Sep

24

Happy place

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In order to deal with my crabby state of mind this week, I have taken the following actions:

• Baked various things featuring white flour, sugar. Took turns licking giant spoonfuls of uncooked dough with Riley.
• Booked a hair appointment. Fuck you, roots.
• Hired my smart web coder friend to help me build a new website that is going to be so totally awesome I swear to GOD you guys.
• Watched this video, like, a LOT. Ditto this.

JB’s parents leave tonight and I am bummed. It’s not that I wish they, you know, lived with us or anything (!), but they have been home with the kids while I’ve gone to work and Riley has been so incredibly HAPPY as a result. I leave in the morning and they’re all having fun, getting ready to go for a walk or whatever; I get home at night and the kids have had their dinner and Riley’s chattering at me like a cracked-out squirrel about how he and Grandpa made a FORT, come look RIGHT NOW MOMMY.

I’m sure JB’s parents are more than ready to get back to their normal, non-baby/3-year-old-centric lives, though. It’s probably been a rewarding, but exhausting few days for them — I can personally attest to the fact that caring for two small children all day long is, well, a real bitch sometimes. They think I’m insane for putting Dylan in a swing to sleep and so they’ve been putting him in his crib all week, and he’s responding by not napping for shit, so they haven’t even had any decent breaks.

(Oh man, I so don’t want to deal with the swing/crib issue. I know I’ve got to just cowboy up, move him into the crib and handle the fallout, but people, he just started sleeping through the night — he stays down from 7ish PM until 4:30 or 5 now. I feel enORmously whiny about a regressed sleep schedule, which is sure to happen, but of course I can’t stuff him in the swing forever. He already looks sort of ridiculous in there, like a Sumo wrestler driving a Mini Cooper.)

I’m going to take the kids to daycare tomorrow so I can run some errands and finish my freelance work for the week, but I’d also like to take a few hours to pursue the act of Chilling the Hell Out. What would you do if you had a little free time to yourself, in order to help de-stress and recharge your batteries?

Sep

23

Obscured

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My normal morning routine on the days I go to work involves rushing around getting both boys ready for daycare, waving goodbye to everyone as JB drives off, then finally sitting down to bolt my own breakfast and jump into the shower before driving to the office. While I’m blow-drying my hair and rooting through my closet the silence of the house often changes from the immediate peace and relief I feel when the noise and chaos walks out the door to a growing sensation of loneliness. I step over a colorful jumble of toys and the visual doesn’t compute with the accompanying hollow absence of giggles, shrieks, raspberries. It’s like those Nevada houses they used to test nuclear bombs: everything is both right and terribly wrong at the same time.

This morning I got ready while half-listening to the happy din of children in the other room. Riley jabbering nonstop about how he was going to build a REALLY BIG TOWER with his Legos, Grandpa, look, look how TALL this is; Dylan issuing forth a series of satisfied blats and bleeps as he pounded on his exersaucer and quality-tested its springs by vigorously bouncing up and down. I came out and kissed Riley goodbye while he was seated at his little blue wooden table ham-fistedly trying to draw the letter R, I kissed the top of Dylan’s sun-warmed-smelling head while he screeched joyously at the dog. JB’s parents made little fluttering motions with their hands, they told me not to worry, to have a great day at work.

So far this week I haven’t had a great couple of days at work. It’s been one of the few times when all the reasons I enjoy working outside the home take a giant step backwards, and I find myself thinking, this is hard. I try and be a good mom, I try and be a good worker, I try and find happiness and productivity in all things but oh, sometimes I just feel like I’m failing at it all. I’m half-assed over here, I’m part-time over there, I’m trying to do more than punch a clock but man this clock just doesn’t seem to have my goddamned back, I’m on this insane treadmill and the days keep flying by like some cartoon spinning calender.

I want the impossible, maybe. Or maybe it’s all within reach: the contented home atmosphere, the rewarding career, the feeling that for once the word compromise is on the back motherfucking burner. I just don’t know.

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