July 4, 2013

early morning brain dump - mommy guilt, independence day, and me time

okay, so today's blog is my attempt to empty my brain before the start of the day. it would be a journal entry if i felt like writing by hand, but this is a lot easier.

at about 5:00, i woke up, went to the bathroom, came back to bed, and soon after realized i wasn't going back to sleep. random songs started playing in my head - that's how i know. i could lay there with a pillow over my head, wishing myself back to sleep and listening to my husband snore peacefully, or i could get up and journal, a special me-time activity that happens about as often as i get a pedicure which is regretfully far too rare.

i hear some little bumps - is my son whacking his legs around in the crib? no matter. he'll go back to sleep.

fourth of july. independence day.

oh crap. yup, that's him - just said "HEY." go back to sleep, kid. i swear i'm not making any noise, and his door is shut.

we have no plans for this weekend - well, that's not entirely true. we invited my mom up for breakfast so we have an excuse to make an indecent amount of bacon and eggs fried in coconut oil (i'm gonna make banana bread too - why not?). we're meeting people for happy hour friday, and then joining a friend's birthday party dinner saturday evening before we sneak out for a date. i'm feeling good about it.

yesterday, i didn't feel so good about it. knowing that it would be the four of us for four days, i scheduled a drop-off for our son at daycare for monday. i'm giving myself the day off. i know i desperately need it. i've been slammed at work the last two weeks, and home life is a constant buzz from dawn to dusk. i have a really hard time sleeping anymore, and i know it's anxiety plus too small margins in my life right now. i know it's a season, and one of these days i'll wonder what happened to this little toddler who charms the pants off of me even when he's screaming his head off with tantrum #231.

anyway, guilt set in. i'm a crappy mom. why do i need a day off? what the hell do these stay-at-home moms do - take zanax? i'm sure i would lose my mind if i didn't work, and yet i'm so mentally and physically exhausted i can't help but wonder if i would feel "right" by napping every day when my son naps and scheduling the next play date?

it is what it is. we need what we need.

work is going extremely well. i got a tiny raise - just enough to bump me up to a personal salary milestone. it's humbling. and i'm working better, more efficiently and more effectively than ever. not a week goes by that i don't ask the Lord to give me his strength, and i believe this is his hand in my life because my work life is oddly successful to me. it kind of blows me away that, even though i only work four days a week (and one of them from home), i'm pretty sure i do the work of a regular full-timer. i also learned last week that i may become a client rep - a significant step up from my current role as a person who works alongside a client rep. it's more responsibility, which scares me but only because i'm a bit on the lazy side and am weirdly introverted when it comes to my clients (the group of lab researchers that i edit papers and such for). i realized earlier this year that i really have never taken my career seriously - oh, i'm very good at selling myself and getting good jobs with good companies with increasing amounts of responsibility, but when i get settled into a place i also get bored and restless. good grief, i think this is the first time i've really admitted this. i'm in my 40s and i'm not what you call established. i've figured out how to work things to my advantage and move up a notch every so often, but i've also put a really high priority on putting margins in my personal life and i don't work a single minute of overtime if i don't absolutely have to. for those reasons, how i've managed to be successful in my current job is a bit of a mystery to me.

through an odd turn of events i'm pill-free for the next month. i lost my paper prescription during the temporary move, then they called it in without the generic okay so i couldn't get them (i wasn't going to pay a $50 copay thank you very much). oh well. what's the worst that could happen? hahahahahaha...

i think i'll get a massage monday. the place we like to go is next to a really fabulous french bakery/cafe in a recently gentrified, snobbily high-brow-hipper-than-thou, walkable part of town called the denver highlands. it used to be cool and on the fringe, now it's irritatingly inviting.

damn. he's working himself up to a cry. go back to sleep! time for my second cup of coffee. maybe he pooped and needs a change? it would be cruel to let him stew in it.

i have a calendar print-out with every social circle event happening this summer, which is every single day. this is our church's latest creation - creating opportunities for people to just hang out and have fun together. it's alternating with short-term small groups, which i guess will start in september. we're desperate for social interaction, so we're trying some of them. saturday morning play dates in a park? instant win. friday evening at one of a dozen new nanobreweries? i'm so there.

the boy's early bedtime is a sacrifice for us. it makes it hard to do anything in the evening. but it's totally worth it. we get evening quiet/movie/margin time, he gets a solid 12 hours of sleep (usually). maybe when he's six i'll let him stay up until 8. ha!

i love cooking and meal planning and grocery shopping. i hate walking in the door at 5:30 and realizing i have 30 seconds to make dinner. but i found a recipe for sausage kale soup that i absolutely have to try. i tried kale chips a week ago. my son liked them. i thought they were pretty nasty. i told my girlfriend she needs to make me some kale chips or i may never eat this superfood. it's going into a soup where it can mellow out and be palatable, dancing around with the flavors of italian turkey sausage, mirepoix, and beef broth. sounds good, right?

silence. i think he went back to sleep. thank you, Lord!

we're gonna have some good family time, dammit. i think we'll try to go hiking today before it gets hot. afternoon? indoors somewhere. we have two museum memberships that we never use. i won't bother renewing until the boy's old enough to appreciate them - or when he's old enough to do their kiddie activities, which oddly is not far away. so maybe i better keep them up. ugh. i definitely need to drop the gym membership and switch to punch cards. we rarely go anymore. not worth $48/month.

it's 6:20. i think i'm done dumping my brain. going to sit on the patio and enjoy my second cup of coffee. happy 4th of july!