Shuffling Through

You know what? It's cold here. I mean, cold is relative and all, but even yankee-types put on jackets when it's 50, right? We are looking at record-low temps here tonight and I could not be more excited! Tomorrow night is our pumpkin carving get-together and we may, for the first time ever, enjoy hot apple cider and pumpkin gutting without breaking a sweat. I may even see if I can find a sweatshirt or something.
You know what else? I'm tired. I know I said it yesterday, but I'm really tired. Scary tired. Everybody asked me in our staff meeting this morning why I was quiet.

I was quiet? That Means Something.

There are days that you say you just can't (fill in this blank with any to-do item) so you sit on the kitchen floor, smothering your sorrows by licking out a bowl of chocolate cake batter. And there are days when your body just says, "no."
Mine did that today. I stared blankly at my computer today at work. Just sat there. Not really doing much. And I got Emma from school, got the rest of Andrew's Halloween costume (I pleaded with him for just one more year....he can be done with Halloween next year....) and grabbed some coffee (not the panacea I'd hoped it would be, but it helped), picked up the dog, picked up the boy child and headed home.

I surveyed the mess of two weeks of on-the-go life and just couldn't do anything about it.

"What's for supper?" I heard, all afternoon. "I don't know," I said, over and over.

I took my hubby's iPod out of his closet and shut out the afternoon cacaphony - baritone practice, guitar practice, piano practice, "mom - will you quiz me on my spelling," and a few more "what's for dinner?s" were ignored.
When Chris and I got our iPods, one brother (ahem) helped me set up mine, and the other brother helped him (cough) set up his. So we have different music and I like to see what he has that I don't have. I'm currently loving Wheat. Maybe it's not brand new music, but I really like it. And I pretended I was an indie rock star, singing along and poking my sweet potatoes with a fork (oh yes. that's what's for dinner, kids) and wrapping them up in foil.
It's a funny thing - I never expected to need to shut out the noise. The afternoon noise of my childhood included me at the piano, bassoon and marimba, my younger brother at the drums, the saxaphone or plunking out a one-fingered pop melody on the piano (I used to so disdain his simplistic strains of pop music - ha! now we see which one of us turned out to actually be a musician), and my youngest brother at the bass guitar or the trombone. If there's anything I expected to tolerate, as a mother, it's noise. And usually, I can.

But maybe not today.

So I headed for my porch, because when I can't do anything else, at least there's that. The light was already fading and making stripes and shadows out there.



The wind was swinging my windchime's pendulum around wildly. It looks like some wasps tried to make it part of their home over the summer.


And I still felt restless. I went down to my bed, still shutting out the noise and tried to pry open my release valve, just letting the tiredness leak out of my eyes. I know it's so wussy and girlie, but crying it out is amazingly helpful. But I'm too tired to do that too, I guess. I couldn't even muster a sniffle.

So I sighed and went to the grocery store for the remains of dinner fixin's and some hot chocolate mix. Fortuitously, the Charlie Brown Halloween special was on tonight. Some hot chocolate and cuddling up in the living room was nice family time. Normally, I don't count TV as family time, but today, I decided to.

Now, I need to find my bed. I'm not sure where I put it. Maybe it's under the pile of half-made Christmas gifts. Maybe it's under the stack of school papers that need to be signed.
Eh. I think I'll just sleep on top of the laundry pile.

DAILY BLISS: An October cold snap! Fabulous!