What Have I Been Up To? About 5' 5 1/2"

So I went 4 days without posting. In my defense, because Monday felt like Sunday, today feels a little like Thursday, so the week isn’t really over yet…

Anyway, lest you imagine that I was busy exercising and decorating and volunteering and meditating and generally making the world a better place, I will fill you in on a few things I HAVE been doing this week:

1. Staying up way past my bedtime watching Lifetime movies, including, but not limited to:” The Mary Kay Letourneau Story.” Yes, I feel dirty.

2. Being in a grumpy mood each morning (see #1)

3. Refereeing two kids who have gotten along beautifully for the past 8.5 years but who now are at each other’s throats.

4. Obsessing that putting them in different schools this year has destroyed their sibling bond.

5. Trying to convince my underweight son that his winter coat does not “make him look fat.”

6. Trying to convince my son that he is not ugly, stupid, unathletic and generally terrible at everything (I remember starting to feel this way in 6th grade, not 5th. He must be advanced in the self-loathing department.) I think the sex talk was easier.

7. Being gentle and kind and understanding when my (8 year old!) daughter couldn’t put on her own socks and shoes because she had already brushed her teeth and it made her socks “feel weird.”

8. Getting so pissed at my daughter when she was screaming at me for putting on her socks and shoes WRONG that I said, “Well, how would you feel if you were dead in an earthquake?” then showing her a gruesome front page photo that no child should see. Aargh.

9. Grunting hello and goodbye to my husband as we said barely 2 words together all week (see #’s 1-8)

10. Remembering the Brownie meeting 20 minutes away 45 minutes after it started

11. Forgetting my dear friend’s fundraising dinner until…the day after.

12. Wondering why so few of the bloggers I read were posting this week, and then realizing that they just weren’t showing up in my reader. Thanks, Google.

Oh yes, I also went to work, did a lot of carpooling, laundry and wiping of muddy paws and nether regions of our dog, seeing that our yard has turned into a muddy swamp.

But mainly, despite my complaints, grumpiness, acne and general malaise, I spent time praying for the people of Haiti, reading their stories, and trying to remember to be grateful for this charmed and wonderfully messy life I have in a world where others are suffering so so much.

Forgetting a Brownie meeting is one thing, forgetting my blessings is another.


On the good news front: Things are coming together for our Well Project! Look for more news soon on this blog. The kids and I have already found $130 in change in the house that we had been saving for Disney and a generous donation has come in via mail from an awesome blogger. Thanks for your encouragement on this!

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

I was bored today, really bored. Jake and Tom were at a movie and Molly was at a friend’s house. I know I should have been happy, because for years the thought of some alone time in my house with no one touching me was an unattainable dream, but I was just in a funk.

It was pouring rain and Shadow I and couldn’t take our usual walk. I didn’t want to drive anywhere, because I knew I’d just spend more money. My first 3 days of freedom from the kids this week meant big budget trips to Costco and Walmart, and I know I need to reign it in.

I thought about how peeved I got with the kids all summer whenever they said they were bored. Hello? Read a book! Clean your room. Use your imagination.

Every time Tom heard them say it, he gave them a chore to do. They learned fast and stopped saying it to him and pretty much saved it for me. I was more likely to suggest going outside or lecture them on how lucky they were to be able to be bored in the first place. I told true but long-winded stories of villagers having to walk miles every day to get contaminated water out of creeks for their poor, sick kids. I brought up other pleasant topics such as child labor and war. Not super effective.

When the kids said, “I’m bored,” it really meant, “I want to watch TV!” It annoyed me that they couldn’t think past the obvious, but the first thing I did in my boredom today was turn it on. When HGTV didn’t do it for me, I set to work on my candy corn. I still have ½ pound to eat. I thought about doing yoga, since I was already in workout clothes, but after all that candy corn I just didn’t feel like it. I could have made phone calls since I’m behind on various projects. I could have blogged. Nope, nope, nope.

In the 3 hours everyone was gone, I cleaned, read a little, moped, ate, and cleaned some more. After spending the whole summer judging the kids for their utter lack of creativity when it came to keeping themselves occupied, I am not about to admit to them or to Tom that I was bored. Especially after last night when Tom ever so gently told me that my extreme crankiness when I’m hungry has started rubbing off on the kids. Ouch. I’m not going to have the boredom thing pinned on me, too.

I'm just going to let them think I got a huge kick out of rearranging the pantry this afternoon.