How to make a day

Scintilla prompt Day 4: What does your everyday look like? Describe the scene of your

happiest moment of every day.

This is from a post I read at Blogging out Loud Ottawa in July of last year:

... I'm nearing the end of my second year of both kids being in school full days, and I still haven't gone back to work. I know - it sounds heavenly. I assumed I would be giddy with freedom. I assumed my house would be spotless and scrupulously organized by the end of the first month, I would be finished my first novel by the end of the sixth, and OBVIOUSLY I would be thirty pounds lighter, because, like my mother said "you can go to the gym five times a week!"

From where I'm sitting at the kitchen table right now, I could reach out and lay hands on six novels, three textbooks, a kit for making twinkle tiaras, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch Game, a sock puppet wearing sunglasses, and a box of ant bait. That should give you a clue about the state of my house. The state of my ass? Let's not discuss it. 

I can't say I've undergone any great epiphanies since then. I'm not in my third year of both kids being in school full days and I'm still not working, at a full-time job outside the house that someone pays me for. 

Right now? I get up in the morning. Sometimes I get up with the kids and make breakfast and get them off to school and this feels good, even if I'm headachey and nauseous and slightly stoned from lack of sleep. Sometimes my husband takes the kids to school and I sleep late and get up and this feels less good, even if I feel more well-rested. Sometimes I get up at the EXACT RIGHT TIME and feel neither raw with insomnia or guilt-ridden and lazy. But not often.

I shower and come down to the kitchen table and my laptop. We used to have an ancient round dark wood kitchen table that I hated. We now have a light, clean, rectangular pine table that I love, and sitting at it typing makes me happy. I make breakfast and take it to the table with the telephone (because the minute I sit down the phone usually rings, and then I bash into the table trying to get around it to where the phone is) and some water, which I usually intend to be tea, but I usually forget to make tea, because I love tea but lack the area in the brain that tells you to make it, so I usually only have it when someone makes it for me.

Email. Blogs. Facebook. Twitter. Course work (which is usually of varying degrees of interest and challenge, but at this particular point in time is INSANELY CRIPPLINGLY BRINGING-ME-TO-MY-KNEES BRAIN-BREAKINGLY DIFFICULT). Then if it's Monday I go to the library to shelve books (which used to be very relaxing, but the fact that I now start shuddering and whimpering at the sign of a Dewey Decimal Number makes it harder), if it's Tuesday I go to Zumba, if it's Wednesday I go to physio and/or the chiropractor, if it's Thursday I go on adventures with Pam and if it's Friday stand back because ALL BETS ARE OFF.

I used to go to school to pick up the kids at three o'clock, but now Angus walks to my Mom and Dad's right after school, and Eve walks there after she's played at school with her friends (she has a walkie-talkie, my Mom and Dad have the other one - Eve is Baby Bear, my Dad is Poppa Bear). They go get stuffed full of ice cream by my Mom and then get delivered home between 3:30 and 4:00. Eve explodes onto me and unleashes a torrent of information and silliness. Angus confirms that the day was 'good' and goes out to play basketball or downstairs to play video games. 

Piano practice happens at some point (on a good day). Piano lessons on Monday, Eve's dance on Tuesday, dinner, homework (for them and/or me), reading, bed.

When I'm feeling normal, I love most of this. I love all the ways I can connect with the world through my computer. I love making an ass of myself with Pam at Zumba (our initial comment was 'we make asses of ourselves most places, at least here we get a good workout'). I fully realize how lucky I am to have the freedom to go wherever I want while the kids are in school. 

Soon we'll be in the full swing of Spring Baseball (I call it Goddamned Baseball, mostly good-naturedly). This will mean four nights a week of one or both kids having to be in uniform and out the door by 5:15. We eat a lot of chicken wraps and pasta in May and June. At one point last year, when Angus was swamped with baseball and I knew for a fact that all the marks were already in, I actually told him to go play baseball while I finished his project, because I thought it was so stupid that it had been assigned. Last year Matt coached Angus so I always took Eve. As a result, last year I watched a LOT of crap baseball. This year Matt promised Eve to coach her team, which means I'll get to watch a lot of good baseball. Either way, it's a LOT of baseball.

Some nights, around 8:30, I get in bed with a book. Angus gets in Matt's spot with his book, and Eve goes in the huge armchair beside the bed with hers. The room fills up with the smell of freshly showered kids and the sound of flipping pages. Every now and then one of them asks how to pronounce a word, or what it means, or one of us reads a funny line to the others. Instant happy moment.