Baby Steps

Mood: Awakened, Mindful
Thought: A day at a time..
Song: Happy Phantom by Tori Amos

Yesterday was one of those days when I woke up in a funk. This is not unusual. Mornings generally stink in this household. This house embodies four non-morning people, all of them attempting to operate at even a low level of normal functioning in the a.m. is next to impossible.

We wake up because the children love to wake up at Oh-God-Thirty every single morning. We then stumble out of bed and run to make fresh coffee. Then we're scrambling eggs and bacon (the kids' favorite breakfast) and running to get them bathed and dressed. Hair is combed, teeth are brushed, medicine is administered, new school clothes are picked out of the closet for wearing, cartoons are watched and then one of them is out the door for preschool. The other is then down for his morning nap.

Something "snapped" in me yesterday; and as I am writing it is coming forth once again as a reminder for me. I began my standard morning rituals, got little Cole out the door for school and little Aidan off to sleep and then I sat there wondering. WHY was I just sitting there? I had my morning cup of joe, the kids were taken care of, but what did I do? I sat there and goofed off online for the next two hours. Why? Because I am in a funk lately.

I wake up, do everything for everyone else but myself..then I start working in my pajamas or sweats, working nonstop until I have to do more child duty or until a client needs me for something. A friend of mine was in this same funk a couple of years ago (Debra) and she emailed this wonderful site that dedicates itself to getting out of the funk...www.flylady.net
At first I thought, how is cleaning up my house going to help me with my life? I started the program the day before yesterday, following it to a tee. They give you ONE thing to do with your house a day..adding on a little more as you can handle a day at a time until you get a "routine" down.

The tip for day one was: Shine Your Sink. What? Do they even KNOW how many dishes are in my sink at any given point in time? You've got to be kidding. I did it..and two hours later there were so many dishes in my sink that it did not matter. Waking up the next morning the tip said, "Shine your sink again." ARGH!!!! Today's tip was "Get dressed to lace up shoes". I laughed at it, but did it anyway. And you know what? I felt GOOD!! My outfit wasn't the best, but I had done itl, bra and all.

That's when the wake up call sank in. Being in this tiny little town had started to sap my energy a bit. I thought back to the Las Vegas days and tried to remember my routines when we lived there. I woke up at 7, had breakfast and bath time done by 8, had Cole at preschool at 9, errands done 9:30 and was home and working by 10am. I worked until 4:40, then went to work out and had Cole retrieved from school by 6pm, dinner served and Cole in bed by 7:30pm sharp. Work then resumed, housework finished, then I would add a page to the kids' scrapbook or do another hobby I enjoyed until I finally fell asleep.

Nowadays the kids wake up at 8:30, we rush around the house trying to get them ready for the day, but they are normally not ready for anything at all until 10:30..around Noon I finally begin my workday without even having time to brush my teeth. Thank God I'm not a part of the corporate world; that just wouldn't fly (no pun intended for flylady).
I can't keep living like this...I need a schedule again and I need it badly or I'll be waving good-bye to what little sanity remains.

Yesterday it finally "sunk in". I woke up early, showered and dressed (kids screaming bloody murder in the background), made sure everyone else showered, brushed their teeth, etc., whipped up breakfast and had them out the door by 9:30. Hey it's a start so don't laugh! But you know what I felt good. I started working, got some appointments out of the way, cleaned up the entire house...hell I even shined that damned sink again. I can't keep letting life pass me by because I live in a town with no friends and nothing to do other than work. I got my whiny ass online, looked for a playgroup for the kids (by golly I found one, too), joined matchingmoms.org and made a new friend, emailed an old friend to offer help with her babies and even found a scrapbooking club in the area.

My point to all of this incessant mindless chatter is this: I need to live. Housework, errands and all....I need to breathe it all in. Living one moment at a time, one errand at a time, one sink shining at a time, one diaper change at a time, one client at a time..I can do this..I can do anything I want to do in my life (because my father said so). It's all coming together. My health seems to be slowly coming together (even though I have no doctor at the time), my kids are growing up, my life is coming to a place where I can start to have time to be me.

Quoting Tori Amos, "And if I die today I'll be the happy phantom...And I will never need umbrellas in the rain. I'll wake up in strawberry fields every dayAnd the atrocities of school I can forgive. The happy phantom has no right to bitch...." I want to live as if there is no tomorrow. I want to live each day to the fullest....and when I die I will have lived life in all of it's glory and enjoyed it to the fullest capacity.

Soak it all in people...life is what we make of it, a baby step at a time.

Signing off,
Pamela