Kvetch

Matt is traveling every single week in February, which happens to be a month that we have a ton going on. I realize he is working very hard to support this enormous family, however I begin to suspect the man of arranging work trips in order to get some R&R!. We talk late at night, after my long workday, plus marshaling and feeding our own kids, taking care of a church calling or two, and cleaning up the mess we call our kitchen, and I'm exhausted in the bed. He's watching a movie in a room that someone cleaned for him that very morning, no seminary wake up time on his horizon. I find I cannot be at all mature about this disparity.

I'm also getting a bit churched out, to be honest. I have responsibilities that are church related every single night this week, amounting to some twenty hours of being away from home. I figure I can skip the next month of Sunday church service with an even exchange of hours. Although I fear that may make me an idle and wicked girl, so I won't risk it.

Did I mention all the kids save one got the flu this past week? And has anyone forgotten I'm eight months pregnant?

I don't know if all that whining was cathartic, but I will cease and desist for today. I should mention that I'm VERY GRATEFUL that I did not get the flu myself--that may have just been the end of the world as we know it here in Poway.

So many children, she didn't know what to do

Long periods between posts generally mean I have lost my sense of humor! I'm not sure where it has gotten to, unless it has been swallowed up by fatigue. I checked myself in the mirror this morning, and sure enough, my mouth is set in a disapproving frown, pulling down at the corners without my bidding.

One thing that did make me laugh yesterday was an email that appeared in my inbox, naming me as someone nominated to be a local woman's history honoree, for being "amazing" in some way or another. This is the work of one of my dastardly friends, who hasn't spent enough time in my presence to rule me out for such a reward. I'm just ordinary--the old woman who lives in a shoe, spanking her children soundly and giving them broth for dinner far more frequently than she probably should. If in twenty years I find that my kids have turned out okay, if I have managed to run my business well enough to help get our money pit of a house into shape, if I can at that point find myself volunteering in the community--it seems to me that that is the time of life where I might look back and say that I did some amazing things. Right now, I'm just holding on by my fingernails and trying not to fall. The fact that I haven't fallen is, so far, my most amazing accomplishment.

Time and Priorities

I have entered that portion of the pregnancy where time slows down to a crawl. This is a mystery unexplained by neither scientist nor philosopher--how it is that life rushes by like a Japanese bullet train, but the pregnancy ceases to progress except at a snail's pace. I've been thirty weeks along for a full month now, I'm sure of it.

Before I hit the third tri skids, I took the younger kids to see "Tangled." Not a bad little Disney movie, but the five-year-old was traumatized by the sad ending. (Spoiler alert.) At the end, when the handsome "prince" dies as he cuts off Rapunzel's magical golden hair (which turns it brown and unmagical), the entire theater was distraught--how would they pull this out? How would they save her one true love? Mariah was no exception, but her anxiety was hair-focused. Mommy, what happened to her hair? How will she get her hair back? The true love's recovery was no consolation for the tragedy of becoming a brunette.