Later, 2010

Ringing in the New Year with my sister's cats, Kronk and Huds

The kids are with their dad, and I’m with my sister.  It’s a good temporary visitation schedule.  If I could just stop missing my kids, it would be perfect.

We made the trade in Boise on Sunday afternoon—Boise is the approximate halfway point.  And because my sister Denise lives here, it gives me the perfect opportunity to take a mini-vacation in a single girl’s apartment.  Did you know a single girl’s apartment is vastly different from a single mom’s rental?  Well, there are no expensive exfoliates in my bathroom, designer ornaments on my Christmas tree and organic protein drinks in my refrigerator.  There are also no Legos lodged in her carpet, popcorn kernels stuck in her couch cushions and globs of toothpaste solidified onto her bathroom countertop.  It’s like I’m on a different planet, people.  And I like it!

Well, I liked it for about 2.5 days, and then I started missing those three rowdy kids of mine.  The long quiet hours uninterrupted by fighting, spitballs, unfinished homework, basketball practice, and wedgie free-for-alls have become much longer and quieter with each passing day, and not in a good way.  I wonder how I can be crazy frustrated with their wild kid antics one day and then ravenous for them 2.5 days later.  Parenting has knocked something loose in my noggin.  Or maybe that’s a prerequisite of parenthood, that you have the capacity to function with multiple screws loose.   (Sadly, childbirth has caused the loosening of many things in my life, noggin and otherwise.)

So here I am on New Year’s Eve with my laptop and a couple of cats, resolving to take joy in the hectic, the chaotic, the outnumbered nature of motherhood while it’s swirling around me.  And once I tackle that, I will begin work at the New York Stock Exchange. Or an amusement park.  Or maybe the psych ward.  Until then…

God Speed, 2010.