TheMommyBlog

Friday, August 29, 2008 Family

I haven’t left the house in three days. Since I broke my current eyeglasses, I have a choice between wearing them one-stemmed and crooked or wearing the ones that are two prescriptions old. I’ve stocked up on books from a new favorite author, but she writes so much like me that I get all frustrated that I can’t get it together to redo my first book and finish the second, and maybe split them up four ways. She must have an awesome editor. I need an awesome editor. It’s two hundred degrees out and I hate the heat. I took off ten pounds as of last week, but my current routine will put them right back on unless I go climb an ancient structure for four hours twice a week. My mom is selling her house and moving, and I want to help and am ready for the call, but I don’t know that I want to see the house all torn apart (termite repairs) and empty because my heart will hurt. I haven’t seen where they are moving, but hope to when they get the keys in a week. I’m constantly re-juggling furniture and room dimensions in my head so we can have a plan for how to make room for Phil once we’re married. We need a bigger dresser, but the one I have is a family heirloom, was my mom’s and then mine since I was five. Daphne needs a smaller bed, but ditto on the brass bed. It was mom’s, then mine as a child, and now hers. Sense a theme here? We cling to things that have been touched extensively by previous generations with a desperate sort of alacrity. I can’t bear to give them up, and it breaks my heart to see the marble dresser that matches my night stands (handed down from Mom) in Gil’s house, minus half the marble for the top. I don’t know what I’m going to do when the garage is drywalled and I have to put all that crap somewhere so we can use the middle of the room. Why do I have all this crap anyway? There are roughly five hundred books in my shelves, but they represent countless hours of escape and entertainment and learning, hours that saved my sanity and opened the world to me. The same world I’m avoiding by sitting in here, day after day, in my pajamas. Fortunately, I will have to change out of them to pick up the children this afternoon. I need them. I need to parent. It helps me do grown up things, to take care of the house. To take care of myself. Because when I’m alone I’m just on hold.