It’s 3 a.m.

My Pinterest Worthy To Do List:

Kon-Marie my home.

Use a minimum of 10 beauty products before bed each night (Korean beauty routine).

Run successful “side-gig-” from home thru social media.

Be losing weight on the flavor of the day diet.

Make sure kids are in no less than 2 groups or organizations a week. Maybe even piano lessons for the 11 month old.

Wash the baseboards of my walls.

Read one book every two weeks.

Start selling on Amazon.

Join a Mommy Group.

Practice an hour of mindful meditation each morning. Follow up with an hour of yoga.

Exercise 1-2 hours a day

Blog.

Clip coupons. Hand make Halloween costumes. Bake and cook from scratch.

And so on……

At 2:44 in the morning, (or middle of the night?) after the fourth time the baby has woken up crying since 10 pm, this list is what rolls thru my brain.

It’s the highlights of everything I am “supposed” to be doing. And since I am not, it is the reminder of how I am failing at modern life.

There’s books and blogs and pins all over the internet explaining in great detail how I can have and do it all. Be all that I want to be.

Since when have I ever wanted to meditate? In the foggy brain stupor over my first cup of coffee in the morning- does that count toward the meditating?

I raise a toast to the Moms who see this list and do each and every one item on it with gusto and a smile.

For me, and my sanity, a new list, Minimized and customized to me:

Keep children fed, clean, and happy

Keep husband fed and happy. Clean if necessary.

Keep a pot of coffee on all day so I can stop this time wasting nonsense of brewing a cup at a time.

Mop the floors, and switch out the laundry.

Take a deep breath, baby will eventually nap and then I can paint. Or blog. Or, what the heck, take a nap myself.

Note to self: Throw out that first list I wrote.

Two Weeks

Just under two weeks until we welcome our daughter to this world. She is my second, so there is the anticipation of the joy of meeting her; and the anticipation of the chaos of adding a new (hungry and crying) member to our family.

In a change from my first, I passed on having a baby shower when it was offered. Partly, because I felt we made the decision to bring a little one here- it’s not fair to ask people to come to a party and furnish supplies for her. The other, remembering the volume of ‘stuff’ I got for my son, I wanted to purchase only the Essentials for baby. So many things went unused, or only used 1 time, it made me sad to see things leave the house brand new with tags on it.

I feel prepared, but there are still the unknowns- Not being sure her exact size at birth makes it a challenge for buying both clothes and diapers. To satisfy my panic, I bought two small packs of diapers one in Newborn, one in Size 1. Clothing is at a minimum as well- Some one size sleepy time bags (I remember the challenge of changing a diaper at 2 am and not wanting to stir a little one). We were blessed by a family friend who donated two large boxes of beautiful newborn and infant clothing to get us started as well.

My son’s crib and changing table I hung onto for 5 years. I was too sentimental to let it go- sad that he may be my only baby, especially after my divorce, I had nearly given up hop

IMG_2275 (Edited) — 2 Weeks till it’s the 4 of us

e. But something in the back of my mind made me keep that, and a diaper Genie and other various necessities. I tucked everything out of sight in the basement, and waited. Thank God for Hope, or women’s intuition- saving those items literally saved us hundreds of dollars when we found out we were expecting.

I am glad my son will not be an only child- although I will miss the ‘just the two of us’ time we had. He may never remember it, but I remember the several years as a Single Mom and how we grew together thru the experience. He is now blessed with love from many people- my favorite new memories are watching my husband play guitar for him and having Vince laugh and dance and sing; or the three of us going to the local hockey arena and cheering for ‘Our’ team at the top of our lungs.

I can’t wait to meet Baby, and looking forward to the memories our family will be making.

Sick Day

My son came down with an ear and sinus infection over the holiday weekend, so today was his sick day. He is a happy, rambunctious child most days; but when the stuffy head and fever had him stuck on the couch, the entire house slowed down.

In my sales-manager career Past Life, I would have been on the phone, checking emails, calling for sales updates, and conference calls- if I had the luxury of staying home with him at all.

Today, everything was different. My new title is SHM, as the internet has labeled me- Stay at Home Mom.

Time moved at a snail pace. While he rested, I quietly did chores- remembering my own sick days as a child, and my mother working silently in the next room so I could rest.

I took the time to steam clean the kitchen floor. It’s a slow process, if you’ve ever tried it. By design, to really clean with the unit you must take your time as the steam hisses out the pad onto the floor. It’s meditative, the heat radiating from the tile as I walk back and forth listening to the steam do its work. The only other sound in the home, my son’s stuffy snore from the couch.

I once thought the only joy was in a career with a prize at the top of the corporate ladder- either the paycheck, or the title, or some combination of both. My new “job” is making this house a home for my husband and children. No accolades from the boss. No sales awards to hang on the wall. Just a clean floor, and dishes, and the laundry folded before it’s put away.

My award is the happy smile from my little one telling me it was his best sick day ever.

Smashed

I was decorating with some handmade coffee cups and was reminded of a lesson I learned while making them. I had spent the summer at an art camp in Erie Pennsylvania, and was a little bitter that instead of getting to paint all day, my concentration was ceramics.

Part of this was that I wasn’t good at it- anyone who has tried to center clay on a potter’s wheel can attest that it is a hard learned skill. I have a habit of giving up on tasks that I can’t master in the first or second try; and this class tested my patience at all levels. There are more steps to creating a simple vase than one can image- You must spend time kneading all the air bubbles out of your lump of clay. Then after arm numbing kneading, you attempt to throw the lump of clay at a spinning wheel, aiming for as close to center as possible and with enough force that you ensure there is no air pocket separating that clay from the metal, wet wheel.

Back to the grind, you then use your upper body strength to force the clay down and in on itself; one move the wrong way, and the clay may fly off the wheel, or go off center, and your clay needs to be removed, re-kneaded, and thrown again.

Back at the wheel, if you are successful, and have “pulled” the clay upwards in a semblance of a vase shape, there is the cleaning of the excess clay, and removing the spinning vase from the wheel by using a steel wire.

That’s just the throwing. That’s nothing of the hours of drying; ‘firing’ in the kiln; glazing; re-firing; praying- and maybe, just maybe, that lump of clay has become a fine piece of art. The process, start to finish, can take days- sometimes weeks depending on the drying times involved.

After all that- My Professor then had us smash the pieces.

I fail to find the words to fully express the sickening feeling of watching my own work destroyed beneath a hammer swung by my own hand. The hours, the frustration of the process, the joy at seeing the work finally finished- gone- back to the dust that it had come from originally.

What did I learn? Don’t be afraid to lose everything you work for. Don’t be afraid to start over. Don’t get too attached to material things- they can all be lost in a moment, and you will need to be able to move on. There is always more art to be made in this life.