on sweatpants and sweatshirts and such

There was something that one of the kids said yesterday that was so funny and after I laughed and laughed I thought, I am definitely going to put that on my blog tonight and somewhere inside my brain something prompted me to write it down, at least a crib note, right then because I might forget it and another part of me said, no way, I will never forget that! *That * was so funny it will be imprinted on my brain forever, ready to be retrieved at a moment's notice for the perfect blogging moment. And yet, no. This is clearly not what happened. I have been wracking my brain all day long to remember, gently questioning, even begging. No luck. There is apparently a lot going on around here and while I can recite many things off the cuff these days, a random humorous story from the day before is not one of them.

So then earlier today Samuel said something that was humorous {maybe again because I can't remember which child was amusing from the day before...although to be honest probably both at some point said something that cracked me up} and while it may not have been quite as humorous as whatever-it-was-someone-said-yesterday, it was funny enough that I actually wrote it down so that I could remember to write it down later.

So just now I sat down at the computer and thought- oh yes! I wrote down something I wanted to write about and I went and got the little notebook (the one with my dream from last night still written on it from around 3:00 am...) and looked at my little notes on Samuel's-humorous-comment and dang it if I couldn't remember what the heck it was all about. Shoot.

Ah! But then it all came back to me and I see it is worthy of a blog post after all. But first some background. Samuel wears predominately sweatpants and sweatshirts (and when I say predominately sweatpants and sweatshirts, I really mean only sweatpants and sweatshirts- except when he wears a t-shirt, but then really only red t-shirts or something with Mario on it, unless those are in the wash and then he might, might! wear this one blue shirt we have just in case everything else is being washed- but this is rare.). He likes the feel of sweats, says they are comfortable and who am I to mess with that. There is enough going on in life and worrying about clothing choices is not high on my list. I say be comfortable and enjoy yourself as much as possible.

So the sweats that he wears get pretty bedraggled looking. I patch them up and mend them as best I can but they are only sweats and to be honest I don't think they were made to be worn all day, everyday. Just cotton sweats. With plenty of holes in them at this point. We buy more and they get holes and so on. Even I was a little taken aback, though, by the sweatshirt he had on today. There were large- as in elbows-fit-through-them- holes in both sleeves and several pen sized holes throughout the body as well. How did this get past me? I pointed them out to Samuel, saying something like, wow check out those holes. I need to sew those up- if I can that is- because to be honest this sweatshirt looked like it was on its last leg and would soon be relegated to the rag pile. (One thing I loved about our rat Charlie was that he liked to sleep in Samuel's leftover sweats.)

Samuel looked down at the holes and at his arms and said "This sweatshirt is fine. People care too much about style and fashion for my taste." I laughed. How true, how true. We do put an awful lot of thought into how we look, for better or worse- or at least some of us do- because Samuel clearly has other things on his mind most of the time. Although even Samuel thinks about it to some extent some of the time.

For instance, later in the day I found the sweatshirt discarded on the floor and noticed Samuel was wearing another one, this one fresh, hole-free, stainless, clean. Ah well, civilization pokes its way into the best of us at some point. Just now I stopped writing for a bit because I wasn't sure where this was going. Words like land-fill and ego started filling my head, things started feeling a little pedantic for my taste. What exactly am I trying to say here with this humorous comment by Samuel? I am definitely not going for lecturing, that is for certain. Something to do with following our hearts? Absolutely. Trusting what is meaningful to us? Definitely! Allowing my children to follow their bliss? A resounding yes! And of course something in there about letting each of us be who we are and loving what is.

Too pedantic after all? I can't tell anymore. I do think I am going to try and sew up that other sweatshirt. Samuel said it was really comfortable and he likes the color. Surely there are a few more days left in it...