Submerged
September 25th, 2006
10:30 when they’re all finally in bed, lunches are in the refrigerator, dishes
in the dishwasher, and the coffee maker set to go off again in eight hours I
realize it’s not just a different time zone from everyone I want to call, I am
in a different time speed zone. But I am blogging because I am feeling a little
bit isolated here.
composing and editing that keep me from writing more than one entry every couple
weeks in a perfectiionistic paralysis. It’s a mixed thing — on the one hand,
life’s so short and there are so many great things I haven’t read yet, that it’s
hard to spend much time sorting through poorly written blogs with opinions that
mean little to me. On the other hand, the blogs I check regularly I love in
their ordinariness, in the reminder of the courage of all the people out
struggling their struggles, some I relate to, some I don’t, but, somehow, I am
not quite as alone as it sometimes
feels.
Ok, so it’s 11 at night and I am
trying to figure out where today went. What would a pie graph look like? an
hour spent in the car with Aodan on the way to and from a cello lesson across
town at 4:30, half an hour to and from Soren’s preschool… a load of diapers
and a load of toddler clothes washed and dried and put away, stuck into the
cracks throughout the day, but how does that count against the time spent in the
kitchen, making playdough for the preschool, preparing meals that the kids spend
less time picking at than I spent preparing or cleaning up… time spent
helping Xander practice holding the violin correctly (four weeks of lessons and
he’s getting anxious to put the bow on the strings) and looking up stem and leaf
graphs on the internet so he could do his homework. I sorted recycling and took
out the trash, somewhere in there. I did morning pages, clinging to them like a
life vest, I did an hour on the elliptical because I am a little less crazy
afterwards.
Adult interactions? I
greeted Aodan’s cello teacher, and sat mutely taking notes except when directly
asked a question — actually kind of a challenge, I realize I had gotten in the
habit of talking for him, so this is a good exercise — and nodded
sympathetically when Raven mentioned he was really stressed over a deadline at
work. This isn’t a self-pity session — it’s just, i lose perspective, the list
of things undone at the day seems twice as long as the list of things done — I
despair of finding fifteen minutes to vacuum up the dried rice on the rug
beneath the dining room table and I’ve been meaning to start a blog again for a
couple of weeks. I just need some sort of reality check, because I do realize
that I am talking back to my television and not feeling my most, um, powerful,
or resourceful, or connected or whatever it was that gave me the hubris to think
I could manage the four children thing with any grace at all. I love that Aodan,
Xander and Soren are all taking lessons and I get this one on one time with each
of them driving them to lessons and practicing with them each day, but somehow
the sum of all that, and homework, and housework just seems barely sustainable
right now, and I’m waiting to see if we’re going to find a groove, if this is
going to get easier, or if not, what’s going to break.
