Domestic Bliss
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A Needed Morning Off
I worked both days this weekend, and Sunday and Monday nights til approaching midnight – all to meet a Monday filing deadline (met). So this morning when I got a call from Craig’s daycare saying it was 10:30 a.m. and he’d been uncharacteristically asleep for two hours, I was almost relieved to have to leave work and come pick him up. So I’m spending a quiet, lazy morning with a little piglet who is lethargic and listless, no fever or symptoms besides being very sleepy and very gassy (I need a gas mask – I can tell he’s sick, the smell of him is making me kind of sick, too.…
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Name-Dropping NOLA Eateries
The boys (all four of them) have been gone this whole week. I had to stay home, of course, and I have literally worked every single day that they have been gone. It’s Saturday and I’ll be going into the office in a bit – though not til after I do a Body Pump class and savor a lazy morning with coffee first. It’s been a really good week, actually. Although I miss the Littles, I don’t miss them too much. I’ve worked way too much but I’ve also been out on the town with friends almost every night, taking advantage of all this city has to offer. Last…
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Care Work
Today I am largely engaged in care work – feeding ice to a pale and sweaty six year old who can’t keep food or drink in his stomach today; following him around the house with a Clorox wipe; washing the numerous linens he is soiling, bless his virus-ridden little heart; shifting him from couch to couch and scrubbing the cushions where he missed the buckets/towels/numerous other puke-catching devices that I’d arranged in his immediate vicinity. I have work-work screaming for my attention as well, of course. As we all know, parents are expected to parent like you don’t have work, and work like you don’t have to parent. . .…
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Summer Weekend
A summer weekend: I wake at 6, lace up the shoes and go for a run. The summer heat and humidity is already so intense, my peppy run quickly devolves to a walk/jog. I shuffle over to Audubon park, do lunges around half the circle, wilt some more. I stagger home, and Craig flings open the front door for me, shouting “Duh-Pwize!” (This is his thing now – cheerfully “surprising” everyone who comes to the door.) I walk in, stripping off shirt, shoes, socks, and guzzle iced water. It takes a while to cool down, and I do some yoga. (That was yesterday, and today my back feels much better…
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Dinners
An old college friend with three elementary-school aged children was recently widowed. Her husband was in his early forties when he died – he had been dealing with cancer a long while, which is terrible in many ways, but also gave them a long timeline for death. With all of its many cruelties – the logistics of dealing with treatment and feeling bad, the pressure on the children, the burden on the healthy spouse, the anticipatory grieving – the long timeline also, mercifully, allowed them to get the family well situated in advance of his death. He quit his job as a pastor in South Carolina, she (a SAHM for years) brushed…