Six-word Saturday

Cat in the Hat: Oh, that...

This morning, my husband and I will be packing up the kids and heading to our local Barnes and Noble to see The Cat in the Hat and listen to some stories by Dr. Seuss. Now this isn't exactly my idea of a thrilling morning activity—especially since it's early morning—but I'm sure the kids will enjoy it. My kindergarten-age son is learning how to read, and two days ago he read Green Eggs and Ham to me. Amazing! I certainly wasn't reading in kindergarten—back in the old, old days. ;)

Our other Saturday excursion will be to the clothing stores. The kids need picture clothes, and I'm crossing my fingers that finding them will be an easy task. Hopefully, seeing The Cat in the Hat will put everyone in a good mood. ☺


Wishing you all a fun-filled and happy weekend!
 

Six things I love about Mondays

Image courtesy of Gesine Kuhlmann,
rgbstock.com

Happy Monday!

I admit that sometimes it's hard to drag myself out of bed on Monday mornings. After all, Monday means I'm back to waking up at 5:30, back to packing lunches, back to the daily routine/grind—all things that seem just a little too difficult to think about after a weekend off. However, there are also some things about Mondays that I absolutely love:

♥  The promise of a new beginning. Monday is all about second chances. ☺

♥  Storytime at the library. My daughter loves it, and I love having the opportunity to pick up some new books.

♥  A new episode of The Carrie Diaries. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows.

♥  Naptime. Because we're usually busy on the weekends, my daughter often misses her nap. Starting on Mondays, naptime is back, and that means time for me to write and get things done around the house.

♥  A new edition of Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry column. I look forward to this every week.

♥  On Wednesday, the temperature here is supposed to reach nearly 60 degrees. That's definitely something to look forward to!

Love them or hate them: How do you feel about Mondays?

Wishing you a wonderful week!

Playing hooky

This morning's 100 words:

I'm playing hooky today, skipping the kids' storytime in favor of a few more minutes of sleep and some extra writing time. I call it a mental health day, and I need it after a week spent getting up too early, frantically trying to capture all the pieces of the chaos and coax them into something tamable. It's the season, I guess, the time of Halloween costumes and parties and an evening spent trick or treating in the cold, shivering on the sidewalk as my children go from door to door, plastic pumpkins in hand and wide smiles on their faces.

In the game again

It's true what they say about vacations: you need one to recuperate from the one you just took. Ever since we arrived home late Saturday night, I've been unpacking, doing laundry, cleaning, and taking the kids to appointments and storytime. Yesterday I even managed to catch up on some of my writing. (Yay!) I've been busy.

And I am exhausted.

Returning home from vacation is always difficult for me. If I could, I would move back to Michigan, back to my small town with its small-town way of life. I don't dislike living in a large city--I certainly appreciate all of the opportunities living here presents to me and my family--but I miss the atmosphere of a smaller town and the sense of community and belonging that usually goes along with it.

And then there's my family. We've always been close, and it's hard to be away from them, especially when I know I can see them only once a year. I wrote a 100-words entry about this shortly after arriving back home:

I've been back in New York for only two days, yet I'm already homesick. Although I can think of many good things about living in a large city, I still miss the small town I grew up in. Mostly, though, I miss my family. Neither my husband nor I have relatives close by, and that's really a lonely feeling. I'm not the type of person who has a large circle of friends, and even though I've made one close friend since moving here--a friend I would miss so much if she weren't in my life--the loneliness doesn't subside.

But enough of the sad stuff. What I'm happy about is being back here, blogging and interacting with my online friends! It was hard to be away for so long, and I'm very glad to be back to the world of writing.

So what's up next for me and my blog? More writing and more writing about writing--just more of doing what I love.

And I can't wait.

The Ripple Effect or How Not Paying Attention Threw Off My Entire Day

I'm losing my mind.

Tuesdays are storytime days at the library, and every week, I dutifully wake up my usually late-sleeping children and get them fed, dressed, brushed, and ready to go listen to Mrs. O tell her stories.

Today was no different--at first. I woke up the kids, fed them breakfast, dressed them, brushed their teeth, combed their hair, got them into their coats and shoes, took them to the car, and strapped them into their car seats. Then I got into the car, put the key in the ignition, and did what I always do: glance at the clock to see how late we were going to be this time.

The clock said 10 a.m.

We didn't need to leave for storytime until 11.

My first reaction was complete confusion and denial. The clock must be wrong, I thought, and checked my cell phone. Same time. Huh. I sat back in my seat and counted back the hours. Everything seemed right. Could both clocks be wrong?

Comprehension finally dawned when I recalled that Pinky Dinky Doo was on TV when I brought the kids downstairs. Now, I know Nick Jr.'s lineup by heart, and that program is always on at 8:30. Always. I was supposed to get my kids up at 9:30.

Oops.

This may seem like a little thing, but it's just one more example of the many ways I feel like I'm losing my mind these days. It doesn't bother me so much that I got the kids up an hour early (even though I missed that extra hour of writing time), but the fact that it took me so long to figure out what was wrong makes me feel like I'm two crayons short of a box. Maybe it's Mommy Brain...

Anyway, because of this timing mistake, my whole day was thrown off. It just didn't feel right, and consequently, nothing was done when it was supposed to be done, and I'm sitting here at just after 11 p.m. writing a post I should have written hours ago.

I've learned my lesson. You can bet I'll be checking that clock tomorrow.

At a loss...

for words, that is.

It's late, nearly midnight, and this is the first chance I've had to sit down and write this post. It's been a long day, yet I don't really have that much to share. I spent the morning at storytime with the kids, the evening grocery shopping with the family, and the afternoon in front of the upstairs computer, trying (and succeeding, thankfully) to remove a virus. Everything else got away from me, and it looks like the weekend--with all the preparations I have to do for my son's birthday on Monday--will also be busy. It'll be fun, but thinking about it makes me tired. I'd better rest up...

More for the memory books

Since my children were born, I've been trying to keep journals that contain the cute or special things they say. So far, their quotes are all written on scraps of paper and scattered throughout the house, but one day I'll get them organized and put into the two beautiful matching journals I bought more than a year ago. One day...

Anyway, this morning I sneezed as I was rocking my daughter to sleep, and I heard her sleepy little voice say, "Bless you." Now, she says this a lot, nearly every time she hears a noise that even resembles a sneeze, but there was something about her tired voice and her heavy head resting on my shoulder that really made the moment special for me this morning. This one is going in the book.

My son said something cute today as well. As I was driving to storytime, I was listening to talk radio, and the guys on the show were talking in not-so-pleasant terms about some bodily functions. After a few minutes of quiet in the backseat, my son said in a tiny, sweet voice, "They're not talking nice, Mama." He repeated himself a couple of times, and I was just so proud of him for recognizing that the men were being crude and for knowing that we should always "talk nice." It was a reality check for me because I'd never really realized how much he listens to the radio. I changed the station.

Today was a wonderful day with the kids--one to remember.

Not the Mommy Guilt!

I'm feeling some Mommy Guilt today. We were supposed to get a huge storm last night, and I decided early this morning when I was awakened by sleet pinging against the window that I wouldn't take the kids to storytime today. It's held at the Barnes and Noble across town, and I worried the roads would be icy. I dislike driving in the winter, particularly since I was rear-ended a little over a year ago. Snowstorms cause me to clutch the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, praying all the while. I decided not to put myself through that today, and so I slept in a bit and woke up too late to get them to the bookstore.

 

When I looked out the window, however, I saw a gray day, yes, but only a light dusting of snow: no sleet, no blizzard, no trees bent in high winds. And so now I feel that infamous Mommy Guilt, that "I should have taken them to storytime since they love it so much" thought playing on repeat in my mind. I know my kids won't care; they may not even realize that today was a storytime day, but I feel guilty nevertheless, just one more guilt to add to the already towering pile.

 

Mommy Guilt: bah!