A Good Day

I woke up this morning to four or five minutes of the most stunning sun rise. I watched it amazed, through a bit of a hangover acquired last night around the fire pit. I'm not sure if I need to remember much of that.

Today, my son revived my faith that the children will be okay. He had been counting the days on the calender for close to two weeks because today was the day that he was getting a game he had been wanting. At the check-out counter, his brother wanted some legos so he instantly put back one of  the card decks with his game so that his brother could get the legos.

We need those moments more often, but when they come, they are bliss.

And now it's been nineteen hours since that sunrise, just more than a day since we sat by the fire pit drinking wine and roasting marshmallows. It's all covered with snow. An eerie orange light fills the sky, and I've  opened the door several times to listen to the silence, silence only broken by the intermittent sound of cracking as limbs weighted with snow fall from their trees.

Petulant Whining

A) I'm surprised if I don't already have a post with this title. B) If you have anything to do, I would suggest just by-passing this and moving on with your life.

I'm just going to admit it. I liked the part of adulthood that was about beer and cocaine. I liked the part of it that was all about holding little babies. This part where I am compelled to scrub carpet stains even though two kids are at grandma's, one kid is sleeping, and one man is at work is tres yucko.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling overwhelmed trying to balance being a good mother (decent is probably a better word not sure that I ever hit the good mark), being a not-bitchy wife (ok, that never happens), keeping the house (reasonably) clean, working from home two to five hours a day, and cooking (constantly it feels like-- by the time I've finished washing the dinner dishes, the mouths are open again), and then when that's all done, I have my project that I'm working on and if I don't work on that at the end of the day (if I for instance read or watch a movie instead) I feel a horrible dose o' guilt. Mostly I was feeling overwhelmed by all of those things a couple weeks ago becuase the man was working a ton o' hours and extra days, and I'm the only one for the kids from the moment they open their little eyes to the moment they finally close them. Anyway, overwhelmed has come and gone, and now, I'm just feeling whiny.

And I think Virginia must have been around before carpet because otherwise she would have written, "A Room of One's Own and a Damn Tile Floor". So now, Imma gonna scrub my nasty carpet, think of whiny crap, and that's it, I don't want to overtax myself or anything.  

Note to Self

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is our latest bit of bedtime reading, and we all love it. I think my kids were meant to live in the 1800's. Tom does all the things that the boys love: warring, frolicking naked, catching bugs, playing pirates, meditating, smoking, and although they have never swung a dead rat from a string, I wish they would...  it seems like a sad bit of boyhood that no one's doing that any more. 


Okay, technically, they do not smoke. Even yesterday when I tried to diffuse a little kid anger by handing them all pretend peace pipes and inhale, exhale, let the anger smoke rise up to the ceiling and float away, they still refused to smoke. This parenting tactic, by the way, was a massive failure. Boy One was twitching on the floor apparently dead from smoke inhalation. Boy Two was still mad. Boy Three just pulled out his junk and suggested they have "wiener time" which seemed to calm them all down. But the fake pipe definitely soothed me, and I'm pretty sure that's the most important thing.


My mantra for the last week or so has been: "Minger, don't be an asshole" because in the inimitable words of Tom Hank's character in Apollo 13, "We're not doing this, gentlemen. We are *not* going to do this. We're not going to go bouncing off the walls for ten minutes, 'cause we're just going to end up back here with the same problems!" 


So that's it. I can be an asshole (to the kids) and ten minutes later, we'll all still be here, or I can not be an asshole, and ten minutes later, we'll still be here...  probably in a better head space to boot. So I guess, note to myself: walk away, grab your fake peace pipe, and re-approach the kids when you're ready to act like an adult non-asshole. These little mirrors (the kids) reflect all of my faults so I may as well try not to have so damn many.


P.S. Here is my favorite line from Tom Sawyer so far. The line refers to a boy that Tom is approaching and Tom is criticizing the boy's too fancy looks (keep in mind that my poor kid got pulled out of Karate to wash his feet which I hadn't noticed were black and it was Saturday and he probably hadn't worn shoes since Monday): 


He had shoes on --  and it was only Friday.