Days, of the Motherhood Variety

Sometimes it's easy for me to forget that a blog is a narrative construct as much as any other form of writing that might come down the pike, that it's as shaped and whittled in certain directions as personal essay or short fiction.  To keep a blog may not be art, but it certainly is craft ... and once you start crafting something, you snip and darn and leave things on the cutting room floor.  

But in service of keeping it real, I submit the following "stuff" that's ended up on my cutting room floor lately

• The Husband, having started a new job, now leaves the house at 7 a.m. and returns to it at 7 p.m.  This is not abnormal, this is, in fact, life-and-how-we-live-it for most of America; but I am reeling from our family's new math:  if he sleeps the requisite eight hours, and spends an hour getting ready in the morning, that leaves three hours for him to live the rest of his life in.  And as his home life consists of less, mine consists of more:  more racing kids to schools, more emptying and loading the dishwasher, more errand running, more guilt, more feeling like I seldom converse with anyone over six.  This sounds like kvetching and it is, and wrinkles in the family schedule always iron themselves out, but it's struck me that most people would not consider this "quality time." And this is all the time that most American families have got.  (And our family is blessedly middle-class. Where does that leave single parents, those taking care of aging parents themselves, the blue-collar?)

• Younger Girleen has been laid low by another bout with some sort of toddler ick.

• That means she's napping right now; that also means that she was up at one a.m., three a.m., four a.m., five a.m., and five forty-five a.m.  She went to sleep at 6:20, but by then it was only 25 minutes until Elder Girleen had to get up, so I just gave up.  
• More power to all those folks out there using the internet to figure out how and when to potty-train by the signs:  starting on an auspicious date has given us mishaps just about everywhere you can think of (and if you want to feel sorry for yourself, being on hands and knees cleaning up human feces gives you the perfect venue, let me tell you).
  

In the midst of a week where most of my business ended up on the cutting room floor so to speak, being neither pretty nor finely-crafted nor literary nor interesting (instead it was just Life, warts (or poop) and all,  I took a break for a few minutes and checked a friend's blog, which led me to click a link, which led me to learn about a book called The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal.

My Mother's Day gift to myself is going to be to look at the downloadable fourth chapter.  And I dunno... if you're down in the trenches scrubbing the floor this week, this might help.  

Sometimes "online" connectivity is like a visit to a really good thrift store:  when you least expect it, you find a shirt that fits you perfect, and it only cost a quarter!