Slice of Life #5

                                                          

Don't worry, I'm not copping out on SOL with a bunch of photos. I just thought it'd be helpful to provide a visual for my slice as of late. See, snow. A lot of it. More coming. It's hard to pick one moment in the day as a slice because the whole day feels like one big slice...themes are recurring and are woven throughout the day, like subplots in a TV episode.  I have days where it all blurs together and time falls into this weird vortex where I open my eyes at 6am, then all of a sudden it's 12:30, and then it's 3pm and then it's 6:30 and then it's 10 (if I'm lucky) and I'm closing my eyes again, not really sure where the day went or what exactly I did. My cousin's wife told me once that we have this thing called motor memory, where we do things without thinking about it. This was after I told her that sometimes I get home and I have no memory of driving home. That's what my life is like sometimes--I have no memory of how I got through the day. I just get through it, even when it's not the same old stuff I always do, it feels like it.

I think I'm tired.

Slice of Life #4

I call my sister's house the abyss. Lovingly, of course! Alternatively, it's a time warp. I don't know why or how but I seem to lose all sense of time when I'm at Kate's house. I walk in the door at 9:30 and before I know it, it's past dinner time and I'm hollering at my kids to find their shoes and to please pee, for god's sake, before we get in the car and I'm joining a long line of cars in rush hour traffic, which in theory, I should be able to avoid, by a long shot.
It happened again today! I got sucked into a project that I'm working on with Kate. I picked her up before ten so we could do a Community Plates run together. We came back to her house to work on the project, and she ended making me lunch. And there I was, leaving Micah with her so I could run and pick up Stella from school. And of course, Stella wanted to play with her cousin, Laila and I was still working on this thing with Kate. Then, I finally became determined to leave when it was time to go meet Alice's bus. I got the kids all ready to go. Shoes, coats, everything. About to walk out the door. Nope. Not happening. Somehow, I ended up leaving both kids to go meet Alice's bus and bring her back to Kate's house. Before I knew it, Kate was making all the kids dinner while I bounced a drooly baby gnawing on my thumb and tried to figure out how to lift a text off a background (tear-my-hair-out-frustrating, okay, seriously!). And I still haven't figured it out. (I don't want to talk about it anymore, okay?)
I always like to be home before Henry so I can do a little housekeeping and get dinner ready, so I can at least PRETEND I got something done during all those hours he's been gone... because, I admit it, I don't want Henry coming home to a messy, chaotic scene though he often does and I totally blame Kate. I do.  I'm easily plied with coffee and lunch. I'm a total sucker. That's totally on me. But it's still Kate's fault.

(Do you hear me, Kate? Are you reading this?!.... Coffee tomorrow?)

But on a more serious note, I'm doing kind of a sucky job with my word of the year, FOCUS. I've been collecting inspirational quotes and things to a board on Pinterest but I clearly need to pin it to my brain because it ain't sticking...

Follow Nancy Cavillones's board Focus (Word of the Year) on Pinterest.

Slice of Life #3

{Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a free copy of The Good Mother Myth! See that post here: http://realnani.blogspot.com/2014/01/GoodMotherMyth.html}

This weekend, Micah and I snuck away to Northampton for the express purpose of attending the book release party for The Good Mother Myth but I admit, the prospect of flying solo with only one, extremely portable, baby in tow was pretty exciting. Micah came along because he's good company and well, we're literally attached at the hip and boob. Together, we wound our way up 84 and 91, battling the cluster-eff that is Hartford traffic on a Friday, and of course, it didn't dawn on me until it was too late that I should've left Redding MUCH earlier because of the long weekend. But my road weariness was combatted by a warm welcome at Sovina and Mike's, and aromatic chicken from Great Wall. (You'd think good Chinese would be hard to come by in a small town like Northampton but you'd be so wrong.) 

After dinner, Sovina and I headed out, with Micah in tow, to the book release party at Hinge on Main Street. The place was packed to the rafters with supporters of and contributors to this wonderful collection of writing featuring an impressive roster of feminist names, and how awesome that my friend Tara is among them, and that my friend Tamara was the official photographer for the event. I was pleased as punch to run into some NoHo and Greenfield friends, including my IRL friend and fellow blogger, NJ. 

I don't know how I never noticed this before but before apparently, in crowded NoHo bars, thirsty people line up, all civilized-like, at the bar, to order instead of wedging themselves between two barflies to flag down a bartender. (By the way, did you catch that scene in Girls when Shoshana's new man friend takes two beers from behind the bar? Never happen in real life without a beat down, never.) 

After the readings were said and done, and Micah clearly had enough of the loud scene, we headed back to Sovina's for pajamas and one last beer before bed. My plan was to leave in the morning after breakfast. 

Sovina fed me breakfast (egg and tomato on toast, so simple, so perfect) and plied me with hot coffee before I headed out to pack up the car. The light flurries coming down morphed into heavy, wet flakes by the time I went back inside. At Henry's behest, and with Sovina's blessing, I abandoned my plan to leave. Two bonuses came with this plan: I got to have lunch with my friend Rachel, and I got to go to a birthday gathering at our friend Mike and Tom's. Rachel and I had a deep conversation about living with disabilities that sparked an idea that I'll share with you soon enough. 

At Mike and Tom's, there was a baby convention happening--Micah got to chill with a cool dude and a pretty lady all around the same age as him. I had a brief and awkward fangirl moment when I discovered that the editor-in-chief of a major online magazine was in attendance. 

The next morning, I really did have to leave. The two hour drive is not long, no but just long enough to make me wish I were already home. I resisted the urge to stop at Ikea and instead, pushed southward, the refrain from Homeward Bound playing in my mind as I wound down the country roads that lead back to the cottage on Deer Lane. 

There's nothing like coming home to two excited little girls, one of whom tells you she slept on your side of the bed so she could smell you. Oh, I remember that feeling so well from my own childhood, I do.

A weekend away does a mother good and a sweet homecoming does her even better.