So, what ever happened to that St. Baldrick's follow-up, anyway?*

Well, I'll give it to you straight: I was spent.

Completely and utterly drained; physically from all the nights of lost sleep, mentally from the challenge of writing after laying dormant for so long, and emotionally from, well, I'm sure you can figure that one out. In order to find some closure, I had to open up a part of the past that I'd thought would be easier to examine after sixteen years.  I was wrong.

I've been in a bit of a funk ever since, but not from reliving the past; even more so from the ending of my project!

Other stay-at-home moms will certainly understand. Choosing to take on parenting as a full-time job (and YES, I realize how lucky I am to be able to make that choice, and not be forced to work by my circumstances) yanks you abruptly from any sort of perceptions you had about the world, and into a completely alternative reality. This was a particularly difficult transition for me.

Throughout college, I'd worked in the service industry – first waiting tables, then bartending, and then, even after earning my degree, managing in brewpubs. I loved to be surrounded by throngs of people, noise, and the fast, fast pace of our do-it-now culture. After work, I was on the fun side of the bar, surrounded by friends. Or at a concert in a packed theater -- or a concert in the middle of nowhere surrounded by tents and thousands of like-minded people. In a coffee shop getting into some great debate that in that moment carried the weight of the world, or hiking up a mountain, with a clear goal of getting to the top of a trail with an amazing view.

And then suddenly, there I was, in a strange new city listening to the clock tick in a silent apartment while Little Bee slept, watching for endless hours while other people lived out their lives on our tiny

Let's try this again. Relaxing Thursday?

It has been a full week since Bubba's tooth incident.

I'm happy to say that it's healing up nicely, and still seems to be a good, healthy shade of white.  Hooray!
However, somehow a full week has gone by since my last. post.  I'd hoped to write regularly, but life is moving too fast for me right now.  I feel like I'm too busy.  As I mentioned last week, Thursdays, at the moment, are the only day in a week where I don't have something scheduled.  That too will change in two weeks when t-ball begins.  So THIS is what the "soccer-mom" syndrome is?

Not that we're going straight from gymnastics to swimming to basket-weaving -- as always, I try to keep things in moderation.  Each boy has two activities a week, and I only schedule one into each day.

So, why do I feel too busy?  And does everyone feel this way?  Let's look at some time management (this might get tedious, so bear with me):

Consider the amount of time it takes to get three people ready to go anywhere.  As a veteran mama, I've been able to reduce this to about 45 minutes, not counting breakfast.  With breakfast, we're realistically looking at about an hour and fifteen.  That includes a shower for me!  I've given up on giving up my showers.  Enough is enough.  Mama deserves to be clean.  I'm not a primper - especially without hair - so I can't imagine how long this leaving-the-house process would take if I were!

There's no point in rushing through the prep-time, because I don't get bonus points for being early.  In fact, if I'm early, I need to come up with a way to keep everyone out of mischief in unfamiliar surroundings.  I can't really add in an errand -- that would mean adding in a whole lot of extra time to get everybody in and out of the car, complete the errand,  and in the case of a grocery grab, time to get back home again to unload perishables.  We live in a fairly convenient part of the city, and have access to three major highways within five minutes of our driveway.  Still, it takes 15 to 20 minutes, each way, to get just about anywhere. 

Let's summarize.  We have an hour-long class.  Plus and hour and fifteen minutes prep-time.  Plus forty minutes drive time.  That's three hours of the day.  Let's say we start all of this at 8:00am. (I do NOT function well in the morning.) Suddenly, we're busy until 11:00am.  Add in a snack and diaper and some toddler exploring and preschooler dawdling, and we're at about 11:30.

Lunch is around noon.  Eating out has become very expensive, because I insist on healthful choices, and small people can be very picky.  And while I try to do all that I can to expose my kids to society so they can learn to function in it, it totally stresses me out to constantly chase and correct and entertain them to keep them from shimmying up the table legs of neighboring diners.  This is why we often eat at home.  Which means that I need to prepare a meal.  Another fifteen minutes.

We've now come to about 12:30.  Naptime is around 2:00pm.  Kids need unstructured time to imagine and invent, and learn to entertain themselves.  This hour and a half is the perfect time for this.  Unfortunately, mine are constantly at odds.  Little Bee is in his "creating" phase, while Bubba is in his "destroying" phase.  Mama is referee.  Bubba is also clumsy and heedless right now.  And the attention spans are at about 10 minutes MAX, so in this total of 90 minutes, we're talking nine messes.  Big messes!

I've demonstrated that this is not the time for any concentrating on anything (like blogging) due to the constant interruptions.  My only exception to this is guitar playing -- I can supervise while standing sentry, and my noise often counterbalances theirs.  But boy, do the altercations seem to increase as soon as I begin!  Most moms will sympathize: I believe this same syndrome manifests itself as soon as you pick up the telephone to make a call.

Naptime finally comes.  We read stories.  Bubba goes to sleep.  Little Bee doesn't nap anymore, so I set him up in his room with entertainment (usually his Nintendo DS) for an hour of "quiet-time."  What do I do with this hour?  Well, when LB's up, he insists on being entertained, or at very least talking my ear off -- this is the ONLY point in the day where I am completely alone.  And exhausted.  And needing so keep quiet, so as not to wake the sleeping Bubba.  So I sleep, whether or not I'd really prefer to be doing something else.

Little Bee's quiet time ends, and we hang out as I try to mitigate some of the mess of the day.  Breakfast mess.  Dressing mess.  Lunch mess.  Playtime mess.  And then Bubba is up, and it begins again.

I shrug my shoulders, throw up my hands, and grin and bear it through that last hour until CC gets home from work.  Rush hour has begun, so we're not going anywhere.

Then I start dinner.  Baths.  Toothbrushing.  Bedtime stories.  Dishes.  Maybe another crack at tidying up those messes?  Including the new ones made while I was preparing dinner?

Can you imagine how big the messes are if we don't leave the house for a couple hours?

And did you notice that nowhere in my day did I mention laundry, mopping the floor, paying the bills, vacuuming, necessity-only (not recreational) shopping, or scrubbing the bathrooms?  Or bike rides, or birthday parties, or trips to the park.  Or, for myself, reading a book, painting a picture, writing the great-American novel, or composing a blog post.

I don't have a job.  I don't own a farm. I don't have to clean snow off my car, or shovel the driveway, or bundle my kids into snowsuits to leave the house.  I own a car, and don't have to rely on public transportation and it's imposed schedules to do what I need to do.  I don't have a child with special needs that I have to devote extra time and care to.  I have a husband who is VERY involved, both with the boys and our home, who rarely has to work overtime or go out of town on business.

So how does everyone else do it?  Do I have unrealistic expectations of myself?  Or am I truly dysfunctional? 

Or is everyone else hanging on as desperately as I am in this whirlwind, while trying to appreciate and enjoy the kids' early years?  I know that things will get easier as the boys become more independent.  But then these early years will be gone forever....

Welp, the best thing I've got to say about yesterday is that Bubba gets to keep his teeth.  (Say that in a drawl, kind of the like the narrator to the old Dukes of Hazzard series.)

My littlest man did his second face-plant in as many days, both of which drawing blood.  The first one was a running trip over his own feet, raising a big blood-filled blister on his top lip.  But the second fall was a doozy. 

It was supposed to be a relaxing day.  I'd decided to take a day off from the gym.  It was the one day of the week that we didn't have to rush off to preschool, or Heartsong music classes, or Gymboree, or swimming lessons.  The shopping was done, and the only tasks on my to-do list were around-the-house chores.  We were still in our pajamas, watching cartoons, mid-morning.  Ahhh....

I hadn't noticed that Bubba was standing in his Ikea push-cart -- basically a 12 x 12 x 4 box on wheels, with a tall handle -- and then he leaned forward onto the handle.  The whole set-up tipped and slammed onto the hardwood floor, and there was no way for him to catch himself.  This time, his mouth exploded in a spray of blood (and spit, and tears, and snot).

I called a friend whose husband happens to be an endodontist for advice.  Should I go to the ER?  Or call a dentist?  Bubba hasn't has his teeth for very long (our whole family made it to our first birthdays with gummy smiles), so he's not an established patient anywhere.  I called my husband, to help me remotely by making phone calls while I swabbed blood, and dressed Little Bee and myself simultaneously.  We ended up with an emergency appointment at the dentist that I'd intended to transfer Little Bee's appointments to.  Off we went.

I can only imagine how we must have looked to the other families in the waiting room when we dragged ourselves in.  The 4-year-old's in an outfit of his own choosing, his hair sticking out crazily in all directions, my crying baby in blood-spotted pajamas, and myself, in a thrown on t-shirt, jeans, and a hat, looking Swanky*.

I didn't think much of it -- after all, I was more concerned about Bubba's injuries.  Another mom began asking me gentle questions about "the baby" and glancing repeatedly at my hat-covered head, and then actually got teary-eyed, I could almost hear her inner monologue.  Oh, this poor woman, with two children to take care of, and an injured baby... and CANCER.  

It's a very uncomfortable situation.  I wasn't going to get into the whole why-I-shaved-my-head story with a perfect stranger, especially while occupied with a stack of paperwork (!) and an intermittently still-bleeding baby.  Instead, I excused myself, and distracted us all by finding Nemo in the fish tank.

Long story made shorter, Bubba had an x-ray, and while his front teeth are loose and out of alignment, the roots are still intact.  In a few days, hopefully, everything will "tighten" back down, and he'll be good as new.  In the meantime, he is surly, and always hungry, and I'm only allowed to serve him mush.  It's not fun for anyone.  

Oh, and it looks like he lost a fight.  That blood blister/split lip from two days ago is still there, and he's got a new big bruise-y brushburn on his chin.  Poor guy.  I'm hoping for an accident-free day today.






*Swanky [adj.]
having qualities similar to Hilary Swank in the film "Boys Don't Cry," an adolescent-like androgyny achieved by an extremely short hairstyle, thin build, shapeless clothing, and a complete lack of make-up, jewelry, or accessories that would definitively identify a person as female. 

Band-o

Up:  Once a band-geek, always a band geek, I guess.  I had ACWE rehearsal tonight, and went out for drinks with about a dozen other bandos afterward, as I do almost every Tuesday night.  I learned how to write some Chinese characters, heard some awful jokes, told some awful jokes, discussed the merits of the Pythons.... good times were had by all. 

Down:  I can never turn my brain off after playing music for hours!  I'll be up very late tonight, I'm afraid.  Unisom is my friend. 

Opportunity

Today's first Up is easy.  I went out after dinner to a jam session with two other ACWE musicians -- a sax player, who picked up a clarinet for a while tonight, a percussionist (primarily xylophone and marimba), who has been focusing on keys, and myself, trained in flute, but self-taught on guitar on, well, guitar!

We even had a random dude from Minnesota who was in town for a job (and who our sax player picked up on CraigsList) sit in with us on lead.

It was a really great rehearsal, and most everything fell into place.  Played lots of bluesy stuff -- Derek and the Dominoes, Otis Redding, Van Morrison and the like.  We could use a rhythm section to hold us down, though.  Anyone want to play bass?  I'll loan you mine!


The second Up I am going to blatantly Pollyanna.  Our 4-year-old revealed tonight at dinner that he's being teased at preschool.  Apparently his best buddy there has started calling him