Aspirations

Laylee has made peace with the concept of death in fishes. She just told me that when JackAgain dies, we will have to get a new fish and we will name her Kafrin Lafrin Laylien Bitsy Thompson. This name I like.

It’s sort of a relief to think that if we do get pregnant again, Laylee will be there to come up with a name and all Dan and I will have to worry about will be minor details like food, shelter and post-partum cocktails. Just trifles, really. Maybe by then, the pills will come in fruity flavors and then we’ll have one less thing on our minds.

Laylee really wants us to have a girl baby, possibly tonight. Last week she told me that she was gonna remind Jesus to send us one and then tonight she said, “Aren’t we lucky that we’re gonna get a girl baby?!”

Me: Well, that’s up to Heavenly Father if he wants to send us one sometime.
Laylee: I think he’s building it RIGHT NOW!
Me: Well, after he builds it, he’s gonna have to figure out a way to get it into my tummy or it will never grow big enough to come out and play.
Laylee: How’s it gonna get out?
Me: The doctor will take it out.

Laylee then described an Aliens-worthy scenario involving a gaping wound and the attachment of a large flap of skin to make my tummy all better. Very reassuring.

The conversation quickly turned to other things, like how Tuesday’s her BALLERINA CLASS WITH MISS MICHELLE and then her head exploded so I’ll have to update you on her health and whether I was able to find a skin flap big enough to put it all back together in time for her dancing debut.

I really hope she likes the class. Just the thought of her in that leotard with 14 other 3-year-olds in ballet and tap shoes leaping around like adorable spazoids makes me dry-heave from the unbearable cuteness. I’m almost as excited as she is.

reasons: white sailboats on a blue Lake Washington summer day, fat cheeks resting on the shoulders of a sleeping toddler, ballet shoes the size of a Vlasic stacker, Dan reading jokes from the Reader’s Digest

I can’t mop the floor because the duck-down curls on the back of Magoo’s head are too kissable. I can’t clean the windows or appliances because Laylee has covered them all in “bominals” (One day I hope she explains why she calls them this. However by the time she has the vocab to explain it, she’ll probably call them something lame like “post-it notes” and think I’ve lost my mind.)

It’s very easy for me to freeze in place and ignore the work piling up around me, in the name of being a good mother and spending time with my children. “Some mothers may have a spotless house, but MY children have an enjoyable childhood.” I really believe I did not choose to be a stay-at-home maid, but rather a stay at home mom and that my kids should come first. That being said, children also deserve a reasonably clean and clutter-free environment and they deserve an example of hard work and responsibility. They also have the right to be taught to work themselves and help create the ideal environment they reside in.

Today I tried to figure out why I’m really stuck here, having trouble plowing through the myriad chores that haunt every minute of my day. I do try but not nearly as hard as I give myself credit for. Like Laylee, I think that coloring “bominals”, chilling on the pool deck, having a dance party or playing Pla-To are much more fun than installing towel-rods and dusting cobwebs off the ceiling.

Here are a few of today’s excuses for my lack of productivity:

1. I cannot do the dishes because my living room is too full. We are resurfacing the garage floor so my living room contains a mixture of all things garage and all the boxes that haven’t been unpacked. It’s a TON of stuff. You see, we Mormons are supposed to store things for emergencies. It’s not so much the FEMA-suggested-year’s-supply-of-duct-tape-and-saran-wrap-to-protect-your-home-from-nuclear-explosions-and-possible-terroristic-invasion kind of storage, but more the large-buckets-of-wheat-and-#10-cans-of-Jell-O-powder-so-you-can-eat-despite-nuclear-explosions-or-jobloss-or-famine-and-terroristical-invasion variety. (Note to self – do a Tip Tuesday about emergency preparedness soon.)

When the end is near and Super Wal Mart’s mighty shelves lay decimated, party at my house, featuring whole-wheat bannock and layered gelatinous salad. Anywho, in honor of your visit during the bird flu pandemic, I have approximately one ton of food and emergency supplies in my front room. (Okay, okay. It’s not ALL food storage. “The Church” did not exactly put a gun to my head at Sam Goody when I was in Junior High, forcing me to buy large volumes of cheesy pop music on cassette which I would still be completely incapable of releasing into the wild at age 27. Those boxes are in there too. And the yarn.)

2. Your piece-of-jerk well-written blogs, your cute kids and your little dog too. Seriously, please stop writing and so help me if anyone else with a great blog leaves a comment here or introduces themselves at BlogHer!

3. Cactus maintenance. I did get them and yes, it is possible to cause their untimely demise. These babies need a tender hand and loving words to really thrive.

4. I cannot do yard work because when I go outside I have to supervise very closely the activities raging on the pool deck. Sometimes I need to plunge myself right into the actual pool to save the children. Did you know you could drown in a teaspoon of water? Yeah. That’s no good.

5. I cannot hang the curtain rods because the cordless drill battery is charging. I am cool because I came into the marriage with our family’s first power tool… the FIRE STORM.

6. Once the battery stops charging, I cannot hang the actual curtains because no one has ironed them, the iron is too high for me to reach and the ladder is upstairs next to the charging battery.

7. I cannot speak clearly because Laylee just stuck a plastic fork in my mouth and I cannot remove the fork because I am typing this entry.

8. I cannot install the new baby gates I ordered because they ain’t arrove yet, and I may never install them because the case-of-bottled-water-reinforced hamper-gate is so attractive sitting in my front entry.

9. I cannot think of a way to finish this post so I will leave you with what I HAVE accomplished.

I managed to hang up the weddage,

the piece of Christmas décor I keep up all year round because I must be some kind of hippy,

the floating book shelf

and the ill-gotten train picture.

I have constructed a slide

and assembled a pool deck.

Now I’m wondering how long “we just moved” is a viable excuse.

It’s been a year and a month since the initial crash, the day when the harsh realities of despair and evil in the world became the only realities I could conjure up.

That means it’s been almost a year since I was patched, since a dam went up in my brain to stop the hemorrhage of anxiety, since the walls went up around my family to block out anything frightening, anything that would trigger an attack, since I became fragile.

And I do so well.

And occasionally I do so not.

And whenever I have a moment like I did this evening, a reason-I-bought-the-waterproof-mascara-even-though-I-can’t-get-any-solvent-to-completely-remove-it-and-if-I-wear-it-more-than-twice-a-week-it-looks-like-caterpillars-curled-up-and-died-on-my-eyelids kind of moment, I am more upset about the existence of the anxiety and panic attacks than I am anxious or panicky.

And I scare my daughter when I cry for “no reason.”

And after a year, I ask myself if I will ever be the same again… and I realize that’s a stupid question because when are we ever the same?

We move houses, we have children, we lose people we love, we walk down the street, we stay in the sun too long, we go to the bathroom, we live life for 3 minutes and we’re not the same.

I really wonder when I will ever be as good again, when I’ll ever be whole and I wonder what that means for a mother, a wife. In truth it seems that part of me leaves the room whenever Dan, Laylee or Magoo are not there. And I’m scared for them and I’m afraid of being afraid.

The more I have to love, the more I have to fear and this seems wrong. And I know I am not alone and I know how to bring peace into my life again after it barges out the door but I don’t want to have to restore it. I want it ever-present. I want what I made fun of Wayne Dyer for suggesting. I want the free-ride.

Then I look at the positive changes in myself over the last year and I would never wish them away. How do you learn to walk, run or eventually fly without first biffing it hundreds of times?

I’m tired of being sculpted; I just want a fairy godmother to poof me into perfection.