That blotch

This morning's 100 words:

There's peach-colored paint smudged on the white ceiling of the room I'm writing in, splotches left of a long-ago paint job my husband did very late one night, just before we were leaving to go on summer vacation. He was so tired, the paint splotch tells me, but a mean-spirited voice in my head taunts, "He was lazy, too, for making a mess, for not cleaning it up." I stare at that splotch, that blotch, that blemish above me nearly every day as I write, as I search for ideas and inspiration from the ceiling and beyond.

We're going through changes

Tonight I reread some of the emails that my husband and I exchanged after we first met in a chat room in early 2004. I haven't looked at them for about six or seven years, and it was bittersweet to read them. Even though we love each other, it's no longer the same love we shared in those emails; we're not those people anymore. In a lot of ways, I miss who we were back in those days when everything the other said (or wrote) was wonderfully exciting, those days when we counted the hours until we would talk again, when we shared the minutiae of our lives and hung on each other's words, when we finally met and shared that first breathless kiss...

Things have changed now. They have to, I guess, as we evolve, as we grow older, as our circumstances alter and fluctuate--living together, getting married, having children, weathering the ups and downs of day-to-day life. It's a different love now--not better or worse, but different. And I know that our love will continue to evolve as we go through life, as we grow older, as our children leave home to pursue their own dreams and goals, as we settle into a life with only each other to hold on to. I look forward to growing old with my husband, to seeing who we become.

But my heart does ache a bit for those lost days, for those two people who were so much in love.

A Valentine's Day irritation

Every year, without fail, my husband buys me a box of chocolates.

Every year, without fail, my husband proceeds to consume said chocolates, even urging me to hurry up and open the box so he can have some--and he makes the first choice.

Every year, without fail, I fail to understand why he just doesn't get two boxes. I never know quite what to say as I watch the chocolate disappear, but in my mind I'm shouting, "Hey, this is my gift. Get your own!"

I really, really don't get this. Insight welcomed.

Sigh.

The guilt trip

I'm writing this post in the computer room and feeling guilty for not being in the living room, playing cars with my son.

Yesterday I felt guilty for washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen instead of reading books to the kids.

After the kids are in bed each night, I feel guilty for writing instead of spending time with my husband.

And when I write, I feel guilty for working on projects other than my novel...

This is my life: all guilt, all the time. I can't get away from it. No matter what I'm doing--particularly if I'm doing something that happens to be for me, like writing--I feel like there's something more important that I should be working on instead. One day, my life stopped being my sole focus, and that was the day Guilt came to stay.  He might have arrived when my husband and I married, but most likely, he was birthed with the kids. Regardless, I don't think he's always wrong in his assessments: I know that my priorities are skewed sometimes. But figuring out how to live for myself and for others? Well, that's the hard part.

Hi, I'm Dana. How are you?

Why is the first post in a new blog always so awkward? I feel like I'm at one of my husband's work parties, standing in a corner in a roomful of strangers, smiling like an idiot until someone finally notices I'm there. So let me be the one to break the ice. I'm Dana, a mother of two and an aspiring (cross your fingers, please) writer. I enjoy reading, white wine, long walks on the -- oops. Wait. Wrong site. Seriously, all of us mommies have stories to tell, and I hope you'll join me here in my little corner of the Internet, where I'll brag about my kids (okay, not all of the time), complain about my husband (well, maybe not always!), and muse about making my two worlds--Mommy and Writer--mesh.