Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Without

Awhile ago my mother-in-law decided that she was going to go to camp meeting this year in North Carolina. She used to go all the time, taking my husband and his sisters when they were small and always enjoyed it so much that she's been wanting to go back for years now and something always comes up and she never can. So when she told me that she wanted to go this year and take the kids with her, I just sort of assumed that something would fall through and then on Saturday her and my very pregnant sister-in-law told Jeff and I to have the kids ready by 1:00 the next day because they were going to camp meeting and they were taking the kids with them.

I hemmed and hawed and Jeff eventually talked me into it, telling me how the kids would have such a great time there and so on and so forth and so now the kids are in North Carolina and have been since Sunday and will continue to be until this coming Sunday and I am going absolutely out of my mind.

What on earth did I do before I had kids? I keep wandering around aimlessly, picking up books and turning on the television and browsing through my itunes library and even trying on my own clothes for heaven's sake. We don't have the money to go shopping or get pedicures or whatever other self-indulgent mess I can think of. So I've been eating and lounging and trying to enjoy food without tiny hands creeping onto my plate and uninterrupted reading. But I keep drifting, thinking of the kids, imagining the worst case scenario, thinking that if they were here right now they would be crawling onto my lap or pointing at words on the pages for me to pronounce.

When they are here I am always half-devising a plan in my head to occupy them just so I can have a few precious moments alone, and now I have sweeps of empty moments ahead of me and all I can think is FAITH and JAMES.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Shoulda

It is nearing midnight and my three year old daughter is laying sideways on my pillows, arms and legs splayed out, and my one year old son is curled up like a shrimp on the foot of my bed. I am still wearing my bathrobe from the shower I took four hours ago, and I never did comb my hair so I have no idea how I'm going to wear my wavy, cow-licked hair tomorrow.

I know that I should be in bed. I should have drank more water today and eaten less of that drool-worthy sandwich. I should have lined up someone to grade our new yard. I should have made that appointment for the 18 month check-up that James should have gone to last month. I should have exercised. I should have paid the car bill. I should have read more books to the kids and watched less television. I should have not cared so much about the cedar chips that cover the kids every time they play outside. I should have written in my blog in, oh I don't know, maybe the past few weeks?

I wonder if I'll ever get better at this, the prioritizing of time. I know that there are some things that I love to do, and yet, I find myself going two days, a week, a month, without doing them.

However, the house is getting built, the kids are staying fed, relatively clean, and joyously happy. There is money in the bank. I'm healthy, and alive, and growing more peaceful and accepting and, dare I say it, happy every day.