A Bad Good Week

It’s been a week.First, there was the saggy wet spot on the living room ceiling and the mold behind the bookshelf. That led to the discovery of a leak in a water pipe under my upstairs bathroom sink due to a nail in a water pipe from construction of our house three years ago.A couple of chunks of our living room ceiling are missing, a square from my daughter’s bedroom wall, and a piece from under my sink. Much of the living room wall will need to come down.Our washing machine that had been working fine decided to take a crap, because what better time, ya know?We’ve had serious issues at school with behavior. The kind that make you question your parenting. My job is on the chopping block. My husband has his own work stresses. There have been taxes to pay and other expenses.And maybe it all would feel more manageable if the freaking sun would come out. It’s Memorial Day weekend, after all.But Memorial Day weekend isn’t really about sunshine and barbecues at all. It’s about people who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.Our freedom to have a life so good that THIS is a tough week.So as I sit here at the laundromat, I’m reflecting on how fortunate I am.Lucky that the leak was caused by construction on the house and will be covered by the builders. Fortunate to have a nice house with a roof that can leak. Beautiful, healthy, gifted, loving children who are human so they have issues sometimes. A great job to maybe lose. The privilege of paying taxes to support the services we depend on. And hey, you can do a lot of laundry much faster at the laundromat and even take a few quiet minutes for yourself.This is a bad week, but only as good weeks go.

Imperfectionists R Us

Any other imperfectionists in the house?

Maybe not, because spell check just flagged that word.

If you’re an imperfectionist like me, you probably eat cold nacho cheese from a spoon instead of pouring it into a container and heating it up like my husband insists on doing.

You’ll gladly wear that hand-me-down cardigan your mom gave you in that pretty royal purple that’s in great condition except for the missing top of a button.

Your inattention to detail might drive others nuts sometimes. You’re probably forgetful. Maybe clumsy like me. There’s not a kitchen cabinet out there I haven’t bashed my head on.

Your handwriting is probably naturally sloppy. You’re not great at doing your kids’ hair. Pinterest? Forget it. Are you perpetually late? I feel you.

But oh, the ideas you come up with and act on because you’re not afraid of screwing up. If someone needs a quick decision made, you’re the person. You’re decisive. Creative. Openly caring and accepting. Thinking outside the box is your bag, baby. You hate greeting cards because you could do better if you wrote them yourself. You’re ambitious. You don’t give an eff what anyone thinks. Fit in with the crowd? Gurl, please. The crowd should try fitting in with you and your stained T-shirt. But you have the confidence to rock those stains.

We’re imperfectly perfect, and that’s perfectly OK.

Future World Leader

This morning, my 3-year-old daughter asked me for a snack to feed her toy orangutan that she corrected me was NOT a monkey. I told her to feed it a pretend snack. A few minutes later, she whined to me that she was hungry. Even though she’d already had breakfast, I gave her a few slices of my Mandarin orange like us parents do. She fed it to her orangutan before taking maybe a bite. So don’t worry. The future is female, and we’re in good hands.

Books Everlasting

I can remember snapshots of my childhood. This dance recital where I wore the blue leotard with the sequins in a star shape. That embarrassing moment when I fell out of my desk. The ways my siblings and I used to sleep on each other in the backseat on family road trips.

But the blurry lens of time passed makes recalling all the little details difficult. How I felt. The pattern of wrinkles in a favorite teacher’s face. The way a garden smelled.

That’s why picking up a favorite book from my childhood is such a trip. I remember every 👏 damn 👏 picture. The names of the Strawberry Shortcake characters come flooding back. I’d dreamed of tasting the blueberries in that photo. I remember the curves of that swirling dress so completely.

The memories are vibrant when I read my daughter the poetry book from my childhood with intricate illustrations, or my son the Little House series I so loved as a kid. The way I cared about the characters, and thought about them when the book was done.

While the world spins and time pushes on, books stay comfortingly the same. Messages and names scrawled inside the cover. A greasy fingerprint forever on that page. Words etched in eternity, and pictures we’ve loved before. The kind of yucky old book smell.

There’s something so fantastic about the weight of a real book in our hands. It’s a gift we can share with our kids and their kids after them. Maybe even the same book. And that’s pretty special.

The Beauty of Boredom

Sometimes I have to remind myself to put down my phone and be bored.

We tell our kids “That’s enough screentime. Put away the tablet. Turn off the T.V. Find something else to do.”

But then we are glued to our phones like white on rice. If it’s not phones, it’s Netflix. Or some other usually technology-related diversion.

I find that when I can follow my advice to my kids, and let myself just observe and be, at first it itches.

My instinct is to grab the nearest, lamest distraction.

But when I wait it out, and let the weight of the boredom sink in for a few minutes, I really look at my kids.

I note how the traces of babyhood have all but left my threenager, and how impressive my son’s imagination is.

I talk to my husband, and ask what he thinks about this or that. I listen to his answer, and gaze into his pretty green eyes.

I step outside, and do nothing but enjoy the warming sunshine. I let the memories and feelings flood me, and don’t turn away when they burn a little. I come up with ideas. Good ones.

Like our kids, we flourish most when bored. Made to step outside of our comfort zones and get creative. Today is the best day to build that dinosaur or that bridge. Today is a great day to be bored.

Fighting The Lies

It’s crazy that no matter how many times my anxiety tells me I can’t, I do.

When the anxiety tries to tell me that I’ll never tackle this behavior issue or get that kid potty trained. I do.

When the minutes feel more like hours because of all the obsessive thoughts and negative self-talk running on spin cycle in my brain. Those times when I feel I’m wasting the day away and not getting anything accomplished. But then I make it to that morning yoga class and pick up that fruit bowl for the work potluck.

I take my kids to the park and they fight and we come home. But hey, we went to the park.

My anxiety screams at me at the end of the day that I’m not cut out for parenthood. That I can’t take another second of the shrieking kids. But somehow, I do. My husband and I get them to bed. And the next days seems more bearable through the lens of a good Netflix show or 5.

All those pictures on our phones of trips to the zoo and happy family dinners aren’t lies, even if they don’t show the spilled milk and the worries swimming in our heads. They are snapshots of the triumphant way we carry on, living life even when anxiety or depression or obsessive compulsive disorder tells us to go curl up in a ball and let life devour us whole.