Besides my regular daily iPhone photos for my weekly post, for all of February I took a shot from Fat Mum Slim’s photo-a-day prompt and posted it on Instagram. It was fun to be a little more creative than I usually would with my pictures and I love seeing what other people post. I’m taking March off (woooo no internet connection at sea!) but will probably pick up again in April.

p.s. I cross post all my Intagram photos to my Flikr for people who don’t have Instagram (Hi Mom!) You can see them by using the link over there in my left sidebar <——-

Yesterday, while caring for both children, I…

Got the car emissions test done
Renewed my driver’s license
Mailed a package at the post office
Took Caroline to the lab at the hospital for her lead test
Went to BJ’s
Got copies of Caroline’s birth certificate from town hall
Filled up the car at the gas station
Did ALL the dishes and cleaned the kitchen
Did ALL the laundry, including the sheets
Put away ALL the laundry
Made dinner
Made dessert
Remembered to wash my face
Did not completely lose my mind

Today, I am…

Taking a nap

The End

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I am torn on whether or not doing ALL THE THINGS on one day is a good system, and I think we should discuss it.

Pros: Our usual Stroller Strides/playtime schedule  means I only have time for one or two errands BEFORE nap time and the kids are always a mess if I try to take them out AFTER nap time, so taking a day out of the week to get everything done seems like a good idea. Plus if I’m going to haul the kids in and out of the car a few times I might as well do it a LOT of times. I love crossing so much stuff list in quick succession – Check! Check! Check!! Once I get on a roll, I stay on a roll for a long time and my roll spirals into a super clean and organized house/life without lots of hemming and hawing and eye rolling about how much I don’t want to be doing it. And it’s true that once the house is clean it’s easier to keep it that way – I am less likely to throw dishes in the sink instead of putting them directly in the dishwasher if the sink is totally empty. Mostly, I am no longer totally overwhelmed by all the things I know I need to take care of but dread doing.

Cons: I usually only get to the point were I NEED to do all the things after weeks and weeks of avoiding and putting off and honestly should have done most of it a long time ago. It is really, really exhausting to drag the kids to so many places in one day and they really, really don’t like being dragged. When I am PLANNING to do all the stuff at once I don’t bother even TRYING to keep up with it on a regular basis so my laziness spirals out of control. On the days when I am doing all the things I end up ignoring the kids – obviously it is hard to ignore them in public, but at home they watch too much TV and eat snacks off the floor while I try to organize just ONE MORE junk drawer. No matter how much I DO get done, there are still MORE things on my list so I’m still a little overwhelmed.

Wow, that was also exhausting. I think I need another nap. Or maybe I need to suck it up and stop thinking so much about what I have to do and just do it.

This is probably the opposite of how most people feel, but the further I get from my teenage years the more I love going back to my parent’s house in the town where I went to high school. Even though I no longer run into people I know at Starbucks and I barely recognize parts of the county thanks to tons and tons of development I get more and more comfortable there. My current life as I know it fits into my teenage year memories better than I ever expected it to – like at the party on Christmas night where my mean, scary 9th grade French teacher played with my kids for an hour. If you had told 15 year old Suzanne that would happen some day she would have laughed right in your face. Or when another high school friend’s mom hugged E, greeted him by name and said it was great to see him again. I have been dragging him around to my social stuff for such a long time now that he KNOWS these people, people I sort of hoped figured I’d never see again after graduation but have somehow continued to reappear in extremely pleasant ways.

Of course, it’s also impossible to go back to the place where you went to high school without being FLOODED with memories. I think I drove E a little crazy, pointing out that one road where that one guy I knew once almost ran into a tree. But honestly, the number of memories I DIDN’T say out loud was somewhere in the thousands. It was exhausting, both mentally and emotionally, to be surrounded by so much personal history.

Swistle posted earlier this week about imagining life as a choose-your-own-adventure book, which is something I’ve been sort of obsessing about for the last week. Except instead of imagining how things would be different if I changed BIG things – like going to a different college or marrying someone else or buying a different house – I change teeny tiny things. What if I hadn’t come home late from curfew that one time and been grounded? What if I hadn’t gotten that part in the play my senior year? What if I hadn’t gone on that one date? Or that other one? What if my first car had been different? I have a habit of getting carried away with “what if” thoughts whenever something bad (BAD bad or broken dish bad, doesn’t matter) happens, especially as a result of my choices. Like, what if I hadn’t skipped that french exam to leave early the Friday before Thanksgiving break in 2000? I could have been on the road at a different time, I could have been in an accident, I could have met someone at a rest stop who changed the course of my life. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating but if you think about how many tiny coincidences you CAN trace directly to visible things in your life (the best example of course seems to be getting pregnant – SO MANY tiny things worked together to create THAT SPECIFIC baby) it’s not too much of a stretch.

Of course, all that imagining is pointless and time consuming and although it gives me something to distract me from what I’m pretty sure is an extremely painful collapsed lung* on my right hand side, it’s also starting to prevent me from focusing on IMPORTANT and HAPPY and REAL things happening in my life. I especially need happy thoughts now, since we’re starting that dark, cold, boring part of the year where I expend all my energy practicing for the non-existent Moping Olympics. Maybe this year I won’t even enter!

*Not actually a collapsed lung.

There’s a thing in the month of November called “National Novel Writing Month” where people who are writing novels all get together to motivate each other and write 50,000 words during the month. It sounds impossible to me (especially because my first and only attempt at a novel was 200 words about a fictional version of myself sitting on a plane. I was wearing a scarf. The stranger next to me was mysterious. AREN’T YOU JUST DYING TO READ IT NOW?) so I won’t be participating. But some genius came up with the idea to also make November “National Blog Posting Month” which is something I CAN get on board with, although for me that’s not much of a challenge. I post an average of 27 times a month, and have for almost the entire time I’ve been blogging. And yet I STILL WON’T SHUT UP.

Instead of JUST planning to post something every single day, I am going to combine NaBloPoMo with being thankful which is an idea I got from Nick Jr I really love. I lean towards whininess in my online life (and my real life) and it’s about time I shake some of that negativity off. So for November I’ll be posting about something I am thankful for every day. Sunshine! Rainbows! Unicorns! Oh God the energy it’s taking to be that positive is making me exhausted already – especially since it is 8:55 on November 1st and I haven’t yet published this post. It is DAY ONE and I am already behind. Best blogger ever???

Don’t worry, I have all sorts of excuses. My computer is broken, the kids won’t let me use the iPad when either of them is awake (what is WITH that?! is there a sticky-finger-magnet in the screen or something?!), and I’ve been up since 5 am without a single adult conversation besides “cash or credit?” while running errands. There’s also a 55 lb bag of dog food in the back of my car I really need to get into the house but OMG 55 POUNDS IS A LOT OF POUNDS. Maybe I can just lock the dog in the van every time he needs to eat for the next couple weeks until it gets lighter? That’s either a totally genius idea or just about the laziest bullshit I’ve ever come up with.

But right now both kids are sleeping, I’m wearing my comfy pants and I have a whole bag of Milky Ways left over from trick-or-treaters to keep me company and help sooth the rough edges from a stressful day.

So today I am thankful for candy.

My life is a pocket, being emptied before the endless parade of pants go into the machine.

A crumpled $20 bill. It’s enough for a day – a coffee, a burger, a pretty bobble from Target – but wouldn’t make a dent in a year’s worth of bills and car payments and mortgages. My worth as a mother isn’t paid in dollars and cents, so I am both worthless and priceless.

A rubber band. My patience being pulled and stretched and twisted further and further with each temper tantrum, each unwashed dish, each crying baby. Sometimes in breaks and someone gets stung, a hurtful snap I immediately regret and I vow that next time I won’t let it get so tight.

A paper clip. Holding it all together a day at a time. Doctor’s appointments, vet appointments, car maintenance, groceries, playgroups, laundry, dishes, bedtimes, start all over. Papers papers everywhere and that file cabinet I was planning to use still empty. I need an hour a day a month to organize before I’m buried alive.

A goldfish cracker. The compromise between having a hungry, cranky toddler and eating nothing but organic, locally grown produce hand-picked by virgins under a full moon. The place where doing what is “best” for my family meets doing what is best for ME when it comes to my family and the guilt I do or do not feel when I cut corners. Sometime delicious trumps perfection.

A band-aid wrapper, the band-aid long since peeled off a skinned knee. I cover up the boo-boos, deal with the pain, pretend it’s not a big deal. I’m glad the hurt is so small but the scars are still there even after the scrape is gone.

Lint. Dog hair. My hair that is still falling out by the handful thanks to post-partum hormones. Messes of all kinds invade my space. Bits of yarn. Crumbs. Pen marks. Dirty feet. Messy faces. Playdoh ground into the carpet. Drips of milk. The remnants of a day full of fun, sunshine and creativity.

A penny. For luck. We are all healthy, clothed, fed, loved and safe. So much luck.