Mom is Just a Nickname

If I lived up North, I’d say this was the Season for Being Sick. Everyone stays cramped up indoors for long periods, avoiding the snow and ice and cold. Or, they are in and out of the cold air, which (by tradition, at least) leaves the body susceptible to viruses and the like.

I live in the South, though. We don’t have snow and ice. It sometimes gets down into the 30’s…at night. We don’t stay cooped up indoors, exchanging germs all winter. Still, there has been illness in our house.

J was sick Monday and Tuesday with fever, headache, sore throat and stuffy nose. She finally went back to school today. She was so happy to go back. She really loves school, and it killed her to break her Perfect Attendance record for the year.

Last night, I felt ill. After dinner, my stomach was roiling and my head was pounding. I didn’t know whether to bow to the ceramic goddess or curl up in a small ball and hope the Gods of Sick would let me go unnoticed. As it turns out, the Sandman came for me instead. For ten hours, I slept. Neither the ceramic goddess nor the Gods of Sick swooped down to claim me for their own.

I’m not quite up to par this morning. Better than I was last night though, for which I’m grateful. My head’s not quite right still, and the kitchen is not my favorite place in the house (random food smells), and my body is sore. Still, I dare to hope that the Gods of Sick have passed me by for now.

Yesterday, while doing some cleaning and sorting, I ran across some coloring pages that I’d printed up before we moved to Jacksonville. I had never gotten around to splashing color on them, so they stared up at me in stark black and white. They were mandalas that I had found online. Last night, I colored the one pictured at the beginning of this post. It took me nearly two hours to finish, if you can believe it. It’s not even that big!

This morning, J is still home sick, though she’s feeling significantly better than she did yesterday. As soon as Toph left for work, I began to hear the cries of boredom. So, I handed her the other mandala I had printed up so long ago. That, of course, made X clamor for one of his own. So, off on a Google search I went, since I was all out of coloring pages - mandala or not.

I found out that the first mandala, which is pictured above, came from June Moon’s free coloring book. I also found a whole bunch of other wonderful coloring pages, which are conveniently summarized at Activity Village.

The cries of boredom are quiet now. My children are rediscovering the once lost art of coloring. They sit on the couch, still in their pj’s, each with a lap desk in front of them. There is a big box of crayons squeezed in between them and a stack of printed coloring pages sliding off the back of the couch onto their heads. They are coloring, cutting and enjoying themselves. Just as I remember using crayons and paper to create colorful images as a child, I see them doing the same.

And it reminds me that life is good.

We had a pretty good weekend overall. On Saturday, we took an adventure through the area as we searched for meat stores (aka butcher shops). I really thought there would be more around, considering we’re not that far from ranch country. Luckily there is one less than five minutes from us. Sadly, it is not up to the same level of standards we were used to when we lived in Ohio. The butcher shop there was incredible. I’m sure it spoiled me for life.

In any case, we drove for much longer than we probably should have, in search of a shop South of here. We couldn’t find it, which added drive time as we searched. In the end, we headed back home (after a long search for an eat in Pizza Hut and then settling for our favorite Pizza/Italian place, which is right near our house. This caused us to wonder why we didn’t just go home for lunch. But oh well.)

On Sunday, the kids and I spent the morning cleaning their bedrooms while Toph worked on schoolwork. Then, we went to the zoo for the afternoon! We had a good time there, seeing the native Floridian animals, the primates, the Australian birds and tiny deer, and the South American birds (X’s favorites were the birds, I think). That was all we had time to see, which means that next time we get to check out the African animals and the other more interactive things that we missed this time around. Everyone was tuckered out (yes, I just said ‘tuckered out’) when we got home.

The downside, is that somewhere along the line, J picked up a bug. She’s staying home sick today with a fever and a headache. Poor kid was mostly worried that she’s broken her ‘Perfect Attendance” streak at school! I was planning to stay home all day anyhow, so at least X won’t have to miss any of his weekly activities because of his sick big sister.

I may find some way to put this on a sign for our entry hall…unless Toph vetoes it, of course. heh.

Family and Friends, gather here!
Bring happy hearts and be of good cheer.
But join us here too
When life gets the better of you
For joy, when shared, grows greater
But trouble seems lighter when we come together.

ah, ain’t it great the odd things my brain latches on to when I should be falling asleep?

I suppose that sounds bad, that I hear voices in my head.  I actually haven’t heard them recently because I’ve been hearing so many things from my children.  I often call the voices my Muse, and I’ve long believed that she speaks very softly, even at the best of times.  I’ve even got another blog called My Muse Speaks Softly, that I started in effort to spend more time hearing her whispers.  I haven’t posted anything new on it in quite awhile though. 

For awhile, I did really good focusing in and hearing her, even with children and cats and life interrupting the flow of her words.  The last month or two have been harder.  I really need to have no distractions.  I can’t have anything hanging over me that will cause me to make an excuse not to write. 

Wait. I’m making excuses NOT to write?!  What’s wrong with me?  I love to write.  Why would I be making excuses not to write?  Every excuse under the sun has come through my mind though: laundry needs to be done, dishes need to be done, the kids won’t leave me alone, I want to watch Star Trek, I want to knit, I want to sleep, I need to cook….on and on, the list goes on.  The worst excuse of all, the one I heard myself using the most, was the one about the kids.  I found it very irritating actually, that every time I sat down to write anything (even a blog post) a little four year old person would stand beside me singing or speaking the same words over and over.  Worse still, it didn’t seem to matter what I was doing.  This behavior has not been limited just to writing.  I could be in the kitchen or folding laundry, knitting, napping or driving.  He just hasn’t stopped talking much in the past couple of months.

So, today, my husband has kindly sent me off to the library where I can type or read or stare out a window in peace.  There are no little people chattering in my ear; there are no annoying tv shows singing high pitched versions of nursery rhymes.  It is a relief, in more than one sense.

During weeks, months, like the last few, I begin to feel that I have no recourse, no exits, from the cacophony of every day living.  I don’t have a private retreat, a quiet place to curl up and think without being disturbed.  I sometimes resort to lying on the floor of my walk in closet to think.  At least one of our cats is usually curled up there as well, and she makes excellent company.  She lets me idly pet her or just lie beside her.  She does not normally yowl at me for more attention or whine at me to get her anything.  She just seems to like my quiet company.  Invariably, the peaceful quiet is shattered when someone discovers I’m not easily accessible.  Then I hear shouts of “Mommy!!!” echoing through the house until I surface again. 

Sometimes I seek a few moments of privacy in the bathroom.  One would think that I might possibly be able to sit on a toilet without company by now.  I mean, when the kids are tiny, I accept that I will often have an audience when I pee.  By the time they reach three or four, though, I figure they can understand I don’t like company then.  I’m still working on that concept with the four year old though.  I don’t think he’s a particularly slow learner, as I know he’s quite capable of digesting concepts far greater than this.  I think he does have a stubborn lack of desire to understand that he needs to leave me alone sometimes.

My daughter, now nine years old, recently showed an amazing sensitivity to this feeling of mine.  She even suggested to my husband that they do something to help me feel better, since I seemed so overwhelmed this week.  Even she seemed to notice the way that the four year old was hounding my footsteps and being more needy than normal recently.

In just the hour and a half I’ve been out of the house, I’ve made decent progress on a story I started on my Muse blog.  I am debating whether I will post the update there.  I begin to wonder if I should be posting stories on there, for fear that they will be unsellable to publishers later.  (Another excuse not to post?)  Whether or not I post on the blogs, I need to take time to listen to those voices in my head more often. I need to stop making excuses; I need to help my children understand my need for quiet.  In the same way that they usually demand less of me when  I spend time doing what they want, I think I feel less a need to divorce myself from their voices when they give me time to myself.  I think the needs of the four year old have changed recently though.  So a new balance has to be found.