Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Injuries suffered while on vacation:

       Sprained wrist

       Sprained ankle

       Baseball sized bruise

       Scraped knee

       Scraped elbow

       About 15 other miscellaneous bruises and cuts

And those were just mine.

We went to Damascus, Virginia which is, I'm pretty sure, part of the Smokey Mountains and home to the Virginia Creeper Trail, an old railroad line that has since been converted to a bike trail.  The entire trail is 34 miles, but most people who come to Damascus just to a 17 mile stretch from Whitetop down into Damascus.  My best friend suggested the vacation to us as she and her family have been down twice and described it as the best vacation they've ever had.  So we decided to venture there as well and cross a new state off our list.

In addition to my injuries, one kid fell on a hike and scraped his knee.  Another impaled himself with a campfire skewer (minor injury) and fell out of bed giving himself a "deep" bruise on his foot that required a trip to Urgent Care.  My injuries were all acquired from a very uncool wipeout on my bike about 5 miles down the trail.  Eli was riding behind me on one of the half bike attachments and we think his wheel might have caught on a post throwing us off balance.  We both went down, but I sustained all the injuries which were black.  Yes, my scrapes and much of my skin was black.  The trail is lined with coal, so when you fall it gets into your skin and they call it tattooing.  I have no tattoos, and I was definitely not into getting this kind either.  I guess you could say the Creeper Trail was a Creeper Fail...but it so wasn't.

I'm suffering from vacation withdraw...bad.  This was our first vacation in three years and was easily one of the best vacations we ever had, but the tragic flaw was that it was set in absolute, attainable heaven.  I'm almost (almost) happy I fell because it really slowed us down.  Instead of flying down the Creeper Trail on a bike, I got to walk six miles of it taking in all the scenery. (Didn't I mention that?  After my fall, I had to walk six miles out of a forest before I could get to help.)  Rushing streams and cloud topped mountains.  Even when the thunderstorm hit and my kids started to freak out and all I wanted to do was sit and cry, I still was able to recognize the beauty around me.  And then there was our cabin.

We stayed at a little cabin (the area is peppered with cabins and cottages throughout the mountain) just across from the trail.  Our view...a Christmas tree farm down the side of a mountain.  An elderly couple rents out the cabin on their property.  She bakes a chocolate cake on your first night there and he talks firewood and pocketknives.

So on our ride home as we left the Smokeys and passed through Shenandoah heading into the rush of D.C. and then Baltimore and then Philly, I realized that of all the beautiful places we could have chosen to live, we chose one of the least picturesque parts of the United States.  And it's not just about being pretty.  It's crowded!  I mean a lot, a lot of people.  We went grocery shopping in Virginia at 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning.  There were maybe ten cars in the parking lot.  Have you ever been grocery shopping at any time, let alone on a Saturday, in South Jersey? There are never just ten cars in the parking lot.  I had all three kids and my husband with me plus it was a half hour trip into town and then another half hour back out and we were still finished with a full grocery order faster than when we run up to the Shoprite that's five minutes from our house for a few items.

This was one of the first vacations where I felt more at home on vacation than I do where I actually live.  I suppose that's it.  Whenever I'm at the beach, I always picture myself living there, but there are always a lot fewer people than what's really at the beach.  Not to mention that I'm loaded with cash. Most vacations you say it was nice to visit, but then you're glad to be back home.  Well, not this one.

Since I'm still not 100 percent and it won't be easy for me to get out in the garden, I've decided for the month of August to focus on some of the positives of living where I do in the hopes of shaking off this discontent.    

Summer Cleaning...Check!

Today I will be able to check off the final room on my cleaning list.  It's a bit of a colossus, our finished basement.  It serves as a family room, play room, laundry room, and office to me.  It typically is strewn with miscellaneous toys, video games, blankets, pillows, papers, dirty laundry, and the bane of the existence...Legos!  I don't touch Legos as far as cleaning up.  They apparently have specific bins in which they belong, but to me they all look the same...little daggers ready to slice into my feet and twist my ankles.

But, after today, everything will have been dusted, vacuumed, wiped clean, Windexed.  It's never all clean, all at the same time, but at least now I'm in a position to maintain.  I'm sorry, but this is important to me.  The number one piece of advice people gave me while working was to not worry so much about having a clean house.  So I tried not to worry and my house became scuzzy and I felt awful.  It actually got to the point where it was physically painful to sit in my living room and look around at the mess.  My skin crawled.  For me, a clean house is sanity.  It represents an organized life and a sense of control over my life, at least my little piece of the world contained in those walls.

Oh, don't worry!  Having three boys and a husband has kept me real in terms of what is realistically expected and "clean" is a relative term.  At any given moment, there is a very high possibility that there is pee on my bathroom floor and something sticky is on one of the kitchen walls.  There is always a pile of something somewhere that belongs elsewhere.  Usually, I take it in stride and roll with it, cleaning it in stride.  Every now and then I have a small meltdown which is a sign to my family that the overall state of a room has crossed the line and they all pitch in and clean. Even they are starting to sense the line of disorder and will begin to straighten up unprompted by me.

My summer projects list, which I guess you can say were "challenges" just not very fun or distracting ones, is now considerably shorter.  The remainder of my list includes the garden--this is a part of my life where the threshold for order needs to be reigned in...A LOT.  I don't have weeds.  I have weed trees.  Part of the reason it gets out of control is the sun.  And bugs.  And it hurts my back.  And things grow much bigger than when I originally planted them.  I guess you can say I don't like gardening.  I like the thought of it.  I appreciate nice gardens.  I in no way know how to design them and maintain them.  It's a problem, but the neighbors are starting to stop and look for all the wrong reasons you want them to stop and look at your landscaping.  Too bad they can't see the inside of my house.  There have actually been people that come in and are literally amazed at how nice it is on the inside.  It's not really all that nice, but I think their expectations have been considerably lowered based on the state of my outside and they are pleasantly surprised.  Maybe I should keep this trend going.

 

People...People Who Don't Need People

One good thing about teaching was that it distracted me enough that I forgot about how I don't like where I live.  Pool season was a stark reminder.  I hate going to the pool for many reasons.  One, I hate the sun, or rather the sun hates me.  My skin prickles and turns beet red in a matter of seconds. It physically hurts me to be in the sun. Two, it's a lot of work.  You have to pack everything up, carry it all to the car, then to the pool, then back to the car, then back inside, and back to it's proper place.  I try to give some responsibility to my boys, but it usually results in our lunch cooler being swung around resulting in either a smashed lunch or a strangled brother.  Three, I have three boys at three different stages of swimming who want to swim in three different pools, some of whom are restricted to certain pools only.  I can't hop in and swim in the deep end with Boy 1 because Boy 3 isn't allowed yet in that pool.  Four, my boys are, well, my boys.  While most 9 and 6 and nearly 4 year old boys are off swimming with their friends in whatever section of the pool they want, my boys are socially stunted, choosing to stay with each other and refusing to learn how to swim.  Oh, don't judge me that my kids can't yet swim.  They've had swim lessons since they were three, every summer.  I don't know why they can't swim.  I'm assuming it's because they are mine. The youngest still refuses to go in any pool other than the one foot pool, which then often results in the other two wanting to stay with him, so there we all are, the baby pool gang.  And finally, my last reason for hating the pool...people.  At the pool is where I feel the most socially self-conscious.  While other moms are chatting each other up, watching each other's kids, there I am alone juggling all three of mine.  There is no place I feel so friendless as at the pool.  There are a few moms I see on occasion, but for the most part I'm flying solo, which wouldn't be so bad if I could just sit back, let the kids run, read a book in the shade.  Be aloof.  But not yet.  I am forced to be present.

I keep telling myself that eventually we'll hit the summer where they're off doing their own thing, and I'm sure that summer is closer than I realize.  Every now and then I catch glimpses of it.  For now, though, I'm stuck keeping vigilance while my mind wanders to the countryside where I imagine my own private retreat, pool included, and allow discontent to wash over me.  I've found myself once again stalking Realtor.com dreaming of a different life.  Seriously, I'm totally pathetic.

So this is where I somehow need to turn the pool into a positive.  Aaannnddd....I've drawn a blank.  I have no idea how to do this.  I think it might just be something I need to suffer through as a sacrifice for the betterment of my children.  And in the meantime, pray for rainy days.

Disclaimer

I'm getting published!  Yep, I wrote a piece for ScaryMommy.com and it got accepted.  Then it occurred to me that people might actually travel to my blog and read it.  That has me freaking out a bit.  Most of my blog was dedicated to my monthly challenges, but I'm pretty sure occasionally I mentioned a relative or two, maybe put their business out there that they really wouldn't have wanted me to.  I've been going over and over in my head whether or not to go back in and delete those parts. The thing is, I really don't have time.  Like I said before, I'm trying very hard to find purpose once again in my life at home, and finding that purpose takes time, especially when it comes to my three little boys.  I can't be worried about what others are going to think.  This I can say, that I never lie, so what you see is true, at least according to my side or perception of the story.  And if anyone was hurt, that was certainly not my intention.  Most likely what was written was in a moment of my own pain, so I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it was what was real for me in that moment.

The second disclaimer when reading this blog is that I have absolutely no intention of making it a work of literary genius. Most times I write in the early morning before the kids are awake, so who knows how well my brain is functioning.  In many ways this is a free flow of consciousness, a dialogue between you, the reader, and myself.  I do try to proofread, but there is very little editing of content.  And despite my English background, there are going to be grammar errors, colloquialisms, fragments, and cliches.  Get over it, snobs!

  

Repurposing Myself

My last post was in early March before I abandoned the blog and I think I remember doing something about monthly challenges to keep me distracted from life.  If I remember correctly, I finished out my February challenge which was to read one book a week from my stockpile of "to read" books, and then I went into full blown survival mode and abandoned the challenges as well.

I thought about jumping into the challenges again this July, but whoa, too much pressure.  I haven't even been off a week nor do I remember any of the challenges I had originally planned.  What I have felt the need to do is put me back together.  I fell apart in the last few months, and as a result, so did everything else, my house, my kids, my marriage.  I am very fortunate in the fact that my husband and children were all very understanding and patient with me, but now it's time, finally, to start putting it all back together.

My life had become purposeless.  Survival mode is very much about just running through the motions without any real purpose, and since before this job I was running through the motions of wife and mother without realizing it, I had a lot of work to do.

My first purpose in life was to make a clean home for myself and my family.  Even the husband agreed on this one as there was mold rings in the toilets and the windows were so dirty you couldn't really see out of some of them.  Last week, for the first time ever I might add, we both set to deep cleaning the house one room a day.  This was always something I did with purpose and passion, but for the first time my husband also found the purpose in it.  I'm sure he won't describe it as the soul stirring experience I've found it to be, but the fact that we are restoring order together is very therapeutic for me and I feel it's a step in the right direction as far as once again finding ourselves on the same page.

The cleaning is still in process.  My next step is finding purpose again with my children.  I mean, they are the ones I really neglected not just while working in survival mode, but way back months, maybe even years ago.  Not neglect in the not feeding leaving them home alone sense, but neglect in the soulful way.  So in the last week, I purposefully planned some activities to do with my boys, things I used to do with them all the time and somehow forgot about.  The first was to create a summer Book Bingo reading challenge for each of them.  I stumbled across this idea last year on Pinterest.  You create a bingo sheet and each square is a different type of book to read or a different place to read to read a book.  Some ideas:

read a book in a tent
read a book the librarian chooses for you
read a book with a girl main character
read a book on the beach

You get the idea.  For the first three bingos they make, I take them to Five Below to pick out a little toy.  Then they have to finish out the page and we go someplace "special."  (They pick Chuck E. Cheese. Blah!)  These bingo sheets are so motivating.  My oldest is something of a reluctant reader.  He would rather me read to him than read on his own.  These sheets have him reading constantly, different material, on his own.  Anyway, I digress a bit.  I promised my oldest a reading nook.  I have two crib mattresses in brand new condition that I can't give away so I told him I'd use them to make a nook and never did.  His room was the first we tackled to clean and I finally fulfilled my promise to him and made him a reading nook in his closet.  He needed that.  He needed a hideaway.  He needed a little kick in the pants to get him reading.  He needed his mom to keep her promises.

Another activity I planned to do over a year ago was paint giant letters, their initials, and hang them in their rooms as decoration.  Saturday was a rainy day and we put the cleaning on hold for a bit so I could call each one up and paint.  For ten minutes at a time, I sat with each of my boys and painted, chatted, and destressed together.

And finally, I'm putting purpose back in not only my relationships with my kids, but in my cooking again.  I actually watched a new cooking show.  My husband and I used to watch the Food Network all the time, and we ate well when we did.  Somewhere along the way we stopped, probably around the same time life lost its flavor, we decided to take a literal turn with that and not really enjoy cooking anymore.  I decided to find purpose again in what I feed my family and incorporate the boys into this.  Each week one of them gets to plan, shop for, and cook a meal.  We started this week and Eli and I made Caesar salad with homemade dressing, grilled naan pizzas, and chocolate pudding pie with homemade whipped cream.  I took my son to the grocery store.  We went to the grocery store and shopped together.  He nearly caused two avalanches of breaking jars, but I was there with him.  I had stopped grocery shopping with my kids.  It had become too stressful and I somehow made it into another excuse not to be with them.  I was cheating them of a life experience.  No more.  I might not take all three of them with me--that's just crazy talk--but from now on I hope to continue to include them in these tasks.  Next week Sal has decided on some sort of soup, so I've been told.

So that's life right now.  Finding purpose in everything I do.  Hell, I'm even watching TV with purpose again.  Before we'd sit down and just settled for sitcom reruns.  Don't get me wrong, Big Bang Theory marathons are awesome, but they lack purpose when you've already seen them a few hundred times.  I've committed to watching Orange is the New Black.  My husband thought it was going to be another Downton Abbey and, well, let's just say his attention is held just a little better by lesbian jail sex than early 20th century tablescapes.

For the last six months, and for up to a year or more before that, I thought that my purpose was to provide (financially) for my family.  And, yes, I did need to contribute.  Most of us do.  But that is a sidenote as a wife and mother.  Repurposing is big these days: cribs into benches, TV consoles into bookshelves or puppet theaters, crib mattresses into reading nooks.  This job allowed me to repurpose myself, strip down my original contributions to my family and find new, more useful, and creative ways to be apart of their lives.