It’s been over two months since I posted here. The urge to tell the details in my life has been replaced with an intense foray into the law. Hopefully that need to write will come back, until then it’s farewell.
Thank you all for sharing your stories and comments with me and for being a part of something I truly loved to do.
Posted in Uncategorized
Is that all there is?
The problem with fairy tales is they only tell the story of the princess or the prince. They don’t tend tell the lives of the servants who endlessly slaved to support the fantastic castles, amazing kingdoms, and lovely lives of the main characters. Let’s face it, most of us are a heck of a lot closer to those servants than we are the princess with the glass slipper. I have a number of amazing and talented people in my life and as of yet not a single one of them has been handed a life of ease because they had a small and delicate foot.
I don’t want a life of ease, to be honest if I were to win the Lottery I would most likely keep doing what I am doing now. Of course, I would do some of it from a cruise ship in the Greek Isles, but I would still do it. I don’t have a problem with a life of dedication and effort. However, after a day of washing footprints off walls, poop off bottoms, food off dishes, dirt off clothes, etc. in addition to a day of work I feel lost beneath the requirements of my existence. String an endless number of those days together and I begin to forget that I ever was someone who learned to dance because it was fun or spent hours sitting by a window staring at the clouds and imaging my future in the brightest of pictures.
If that’s all there is my friends let’s keep on dancing.
I don’t think I stopped day dreaming because I grew up, I think I stopped because the hours began to run out in my days, and the days began to run out in my weeks, and my weekends became days to catch up on chores or focus on quality time with the family. Week after week began to run together, the passage of time whipping past me virtually unnoticed while I struggled with getting the lunches packed and research prepared and the clothes folded and put away. Which begs the question, is this all there is? Does one really daydream and work all their youth towards a life of work that leaves you too tired to dream?
Am I going to feel this way until my children have grown up and moved out of my house? ‘Cause that’s a damn long time to wait for the chance to daydream. Am I going to stop daydreaming all together? Will the ability to imagine myself doing all sorts of wonderful things fade as I get caught up, day after day, in the machinery of my life?
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.
Posted in Uncategorized
gasp
It has been a crazy month. It turns out owning two businesses is alot like being owned by two businesses. Owning two businesses while raising children… well let’s just say I have a new affinity for the phrase “hair on fire.”
Things are going well. Business is increasing, my children still remember who the hell I am, I occassionally manage to have sex with my husband, and none of my pets have died of starvation. I am so tired by the end of each day I start dreaming about going to bed around nine. Around ten I go about making it a reality. Sleep is a completely dreamless state of non-existence right now. I am too tired to dream anything interesting. My head hits the pillow and I am down until morning. If Otter wasn’t in my face shaking me and yelling “wake up mama!” at seven I would sleep until ten every damn day. I love sleep, I crave it, it haunts me during the day.
I am trying to find the time for excercise. Otter and I went to the park the other day and I tried barefoot running while he chased me and warned me that a wolf was coming. (He has not heard of the boy who cried wolf because he is the boy who cried wolf. He cries it all the time!) I really enjoyed the sense of my feet hitting the track and my body seemed to view the experience in a rejuvenating way. I still have to start developing the willpower to wake up early enough to run before I start my day, but baby steps.
Someday y’all will have to come see me at my new office. Someday I will hopefully have one. We keep looking for space we like, but there are several highly opinionated personalities involved so it’s hard to find something we all love and agree on. Until then I am crammed into my space under the stairs to my bedroom, daily shuffling the family and work detritus around so I can find a pen.
Well look at that. 9:23. That is close to ten…. I could go to sleep now without feeling like a complete lame-o.
Posted in Just me, Uncategorized
Mr. Otter turned three years old on April 9th.
I Otter, I fwee.
We held his party a few days later so we decided to celebrate the actual day with a dinner of his choice. He chose pancakes and bacon.
A birthday (pan)cake and bacon.
The best part was Otter’s help in making the dinner. He measured the mix, added the eggs and milk, stirred the mix, and then poured all the pancakes into the pan, except for the one shaped like a dog. Of course, he wasn’t nearly as delighted with the puppycake as he was with the ones he had made all by himself. He sat contentedly stealing strips of bacon off the pan while I washed everything up and set the table.
Before dinner we sang Happy Birthday to the young man and watched him blow out the candles on the pancake. After dinner we gave him a few small presents. Monkey scored again with a small metal wind up rocket.
Monkey hugs the Birthday Boy!
Then on Sunday we went to Jump Street and celebrated in style with a gluten free chocolate cake, pizza, homemade guacamole and chips, a few good friends, and two hours of running flat out.
A "nummy" cake
Otter and Miss L jump, run and play.
A bouncy game of chase.
Tired but unwilling to give up.
Monkey and Miss B pause in their jumping.
All in all it was a good day. Otter said it was the best birthday ever. He loved his cake, he loved his party, he loved his friends.
Happy Birthday my sweet love, you grow so fast.
Otter drives the truck while Miss L holds on for dear life!
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The Bloggess had me in stitches tonight. Her interactions with her hubby remind me so much of the way conversations between my husband and I go, in my head.
More importantly she brought me here, to a magical place where all my inner snarkiness can find a deserving outlet.*
I have been laughing so damn hard ever since.
_______________________________
I think what really gets me about this Etsy item is the “mature” in the title.
Posted in Uncategorized
Here I was, just working too much and running around like a crazy person, when this little baby girl I once knew grew forty feet, entered the third grade, joined the band and got GLASSES!! Now she is playing the flute, reading everything she can get her hands on, playing chess on the computer in her downtime and borrowing clothes from her Aunty Mop. (Granted my dear friend is a very small woman, but STILL!)
Here is a look at the new Monkey. (Monkey 8.0)
Contemplative Monkey
Tall Monkey in her Aunt's dress.
Monkey hard at work on her homework.
Posted in Monkey, Uncategorized
Last week Otter and I said goodbye to nursing. He was two months past his second birthday.
The decision to wean was not made lightly. He had been growing more independent for quite some time, blossoming the way breastfed babies do. Then suddenly he began to regress, demanding more and more milk, becoming less willing to eat solid foods and becoming violent and angry when I wouldn’t let him nurse. I started feeling as though keeping him on the breast was doing him more harm than good, a feeling that started inside me, and grew. One day he and I had a huge fight about nursing, and we decided, together, that it was time to stop. I told him, in one week, we say bye bye to Mama milk.
That week we snuggled a lot more, we nursed for longer periods, even though we stayed on our three times a day schedule, mornings, naptimes, and bedtime. When weaning day came, we woke up and I invited him to have as long a nurse as he wanted, because it was our bye bye to Mama milk nurse. It was a wonderful nurse. We nursed for a long time. We smiled at each other, patted each other’s cheeks, played with our hair, smiled. He would sit up and talk from time to time, and then settle back in to nurse some more. We snuggled close, took our time, really said goodbye.
Then we got up, got dressed, and went out to Target to get Otter his very first “Big Boy” toy. He picked out a plasmaglider, this very cool self propelled glider. He was very proud of it, rode it through the store, the checkout line, and under my very paranoid eye, even out to the car. He has ridden it around the house constantly ever since. He is thrilled with it, because sister even likes it, a sure sign that it is, in fact, a Big Boy toy.
This week has been surprisingly easy for my boy. We have had a few times when he has asked for milk, and then gotten sad when I have reminded him that we said goodbye to it, but for the most part he has not missed it. He has been co-sleeping again to make up for the lost closeness, and has been less willing to be away from me during the day. He has been needier. However, it seems the milk was more a comfort thing for him, than it was a source of food, as he doesn’t miss the nutrient as much as he does the snuggles.
As for me, I have found it very hard. I have not only said goodbye to nursing Otter, I have said goodbye to nursing. I have said goodbye to babyhood. I am no longer the mother of infants. All those silent moments of communication, spent staring deeply into my baby’s eyes while they greedily drink away, every swallow bringing satisfaction, knowing I am personally responsible for making them healthy and strong. All the soft, fuzzy head snuggled against my arm moments. All the hushed nursery moments. All the first balloons, and baby chortles. At thirty three years of age, that magical part of my life is behind me. Otter was my last baby.
I am on to the hustle and bustle of noisier children, busy children with questions and activities, and the certainty the Mommy doesn’t hold the world in her hand and certainly doesn’t always know what she is doing. I am on to PTO meetings and playdates, boyfriends and girlfriends, allowances and driving permits. I am on to children who don’t have time to snuggle me, and won’t want to spend an hour on Saturday morning cuddled in bed with me, just talking and playing with my hair.
Otter took well to weaning. Me, not so much.
Posted in Motherhood, nursing, Otter, Uncategorized
Do take your medication seriously when it warns of overheating.
Do NOT garden. Not even on a cloudy day. Not even for an hour.
Posted in Epilepsy, Uncategorized
Thank you all for the suggestions and support. I feel better just having expressed myself a bit.
Things are not settling down here at all, in fact we are getting over a several day long killer stomach flu, but I am feeling more capable.
There is a little short on Noggin I keep muttering to myself that seems to be helping.
“Quack, quack, waddle and quack, just let the water roll off your back.”
I am letting the water roll.
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I don’t usually share these but this one made me cry.
I love that she got up on stage in front of the world and lived out her dream.
Her doing so has given me more energy to follow through on mine. What an inspiration.
As my video has been a tad “spotty” here is a direct link.
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