A Moment to Myself

I have two kids down for naps and one doing her school work at the kitchen table.  The dogs are snoozing beside me on their bed and the husband is working another tediously boring day on the boat. 

That last part is total assumption.  Only because I think his job must be boring.  He claims to enjoy what he does.  So, yaaa.

The rain outside is drizzly.  The mountains of snow are slowly dissipating.  What was a mountain of white, as high as the roof of my Suburban a couple of nights ago is now only up to the bottom of the windows.  We, along with the rest of this half of the country, are on a "warming trend" in which our temperatures raise to a balmy 40 degrees for a day or so and then we'll plummet back into the 20s and all that snow that didn't quite melt fast enough?  Now a deceptively slick sheet of snowy looking ice. 

I'm currently reading The Alchemyst because Jeremy stuck it into my hands a few days ago and said it might be something I'd enjoy for an easy read.  I've only made it to the 38th page.  I'm not sure if its entirely because its not my style or if its because I've wasted precious nap times on silly things like cleaning the kitchen, destroying the kitchen or piddling on this here computer. 

Hard to say. 

But I'm determined to trudge through it.  I have two book shelves worth of books I've gathered over the last couple of years and haven't had time nor motivation to read them.  We've run out of room for more books, for either the children or the adults in this house.  I've managed to read a good number in the last few months and either ship them back to their previous owners or donated them to the local library. 

My favorite, I can't put it down forthelifeofme book, so far, has been The Memoirs of a Geisha.  Aside from just being an incredible story on the whole, two quotes have stuck with me a month after having finished the book:

“Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.”  

“I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”  

I have a friend and a sister having a baby on the Any-Minute-Now timeline and I can't help but think of the horrible, crippling postpartum depression I suffered after Ruby.  At the time I tried to rationalize and explain away every feeling I had but in the end, now that I'm no longer enduring it, I can see it for what it is.  What it was. 

Another book I'm anticipating picking up is The Outlander series.  My mother sent me the first of the series with a preface that she really enjoyed the fist and was headlong into the second and thought I would enjoy them, as well.  After The Alchemyst, I tell myself.  As it is, I have no room for Outlander on my bookshelf so it sits, stuck in the door in my truck, waiting for it's turn. 

I forget, sometimes, how much I enjoy books.  I read them to the kids all day.  Some of them wonderful, some of them not.  But a book that is for me is like a holy treasure, sometimes. 

That's typical of us mother's, though, isn't it?  Do for the kids, forgetting about yourself?

"All too soon," the older generations warn us young'uns, "the kids will want nothing to do with ya."  Then will be our time to ourselves.  Until then, I'll enjoy their naps for what they are, a small break in the mayhem, and I'll enjoy my bits of reading when can get them. 

Life right now seems all about the story.  Sometimes its an easy read, sometimes its thought provoking and sometimes you're too busy to notice the pictures on the page, right past the words you've just read. 

Life goes on.  And so do our stories.