My Real Day

I keep re-reading my blog post about my imaginary day. It just sounds so lovely and relaxing. Then I thought, maybe I should show my wonderful followers what a real day looks like for me.

6 a.m. The alarm goes off, jarring me awake.. But I have discovered that my sound machine/alarm clock has a wind chime tone. I awake to wind chimes chiming, as I slap at the clock to make it STOP. Then I roll over and pull the covers over my head while mumbling unintelligibly about the unnaturalness of waking up when it’s still dark.

6:30 a.m. I get up and pour big bowls of Fruity Pebbles for everyone. What? It has the word fruit in it.

7:50 a.m. I drop Caylie at school and drive north for a 9 a.m. appointment. On the way, Chase and stop at a store and buy dental floss to kill some time and keep our gums healthy.

9 a.m. My Physical Therapist guides me through a series of movements so she can evaluate my pelvic movement, gait, and muscle alignment. I’m totally jacked up on my entire left side. She then guides me through a session of stretches to open up my rib cage and stretch the muscle that attaches my pelvis to my ribs. Easy schmeezy.

10:30 a.m. Muscles I didn’t realize I had in my back are starting to ache.

11 a.m. I make lunch for Chase and myself. Then I talk on the phone while I throw dinner in the crockpot. Eventually, I remember that I have a lunch waiting for me to eat it.

12 p.m. Chase and I dance around the living room doing ninja moves. We pretend we’re Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and are obnoxiously loud with our kiai as we make our pretend hits. My neighbors were surely eating themselves up with jealousy at our boisterousness.

12:30 p.m. I throw in a load of laundry. I finish the erotic vampire urban fantasy romance novel that I started yesterday. Then I grab my Kindle and cruise Facebook and check my emails in a semi-quiet house. (I replaced the batteries in Chase’s Imaginext T-Rex. It provided hours of me-time).

1:30 p.m. I put in a second load of laundry. I fold my first load of laundry. Then I start cleaning my house. I’ve been so lazy about cleaning lately that this proves to be a daunting task. Chase provides running commentary on how well things are looking while I put away toys.

2:50 p.m. We walk to the bus stop and wait for Caylie. The balmy 47 degree day in Maine makes my newfound back muscles feel like they will shatter with any sudden movements.

3:15 p.m. I break up a fight over the newly noisy T-Rex and wish that I had a nanny.

3:30 p.m. I put on a movie for the kids and write a blog.

4 p.m. I’m off to fold my second load of laundry while my crockpot cooks a pot roast.

Bet you’re wondering what will happen next! So exciting! I’ll give you a preview of what’s to come: We’ll eat, clean up, nag my daughter to get ready for bed, brush teeth, sing lullabies, yell at the kid who keeps coming out of her room while we’re trying to watch a horror movie and I’ll be asleep by 9:30 p.m. Riveting, isn’t it?

Purple Soup

Yep, that’s right. I made purple soup last night. I’ve been on this soup kick since the weather started getting cooler. While Pinning soup recipes, I randomly saw this amazing photo on Pinterest of a mysterious purple soup. Of course the link only brought me to a food photography website – there was no recipe. So I Googled purple soup and pulled my usual recipe twist where I look at a couple of different recipes for the same thing, take out all the weirdo ingredients (or stuff I don’t like) and make up a slightly new recipe that’s all my own.

Viola! I made Borscht, a Russian peasant soup made from cabbage and beets. Sounds yucky, but I’ve had Borscht in a few different Russian restaurants in San Francisco and it’s good. Although, I don’t remember any of the bowls I ate being purple. Guess that’s where the red cabbage comes into play. I’m not a big fan of beets, but I noticed that when I make soups that get blended at the end of the recipe, my kids eat it up. Vegetables and all. So I’m experimenting with what kind of vegetables I can get into their healthy little bodies.

Purple Soup in a red bowl.

As you can see, I’ll never make a living as a food photographer. In fact, they might pay me not to take pictures of food. It’s hard to see the purple color since I only have red bowls in my house, but you get the picture. So, do you think my kids ate it?

No way! It was absolutely horrible! Gah! I spit my spoonful right out of my mouth. In 8 years of marriage, this is the first meal that my husband wouldn’t eat. Even when he doesn’t like something very much, he’ll still eat it, but not this time! I got a, “I’m sorry, honey. I know you worked hard on this.” Then he got up and heated up some leftovers. Caylie tried a spoonful and then laughed while she pushed the bowl away from her. Chase said, “Yummy in my tummy; it’s delicious mommy.” When I asked him if he wanted more he said, “No thank you, I’ll have some peanut butter.” Peanut butter sounds good, kid. Sounds really good!

And here I was, all excited to post my first foodie blog, recipe and all. I’ll spare you. Don’t eat purple soup.

Thank You, Thank you very much.

Can someone, anyone, tell me how to teach my kids some gratitude? I know, I know, being a mom is a thankless job and waah, waah, waah to me. But really. I need a thank you over here. And it needs to come out of the mouths of the little people I brought into this world with my own blood, sweat and screams.

Yesterday, by the time Mike got home from work, I had reached that critical level of stay-at-home momness. You know it: Defcon 5. As in, this bitch is gonna blow if you don’t back up off me. “Get away from me!” Yeah, I said it. I needed my kids to get the heck away from me and not talk to me for a good 12+ hours. “Mommy needs alone time” was a complete understatement. I actually *gasp* questioned why I ever wanted to have kids in the first place. Lucky for the other 3 people in my family, Wednesday night is grocery shopping night. And mommy goes solo.

You wouldn’t hire a maid to clean your house and not tip her, right? You don’t stiff your waitress when you go out to eat, do you? (There’s a special place in hell for those of you who do.) You wouldn’t go to a friend’s house for dinner and forcefully spit your food onto your plate, loudly exclaiming that it’s disgusting, would you? No, you’d tip your maid and waitress. You’d probably thank them as well. You’d eat the dinner your friend made whether you liked it or not and you’d warmly thank her for inviting you over. For taking the time to cook a meal for you. Out of the generosity of her great big heart.

So why is it that I can’t get a thank you out of at least one of my two children? I pick up after them, cook for them, clean their clothes, clean their stinky little bodies, read them books, color with them, take them to the movies occasionally, go on play dates, take them to the beach, the lake, the playground. Do I get a thank you? No. Today, I picked the kids up from camp and took them to the movie theater to see Monster’s University. We ordered nachos and fries and sodas, stuff I rarely let them eat. As we’re leaving the theater, my son sees the concession stand. “I want a treat!!” “Sorry, we just filled up on junk. We’re leaving,” I tell him, trying to tug him out the door. “I want a treat!” he screamed in his best belligerent three year old voice. “Didn’t you have a great time at the movie? Didn’t you just tell me your tummy was full of french fries and soda?” Apparently not. Instead of a thank you or a “I had a great time” which I would take in its place, I got a pouting, crying kid who told me that he never gets anything that he wants.

You know what kid? Join the damn club. Mom doesn’t get what she wants either. She doesn’t like picking up your wet towels from the floor, digging under your bed for your dirty underwear so she can wash it, or hunting down your sister who has disappeared from the house. Mom does it because someone has to. And all she wants is a thank you, thank you very much.

I need a vacation (from my vacation)

It’s already been a week since I posted last? Man, time got away from me this week. I’ve done a ton of things since I wrote last what with the hubs being on vacation and then my parents coming to town for a 4 day weekend.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m relieved that our “vacation” is over. I’m wiped out. It’s fun to have extra time to spend together as a family, especially when we have the kind of nice weather we were graced with this past week. I have had 10 days of family fun and togetherness (would have been 11, but I snuck across state lines for 24 hours) and I’m ready to have my nice boring days of lunch making, laundry folding and sibling refereeing back. Just so I can clear my head, catch up on basic housework and get to the point where I don’t want to strangle certain family members.

It’s not like I didn’t already know how exhausting having fun is. It’s just that I keep forgetting that I can’t recover as quickly as I did when I was younger. When I think about college and all the things I was able to do in one day, I find it mind-boggling. My senior year, I took 18 credits a semester, worked part-time, interned in NYC 2 full days a week, sat on Student Government, was Editor of the campus literary magazine and still, somehow, found time to hang out with my friends, go to the occasional concert in the city, do homework and sleep. Now? I can barely recover from a Saturday morning buying bathing suits, an afternoon at the beach with the kids and a laid-back dinner with the extended family that I didn’t have to cook or clean up.

Today I watched my kids play outside, folded laundry (it’s a Tuesday thing) and hung out at my brother’s house for a bit. It was a relaxing day, but I still feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. I haven’t spent a single second alone in 10 days, with the exception of me leaving the kids with my dad this afternoon while I drove to the supermarket to buy stuff for lunch.

I feel a little pathetic that I’m looking forward to tomorrow night. Because Wednesday night is when I go grocery shopping. Alone.

To any parents reading this: how do you find time for yourself?

Laundry Saved My Day?

My husband is on vacation this week. It’s Tuesday and I’m already exhausted! I’ve always wondered if Mike thinks that because I stay home with the kids that I’m just hanging out enjoying a day full of free time. Well, this morning confirmed that yes, sometimes he does.

Yesterday was the first sunny day we had in southern Maine in about 8 days. This had us up and out of the house early, just soaking up the vitamin D. Add to that the fact that our town has an annual Memorial Day parade that my daughter’s school (complete with parents) marches in every year and we spent the entire morning outside in the sun. Sunshine apparently supercharged Mike’s batteries because he was a whirlwind of energy, ideas and activities. All day long.

This morning I woke up ready for a semi-normal day at home with the kids. I had to drop my car off to get the brakes done and as we were leaving the house, Mike suggested that we all drive over and spend the day at MacWorth Island since its so beautiful outside. “Okay, that sounds good, if you can help me with the 4 loads of laundry I also have to do today before we leave.” Mike’s answer was a sort of deflated “oh.”

Hey, I’m all for having fun. But this mama here is the one that still has to do all the housework once the fun is done and the kids are exhausted and hungry and don’t have clean underwear.

Mike took the kids out for a hike somewhere. I stayed home and did 4 loads of laundry. And finished reading my library book. And drank two cups of coffee while they were still hot.

Who said housework’s all bad?