Getting it Done

FINALLY!!!

I started this painting in June when my lilacs came out.  How did it take me all the way to now to finish it???

Oh yeah, my kids got out of school :)

It feels good to finish something that I very well could have abandoned…Lord knows I thought about it!

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On another note, over 10,000 of us Rhode Islanders participated in the Coastal Cleanup this weekend. My kid’s school is responsible for a specific beach each year.

It’s almost like a scavenger hunt to see who can find the weirdest and grossest garbage! They give you a clip board and you document every single item you find on the beach down to the last cigarette butt.  There’s always a few pairs of underwear, tons of booze bottles, way too many ice coffee cups and the weirdest for me are the constant findings of gun shell casings.

You leave feeling good.

Our gift is living by the beach. Our duty is to be its custodians.  My daughter gets it.

My son on the other hand spends the entire morning angry.  He keeps saying “…but Mom, I don’t understand why I have to pick up other people’s litter.  If I don’t litter, why do these people get to get away with it?”

Yeah, I’ve got no good answer for you my boy. Nuttin’!

So I default back to what my parents would have told me.  You do it because it needs to get done.

PERIOD.

You can cut or you can stay in line, you can lie or you can tell the truth, you can coast or you can do your personal best, you can choose to help or you can ignore that which needs attention.

In our messed up society it must appear to children that the former is the way you succeed in life. That’s the message we see on the boob-tube daily, cutters, cheaters, liars & an inactive government. As a parent I can only share my own moral wisdom and who knows where the heck that came from. Maybe trial and error. There is freedom. You can simply do for you or you can do for the greater good of all. Is this something you or taught or something you are born with?

All I know is to the day I die I will try to instill the latter in my kids. I guess that’s what they call parenting and that’s why I will worry…does my boy get it???

Yeah, just go ahead and add a couple more silver hairs to my head buddy. What’s a few more!  :)