Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Head in a bubble, now you're in trouble

I've spent the last six weeks in a giant bubble.  Not a "Glenda the Good Witch" kind of bubble, but a kind of bubble void of any oxygen that has floated me here and there and everwhere.  And then ... POP!  The other day, it finally burst and landed me back at home, with no idea of what was going on around me.

I had great intentions for this summer.  I was going to take the kids to the pool.  We would go on walks in the evenings, and E would take swim lessons.  We'd get him a bike with training wheels, and R would learn to ride a tricycle.  There would be lots of grilling out and roasting marshmallows with good friends.

I'd be busy with real estate, but I'd balance work perfectly with my volunteer duties with Ethiopian Orphan Relief.  I'd begin a direct mail campaign and help raise much-needed funds for orphaned and vulnerable children. 

And in the meantime, I'd potty train R before the school year.

But as you can probably guess by the way this post is going, none of this actually happened.  What happened instead was that everyone got sick, and stayed sick for a month (in fact, I am still sick after 5 weeks).  While we were all ailing, lawns needed to be mowed ... errands needed to be run ... and children needed to be fed.  Bathtimes needed to be squeezed into the 15 minutes we had between one thing and another. Tantrums and tears became like background noise, and the exhaustion grew and grew.

A couple of "easy" family trips were made difficult by long car rides, lots of packing, lots of carting toddlers from here to there.  Sicknesses continued.  My grandmother passed away, and more chaos ensued while trying to pack up the kids up quickly, take care of work and change appointments, drive toddlers back out to Washington, DC for the scond time in two weeks, and take care of them at the wakes and funeral.

The bubble finally popped this past Monday, the day after we returned, exhausted, from the funeral.  I asked my husband to take the kids to school, and on my own way to work he called me.  "Um, do they have school today?  There's no one here."  Ohmygoodness.  In all the chaos of the last month, I didn't realize their summer camp had ended ... and that they would start school the next week for good.  The summer was over.  I hadn't been fulfilled my volunteer duties to the best of my ability, and had let people down.  We hadn't gone on family walks, pool trips, or bike rides.  I needed to get a uniform for little R.  And she still wasn't potty trained.

POP.  Back to reality.  Now it's time to mop up the suds ... and catch up on everything that I missed while floating from here to there.  It's been a learning experience, to say the least.  And that's one thing that's made the summer all worth it -- that I've learned, learned, learned.  And I'm still learning.  And I made some precious memories to forever remind me of how blessed I am to have such wonderful teachers.
 

1 comment:

  1. Oh Alex - change a few details and I could have written this post myself. I'm sorry things have been so crazy but I'm (super selfishly) glad not to be alone in having my big, shiny, summer bubble burst.

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