Blurbs

In  few days, I’ll be getting on an plane to Guatemala for a 2-week work trip. Without my family. This will be my longest time away from my littles. I’m both excited about the professional development aspect… and reclaiming a bit of my sense of self… and terrified about missing them. And them missing me. My in-laws will be coming to help out for 11 days while I’m gone – I won’t actually see them myself, but I’m really thankful they’re taking the time (and expense) to do this for us.

I realized something recently: I find motherhood as exhausting and frustrating as I find it rewarding and satisfying because I just don’t have very good parenting skills. I just don’t. I watched a young single woman interacting with my kids the other day and saw how good she is at it. At setting boundaries. At being calm and creative and sensible. I think I need a Super-nanny intervention or something. I’m just not very good at this… and I think that’s why I never really liked being a SAHM.

I know I’m learning… it’s all a work in progress… but I wonder what kind of damage we’ll all be undoing for the next 15 years because of mistakes I’ve made in the first 3/5?

Gimli bought me a jade plant last weekend. I love it so much. I also bought myself a dozen hand-made soaps and some incense sticks… and suddenly our apartment feels so much more like MY home. It’s a good feeling. 

Better late than never?

Saturday night, my period was, by my calculations, four days late. I kept checking… waiting… I have said many times and vehemently that I do not want another child, but when for a moment I thought I might be pregnant… I felt really happy. And then, when the blood started to come, relieved. I think our family of four is perfect as it is. But it’s nice to know that if an accident were to happen (the birth control method we are using is notoriously unreliable)… it would still be a blessing. Terrifying, but a blessing. 

Now that I’ve turned 40, I find myself buying ridiculous amounts of cosmetics. Painting my nails. Wearing lipstick and eyeliner every day, sometimes even mascara (I haven’t work this much makeup in 20 years). I bought some pricey exfoliants and creams for my elbows and knees. There’s a moment in Tangled (my daughter recently passed through an obsession with that movie) when the youth-obsessed witch, regarding herself casually in the mirror, turns her head this way and that, smoothing her hair, pulling at the skin around her eyes, bending her hand back at the wrist to check out the wrinkles in the skin on the back of her hands. When I saw this scene, I had a moment of total shocked recognition. I’m putting on sunscreen every day too, now. I know it’s too little too late… Gimli complains that I’m turning into a painted Jezebel…

Today is a dissertation day. Can you tell?