Sweet Moment

Taking Baby to Grandma's so I don't have to watch her while my oldest gets her palate expander at the dentist today. Running slightly late, feeling a little frazzled as a result. Then, from the back seat, comes this little voice, singing

Jeeeeesus wuvs me

dis I knooooooow

for da bible tells me soooooooo

Yes, Jesus wuvs meeeee.

Yes, Jesus wuvs meeeeee.

Yes, Jesus wuvs meeeee.

Daaa bible tells me soooo.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Can I get an amen?

Proverbial Rough Spots

These are my prints from L. Herbert Designs. They are on my mantle in some frames I got got at Target on clearance. The mats came with the frames and are a nubby linen. They are just about the only thing that's making me happy in my family room right now.

Can't get properly motivated this week. Trying to potty train the Most Stubborn 2 Year Old on the Planet with little success. Trying to keep the house tidy with no success at all. Fretting pointlessly about decorating and landscaping projects that I can't actually start/complete. Frustrated by a lack of money -- great thwacking piles of it would be nice right about now, but these are curiously absent. Low-frequency panic still vibrating through me occasionally when I remember the complete lack of security my husband has with his job and the very real possibility that I may have to go back to work which I do. not. want. to. do. Baby only napping every other day which means I have looooonnngggg days in which nothing -- nothing -- gets done. Oddly not fulfilled by meal planning, grocery shopping, clothes washing and cleaning. Out of town girlfriend camping on my sofa this weekend does not seem to light the fire under me that it should. Oldest child seems to have lost the ability to fall asleep at night and this has me in a tizzy, particularly since there seems to be no easy cure and she is completely vile when she's underslept.

I feel defeated.

If I were totally honest with myself, I would have to say that being a SAHM is vast periods of boredom punctuated by moments of great love and fulfillment. But it's mostly boring. Yes, I am occasionally satisfied by the completion of some task or project, but since much of what I do is highly repetitive in nature (laundry, dishes, cooking) moments of satisfaction are frequently swallowed up by the sheer relentlessness of housekeeping. So I finished the laundry -- more is coming. Dishes are clean -- time to start dinner. Family room is spic and span --wait 'til you see the basement. It just never quits.

And I am tired.

Because of the job anxiety we have going here, my husband is working 50-60 hour weeks. Which means I am single-parenting for long stretches of time and I can't remember the last time I got to leave the house ALONE to do something other than marathon grocery shopping (which I don't think really counts 'cause it's not very relaxing).

I have this recurring fantasy where I am whisked off to a spa and massaged and facialed and foot rubbed into a light, but refreshing coma. Then I come home to a sparkling clean house which looks nothing like my own and Alice has dinner already on the table.

Frankly, teaching high school was a cakewalk next to this mom gig.

Rising From the Ashes

I have had an intense month since my last post. Here's the short scoop:

1) For whatever reason, the person I thought was going to be my ex-best friend reappeared in my life and acted like she hadn't been totally AWOL for 6 weeks. We've been out for coffee and we're chatting by phone again. It's not what it was -- I can sense a distance that didn't used to be there -- but it's not gone forever as I'd feared.

2) My husband's company announced that they would NOT be laying anyone off for 6 months. This was initially good news, but we've seen some other things that they're doing that make us wonder if they're going to lay off in good earnest when those 6 months are up. This has made us take stock of a lot of things and has led to...

3) Weight loss of appreciable proportions. Am I super model thin? No. But I don't have Christmas Cookie Butt any more and I am feeling better about myself than I have in a while. This is partly from the stomach-churning anxiety over #2 which made it hard for me to eat, and partly because my response to any kind of serious stress is to exercise myself into oblivion. Instead of stomping down to the treadmill like a sulky child, I've embraced it as the exorciser of my stress demons.

4) Budgeting. This has always been a bugaboo for me. Just say the word budget and I get all cranky and indignant. I mean, there is math in this whole budgeting gig. Math. But with the possibility of a job loss ahead of us, we had to take a long hard look at our finances and what we could sustain in the event of...an event. One of the things we have decided is that we need to get off our credit card. Now, we always pay off our balance each month, but it struck us that with the credit card we are always a month behind on our expenses. When we pay it off, we're using our money to pay last month's expenses while we rack up new ones on the card. Thus, if we no longer had income, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to pay off the outstanding expenses and still have money for current expenses. So we have begun to transfer our expenses to a cash or check outlay. This means I am shopping for groceries with cash. Actual money. Weird. I'm not sure how long it's been since I used cash for large purchases, but I want to say...high school? Seriously, I think I haven't used cash like this since I wadded up my babysitting money and ran down to The Limited to see about getting some acid wash jeans.

And though I'm really only 2 weeks into this process, I have to say, I really like it. Handling actual bills makes me think more before I spend and it's made me think about conserving my resources differently. My goal is to shop once every two weeks and then only go to the store for milk and bread in the interim. So far it's working; I even came in $6 under budget for the first 2 weeks. Score!

5) My nest: Something has happened to me in the last month with regard to my house. When we first moved here, we hadn't sold our old home, so we had this spectre hanging over us from the get-go that if the old house didn't sell, worst case scenario we'd put both houses on the market and move back to the old house if we had to. Since that was a possibility, I felt like I couldn't paint or even hang too many pictures for fear of damaging its resale value. We did finally sell the old house, but that feeling of not being able to change anything has persisted. Until now. My first real act of possession was painting my oldest daughter's room pink. PINK. Not a neutral; not an anybody-could-live-here color at all, but a little girl color, a color that says in no uncertain terms that a 7 year old girl lives in that room. It empowered me and I am full of ideas and plans for the rest of the house and the landscape. No more over-trimmed Stepford shrubs. I'm going to start ripping things out and planting me some flowers. Already the daffodils I planted last fall are poking their little green tips through the crappy rock.