More us, less everything else

We spent Easter weekend at my parents. The boys love going there, because they get to wear rubber boots and get dirty and smelly and eat well. I could tell on Saturday afternoon they had gotten a little bored, so I shocked them by declaring that I was taking them into the woods. There are woods by my parents' house and if you follow the right trails, you can come out at the junior high school, in another neighborhood, or at a little waterfall. I could only remember how to get to the junior high, and that requires tight-roping over a pipe eight feet above a creek. That pipe was a LOT smaller than I remembered from twenty years ago, but I did it TWICE, carrying a BB gun, with Landen holding his breath at the other end. I hate nature, the outdoors, and being covered in 50+ mosquito bites, but I am still getting high praise from the boys about how cool it was that I could do that and could we please do it again next time we go to Jena.

Jake, Landen, and our cousin Bobby trying to figure out where the hell to go.

There are some beautiful things about leaving the city.

How deep is this creek anyway?

When I was their age I could dance right across this thing. Now I have to concentrate.

I have been thinking a lot about energy lately. Twice a year, my battery drains almost completely, and I struggle to power through eight hours of productive work, 16-18 hours of productive parenting, and 4-6 hours of responsible adulthood. (Bad math, but some things are managed concurrently.) Edging out everything and taking up more room than it deserves is worrying about things outside my control.

I am looking at four laundry baskets (two clean, two dirty) and an unpacked suitcase on the floor in my room. Everybody wears clean underwear, but I have not been caught up on our laundry in a month. My bedroom is still half painted. Landen has pictures we framed two months ago that I have not hung yet.

On Wednesday, I gave my phone number to a guy, and bluntly stated more than once that I was not looking to be someone's girlfriend, but dinner and adult conversation with a nice, single guy sounded dreamy. After 24 hours of too-frequent texting, he decided that I needed to know that he had a fetish of sniffing dirty underwear. The revelation went like this - What are you doing? Working on stuff. I sniff panties. I will spare you the details of what he does with the underwear, but they are laundered before they are returned. My first instinct was to change the phone number I've had for almost a decade, but I ruled that out as overkill. I blocked The Sniffer from my phone, email, and Facebook and spent a three-hour dinner with a girlfriend laughing and shaking our heads that Sniffers are out there and proud of it. 

I came home and thought about how we could have had takeout here and I that was enough time to do two loads of laundry, but I gave the Sniffer two days of energy. 

When I got home, while again doing no laundry, I observed that somebody I thought was on Team Nell had liked several pictures of the wasband and his non-paternal activities. That is a reality for my kids, and I support their experience with it, but I intentionally keep it out of my bubble of comfort. It's invasive when Facebook decides I need to see it without asking. I know this person supports me completely, meant no harm to me or my feelings, and likely put much less thought into clicking that thumbs up than I am, but there were lines drawn over a year ago, and that was a gut punch.

My favorite thing I do is be a mom. I am good at it, and when I give it my all, the rewards are smiles and laughs and cooperation and good manners and requests to share a couch or a dining table with me. I do not do it the very best I can do it when I am fielding a barrage of text messages from someone who turns out to be a creeper, getting myself wadded up about Facebook minutia, and fretting over the disarray in homecraphome because I have put minimal effort into laundry and maintenance. Sh*t, I have slept for two nights with only the duvet because I did not want to wait on my sheets to be out of the dryer. (My mom is going to read this blog and get in the car and come down here. Fight it, Mom.)

My kids are good for me. My work is important to me. Clean clothes and a tidy home make us all feel at ease. Sniffers are out in the world, but do not need to be in mine. Lately FB has become a place for me to feel badly about myself. I shouldn't. Everything that I've worked to get to a better place has arrived there or is on its way. Our house is under construction. Our summer schedule is full. I haven't run out of money in ten paychecks.

I'm going to stretch myself less for a while. The month of May. Hike with my kids. Cook more, eat better. Be clean. Try what those crazy blog moms say and wash a load of clothes every day. Read. Sleep eight hours a night. Use my sewing machine more. (I can't wait to show y'all what I made.) Stay away from Sniffers and Facebook posts that give me bad energy. 

I'm in Negative Sh*t Detox. And I am remaining in possession of my own underwear, but I appreciate the interest.