‘You need something that will burn fat…yoga doesn’t build muscle, push-ups and sit-ups do.’ – Quote from the husband yesterday morning.
That is how yesterday started…ergh!
Well, I didn’t know what to say, or I couldn’t say anything nice, so I didn’t say anything at all. I do a lot of that (not saying). Sometimes I forget to put the filter in and I say too much and the wrong things. Even when I stop myself from saying what I think is the most witty remark, I often have to say it with the preface, ‘I almost said: [insert inappropriate phrase] but I didn’t because it would be inappropriate.’ Then I expect a little bone or cat niblet as I wag my tail as if everyone appreciates my excellent sarcasm. I have to say most people aren’t impressed. I am reminded of the ‘words of wisdom’ in the AD/HD book that I have mentioned before but can’t remember the name of and is up in the bathroom so I don’t want to get it, that this is something that people with AD/HD will often do. They forget to put the filter in and can’t or don’t read the subtle signs of cultural context. It may be true, I’m not sure. It may be that I have just had the moon pointed out to me and need to constantly remind myself every time I look up that I’ve seen the moon.
I used to drive down the street and every time I saw a truck, even when I was all alone and I didn’t have the boys with me, say: ‘OOH! TRUCK!’ or ‘FIRE ENGINE!’ or ‘LOAD OF HAY, LOAD OF HAY, MAKE A WISH AND LOOK AWAY!’ The boys are a bit more sophisticated now, they want to know how to make a flying car or why the man with a sign on the corner is begging for money when he has enough to buy a mobile phone.
Sometimes I wish for those more simple days.
Yesterday was one of the craziest – these days every day is a beautiful crazy day I suppose, but yesterday it hit me and kept going, dragging me alongside the tracks of the proverbial runaway train. The problem is that I am tired. I don’t want to be and I don’t mean to be but I am tired. I want to be full of energy and ready to face the beautiful crazy and not every minute expend effort and extreme concentration (of which, you know I lack) and determination.
My yoga practice was difficult in the morning. I couldn’t ride as my husband was on call, so I picked a solar practice that was meant to be energizing. I am fairly ashamed that I have videos as I can’t afford classes and I imagine it would be fairly embarrassing to me to do yoga in the park. When I think about it I don’t see the yoginis, I just see the people standing around gawking and that is just not right. So the practice was meant to be energizing but I found myself resting in prostration poses when my girl had moved on to more challenging asanas. (I defy anyone to say yoga is easy…I’ll meet them at the flagpole after school.)
My 8 year old has been asking me to wake him up early lately. I am not sure why other than he likes to get up, have the couch to himself and watch Transformers before everyone else starts yelling and telling him to blow his nose and get his shoes on.
I don’t blame him. Perhaps he has heard me say too often that I am not sorry for getting up and riding or visiting the girl in my television who chants ‘om, shanti shanti’ and says ‘namaste’.
Anyway, I have been getting him up early and threatening that I will never do it again when he is as grumpy as anything come seven in the evening. I got him up yesterday morning and went to take a shower. When I got out my husband told me that he had a very loose tooth (the 8 year old, not my husband). I flippantly asked if I could pull it out.
My husband asked, ‘would you let you do that?’
Fairly ashamed, I answered, ‘no.’
The rest of the morning crazy was not really crazy. My 8 year old made his own breakfast and fed the cat. I felt like I could actually take a breath and remember to brush the boy’s teeth like the nice dentist said I should…
Please, just skip forward if you know what comes next. It’s easy enough to figure out.
The next thing I know he is jumping back and saying, ‘OW, MUM!’ and there is blood everywhere and his tooth is now stuck in the bristles of the brush I hold with no excuses and no good apologies in my hand. I can’t tell you the words I thought, they are inappropriate.
You may think that this is not much of a problem. I don’t know if everyone has stories of how their baby teeth were yanked out, I am not sure if mine are true or imagined or whether it is just a very traumatic thing to loose the teeth that you worked so hard and cried so hard to get into your mouth in the first place.
Except…
I had made such a big deal about how he HAD to lose the tooth at school. How it would be a great thing to have to go down to the nurse’s and get a treasure chest and miss class and … he was really excited. Said he had gotten one of those treasure chests with his first tooth but the tooth fairy stole it.
Oh…
Then, in the panic, and not thinking totally, I say ‘well, why don’t you take it to school and say you lost it there.’ My husband wasn’t impressed and made me apologize for teaching the child to lie. I could have back pedaled except I had already voiced the elaborate plan to keep the tooth in a baggie in his pocket but take it out before he showed it to the teacher, otherwise she would never believe he had just lost it.
I finished off before rushing off to the job I currently liken to covering myself in honey and walking into a beehive…sticky and a little bit yummy, that we would just have to let the tooth fairy know all about it tonight…
Meanwhile I am panicking about getting to his 3rd grade music performance, figuring out what we are going to do for dinner, hoping that his white shirt wasn’t inexplicably stained because I used the iron on it when it was still wet because I left it to the last minute to find it and found it in the white wash with all of the bloody handkerchiefs and dirty white socks…Worrying about whether or not I should let him go to a birthday party with a bunch of boys that I don’t know and who’s mums I don’t know and wondering if it is safe for him to play in the back ‘yard’…(see previous posts re mountain lions…)
The boy (my love) says, ‘It’s ok, mum.’
Oh, I thought my heart would break. Then I survived the day and went to go watch him at his performance, glad to be standing in the back because I found myself in tears, the music is just so horribly beautiful. I thought my heart would break again until I fell asleep on the couch and drempt about steping on fish and leading my cat around with a lead before a motorcycle scared it away and she went down a hole after a marmot…which I didn’t know the name of and couldn’t tell my 5 year old so he said he thought I was dumb…
Then…
Half way to work today, I realized that the tooth fairy had NOT visited our house last night.
I now stand ready for my mum of the year award. I felt the same way when the same 8 year old told his martial arts teacher under pressure that he got five sheets of homework a night and didn’t have trouble turning them in when he actually gets five sheets a week plus reading and regularly has to do laps because he doesn’t turn them in even when he does them. I felt the same way when my 5 year old told me I smelled like a dog, especially when I threw out the coodie catcher he read it from (Oh, I am so proud) for other such inappropriate phrases.
Luckily, I think she (the tooth fairy) might have been stuck in a meeting and should show up tonight with a mini lego set or a watch…I’m not sure. Maybe she’ll leave a quarter, these are hard economic times, you know.
I will leave you with the following quotes (again, I am sorry that I am no good at references…no, I wasn’t ever a History student who relied on the proper referencing of materials to add legitimacy to her work…)
‘I believe celebrating mothers is a commemoration of extremes. Not just because preeclampsia is an extreme condition, but because the mothers I am privileged to know represent the extremes that make up all mothers: soft and tough, nurturing and driven, catalytic and comforting, impatient and optimistic.’ – From the Executive Director of the Preeclampsia Foundation (http://www.preeclampsia.org/)
‘You can’t do everything, you are not a superwoman.’ – Quote from a conversation I had yesterday…sorry, I wasn’t paying attention who said it to me. I was too busy thinking, ‘Yeah! You think?! Well, I’ll show you, cos I’m just about to take on the world! I’ve got the t-shirt and EVERYTHING!’
‘Well behaved women seldom make history.’ – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
‘The cat and I have come to an understanding of mutual destruction.’ – Quote from the husband shortly before he likened me to Europe.
I’m getting a miniature of a girl in an evening gown carrying a shotgun so that she can shoot the zombies for mother’s day. (Despite the fact that I am really a hippy about guns, I’m ok about a bit of glam fighting off the mindless hoard.)
Sweet dreams people, don’t dream about stepping on fish or marmot holes.
Also remember the tooth fairy may be experiencing a recession. I’m relying on popular opinion to back up my assertions on the aforementioned delay.
xoxo.
undeadpollyanna 