The power of two little pills & other musings

And now I'm ready to start my day. I had a really hard time falling asleep last night, the intensity of my all-day call out was of no help to finding calm respite in my tattered mind. Wow, if my mind was tattered from merely hearing the details, what of hers?

Nevertheless, every bump, scatter of cats and flipping on of lights outside my bedroom was startling me from sleep and just when I crept into the tingling escape of bare consciousness, my beeper beeped and I was on again at 1:30 in the morning. Fortunately, only a crisis call. I talked to her from my pillow until she was prepared to brave sleep herself.

This fragmented pattern of sleep resulted in a dull headache this morning--something that always zaps the zing right out of my ambitions. So I started the coffee pot, poured the red pills into my hand and admitted defeat only minutes from rising.

But now I'm on. I'm jazzed and ready. Lunch is making it's way to the stove--the brown rice needs more time than the rest so it will simmer for about 50 minutes. I sprinkled in red lentils for appeal. Later, I'll mix salmon with minced carrots and onions, whole wheat breadcrumbs, wheat bran, eggs and freshly grated romano cheese for salmon patties.

I'm still courting my cup of coffee, not as hot as the first cup but certainly worth sipping during my quiet time. The kids are working on math with instructions to move into reading time when they're done. I lit incense for effect--it's effect almost futile against the aroma of garlic rising from the steaming pot of brown rice, but ah well.

My hopes for the day are many, the reality of my day as yet unknown. I hope to venture through science together and read Moorchild. I found some pictures of moors online and showed them to the kiddos this morning so they can have an idea, a picture, in their minds of what a moor is exactly. Then I hope to have some journal writing based on a discussion question in our novel:

"The Moorchild is dedicated to all children who have ever felt different. Is this another way of saying that the book is dedicated to all children? Do you think every child--or adult--has felt different at some point in their lives? Have you?"

In light of my feelings with family this past week, I thought this question appropriate for ALL three of us to respond to--my difference among my own family was palpable.

Following our journal writing, my little man and I will work together to recreate the project I ruined as I packed the car for our trip home from family. I haven't written about this incident here yet. Now is as good a time as any I suppose so I might as well venture in; it's not as if I'm currently following any one line of thinking on this post.

His poster presentation of China was magnificent. Both kids did great, I couldn't have been more proud of them and I learned from them along the way. But back to little man. His was quite the accomplishment for a little guy with very little patience for detail. Thus, we worked over the course of about a month, really taking our time, preparing something he could learn from, be proud of and not hate in the end. We baby-stepped it.

I digress.

I was packing the car in the rain, tornado sirens in the distance and hail on the horizon. The winds were working against me at every turn and I was already emotional as I packed the car alone, something I haven't had to do in years because my honey always takes care of those details but she had stayed home to work. Anyway, his poster was already in the hatch spread across the pillows, the cooler and the duffel bag. I went to put something in the front seat but like an ass-idiot, I left the hatch open and wind caught his poster. It slid into the red-clay-mud-lake building around my car. (Worse, is that I had just scolded him for such absent mindedness when he shuffled something in the hatch and caused the poster to fall--only he caught it in time for just the corner to touch water. My own cluster-fuck-up resulted in a full on soak fest).

Standing in the rain, I cried as his words blurred down the poster, as his sweet little pictures ran away from their intended place and the edges of the various glue-mounted info-bits curled into the murky moisture on the poster.

All of his work, all of the time he spent preparing this for his presentation to family--his pride in every step of accomplishment. All of this wrecked by his saboteur mom.

Fucking fantastic.

I finally forgave myself after a good long breakdown on my father's porch. My dear dad was inside with a hairdryer attempting to salvage my wreck, which only made me cry harder when I saw the futility in his method. My little man came out to comfort me as I stood forlorn on against the wood railings of the porch. He put his little hand on my back and rubbed, "it's okay mama, it's not a big deal really, it's not important". I was so moved by his sweetness that I cried even more.

When I collected myself, I told him we would turn it into a family project and we would ALL work together until we recreated his project, just the way he had it or better if he wanted.

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It's later in the day from when I began this post and though we never got around to science or to the project, we had a great day. We'll get to science and project 'China re-do' tomorrow. And, yes, the journal entry too.

Today, however, was a good day for a spontaneous move on my part. We left the house on a whim to get my hair cut--I couldn't stand the short-hair-limbo another second as my neckline grew ever more undefined. Following my GREAT haircut and leaving so much cuter than I arrived, we made a run to the bank. On the way, we passed a park that we used to frequent and fondly recalled the fun we had, vowing to return soon.

Well, I decided to be someone other than the mom I usually am, the mom stocked full on 'vows', the "sometime" mom, the "soon" mom, the "in a minute" or "maybe" mom.

On our way home from the bank I detoured by the park we had passed, only a few miles from our house, and I parked in the street. The kids were asking what we were doing and I told them they were moving awfully slow for kids with only 30 minutes to play at the park.

Needless to say, they erupted from the car and we actually stayed 45 minutes--I would've stayed longer but I needed to page in by 5:00 and still wanted to have story time with the kiddos when we got home.

I felt so satisfied with myself for pulling something so spur-of-the-moment. I vow to do that more often. I love the mood it created for us and the tone it set for our evening.

Sometimes you ride the pain of a headache in the name of healthy choices and other times you dunk those powerful little bastards down the hatch in order to honor spontaneous inclinations.

I would say now that the reality of my day outlived the hopes I had for my day. No, we didn't get in all of the academics I had planned but we lived and that's the certainty in this house. We will live.