Month: March 2010 (Page 2 of 4)

tonight after work my singular goal was to get my garlic in the ground. while i’m at it, DW says, toss in some onions. i shall! i exclaimed. so H and i stopped at the local hardware and picked up the bag of onion starts and headed to the garden.

the garage is very much the man-space. the husband is quite the tinker-er, so there are all kinds of things taking up space with which he can tink. I have a small little cart with my gardening tools and that’s pretty much it. so i dug into my little cart and in the process of finding my spade and trowel, the wall hanging that gathers our grocery sacks (thank you ikea) comes CRASHING down. on my left middle finger. nail. ouch.

i may or may not have introduced the little boy to a few words i prefer not make it into his vernacular.

my initial thought (after @#$%)? that this was somehow my husband’s fault. now, i should retell the story with the minor details: a) he is currently in columbus for a conference. b) he’s been so busy being superhusband that the hasn’t indulged in any recent tinkering and c) i had just attempted to rehang the said bag-holder just seconds before it’s aforementioned crashing.

so after some near-tears, i had a few angry thoughts toward the husband. i told myself that it was not he who hung the ikea contraption and refrained from cursing his good name. but again on the way to bookclub i had the urge to call and let him know how his incompetency had led to my finger pain. i was able to refrain. but still again, when i whined to him about the achy finger, there was a brief yet overwhelming urge to point out that this somehow was traced to his actions.

i’m not sure how i reached this point, but i’m not entirely thrilled about it. i don’t want to be that bratty. i don’t want to live with a sense that nothing is my fault or that it is the responsibility of those around me to make sure that nothing bad ever comes my way. sometimes containers full of grocery sacks make their marks on fingernails. it’s just the way the world works (DW would lovingly point out the inter-workings of gravity).

my question is this: how DO you just get over yourself? how do i help myself realize that no one thinks about me nearly as much as i do? how do i keep in mind that it’s not the job of others to keep me happy?

on a better note, it’s time to be a bit proud of the bobcats. we still have 7:22 to go, but wow. however, i will admit, i’m not a “true” fan. i wasn’t able to name a single player on the team until i turned on the game. but i think alumni status puts at a fair-weather exemption status.

Last night I was so anxious I was jumping out of my skin. My legs had that “restless leg syndrome” (which prior to being pregnant was something I thought was made up to get more money from workers comp) and I was, simply, quite on edge. This was compounded by the fact that I knew I was on edge and had no idea why. Kinda like when you know you’re going crazy and you just can’t stop. Don’t tell me you haven’t had THAT feeling before.

So, a poor night’s sleep later, I feel ten times better. My only solution seems to be that my morning was mine. And it was glorious.

When I was in college, I had a self-imposed “2 hour rule” (have I mentioned my rule-driven nature?) where I was up ‘n at ’em 2 hours before I needed to be somewhere. This allowed a leisurely cup of coffee, some morning reading and contemplation, shower and time to do those other morning-things that normal people do. In my youth director life, I followed a similar morning pattern, allowing for even more than 2 hours because, well, youth directors don’t have to be in the office so early.

I’m not going to blame the kiddo for my lack of morning ritual; he likes to sleep in as much as the rest of us. I will, however, blame the workplace for requiring a start time of such a god-forsaken hour of 8am. On days I take the little one to the sitter I have to be out the door by 7:20 and 2o minutes prior to that I’m trying to get HIM ready. For those of you who, like me, don’t partake in math, that’s a 5:20 awakening if I wanted to be true to the rule. NFW. (Older people, that’s “no freaking way” in youth-speak. I’m sure. But don’t consult Urban Dictionary on me). I had an account manager who used to get there at 5. I’m sure JJ would divorce me if that were the case – not because I would be gone so much but because I’d be such a basket case when I am home.

I need my morning time. I’m a better person when I don’t talk to anyone until after this ritual. I won’t cal it “me time” because it’s not about me. It’s about focus, clarity. When I have a chance to simply be, I realize that the things that are about to bombard me are really minuscule in the greater scheme of life. I remember what is most important. I’m thankful. I’m aware. I’m even ready to meet challenges for the sake of growth.

I don’t have a solution; I’ll be at my desk by 8am for probably the next 5.5 weeks. However, at least I have an idea of what’s steering me toward the nuthouse every once in a while, and maybe I’ll be able to rectify it here and there. Until then, I’ll just have to relish the perspective I find as carve out these small, golden nuggets of time.

**found this on in draft from march 13th… unedited.**

If there’s one reason that I think this baby might be a girl, it’s because she’ll hold my hand.

We’re to that gestational age where body parts are quite distinctive and I’m pretty sure that this one, like her mama, talks with her hands. I’m also able to manipulate the parts of my belly which will cause a small nub to protrude and so tickle my insides as to make me reconsider what I had for lunch. But often times during the day, if I lay my hand to rest on the midsection, a small part will round the corner to find the palm of my hand.

Being Mommy to a girl, I think, would be quite different. A friend from church today was talking about how her 2-year-old wanted her hair straight-ironed to be “pretty like mommy.” I hope I didn’t insult her when I said that I was secretly hoping a little more for this one to be a boy again. That kind of stuff, mostly because I only know life as Boy Mommy, is like a foreign planet.

But on the other hand, I have some hopes of experiencing life with another (human) being in the house with a feminine side. Don’t get me wrong, I think my Henry Boy is very attuned to emotion and how others around him feel; but the emotional senses of a girl (and, granted, the emotional outbursts as well) round out the human experience. If I enjoy holding hands while she’s in utero, I can only imagine the delight when she desires to hold my hand in person.

Because I think that girls have this depth of feeling, I’m also secretly hoping that she’ll teach me a bit of the way of feeling as well. As we teach children about emotion – what we feel, how we express it, how to handle it, how to share it with others – I think we learn a bit about it ourselves. Husband has told me multiple times how I need to toughen up to be a Boy Mama because things are going to get broken. The week that H took 3 conks to the head was a good introduction, but I’ve got a long ways to go before football 3-a-days.

I think Husband will also have to tell me that I’ll need to soften a bit to be a good Girl Mama. He’s so good in dealing with me that I’m sure he’ll be able to provide some tips, but there is a way of loving a little lady that encourages her even as she is discouraged, upset or outright blazing mad that is a learned skill. I don’t have it.

So that’s my hope. I suppose even if I end up with all boys the sensitive, loving trait can be learned. And I will certainly relish the teenage years that I’m not dealing with other people’s catty daughters and what they said about mine. So either way, I’m hoping that, with each child I’ll learn a little bit more about what it means to love fully.