo-art was, by complete chance assignment, by my friend Mishi. I cried because my post title was “Into the Light” and she beautifully captured its essence. I cried because she incorporated things that make me feel joy, things that feed my spirit, and things that mean something to me (you can see the fact that I love the sun and trees by looking at my header, which was created by the talented Courtney from Judith Shakes Designs).

I love that creativity can inspire others to be creative. I love that, together, Mishi, Courtney and I have fed off of each other. The reason that I began blogging is because I was searching for an outlet to unleash my own creativity.

The fact that it has led to fueling my dreams is simply a bonus.

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