equilibrium-girl.com

It Does a World of Good

What are our plans this weekend?, Conan wrote in an email to me yesterday morning. I clicked the reply button and typed in Do nothing, get some sleep and relax, and sent my response over the packet-switched wires.

If by "nothing," we mean working out, grocery shopping, roasting and collectively devouring a chicken, cleaning up our house, and putting together patio furniture--then I suppose we have succeeded. We're not lollygaggers, and perhaps that's a real flaw. His Honor has even helped Conan with his patio furniture assemblage and has even picked up the never-ending collection of toy cars. Right now, we're all in that afternoon fuzzy state where the expenditure of energy has all caught up to us. I'm sitting in my bathrobe, my hair still wet from the shower and my skin tight from lack of moisturizer.

A full night's sleep can do a world of good. Two week's worth of chores, ferrying The Gov from place to place, constant escalations at work, and life caught up to me last night at around 7 p.m. The downside of being in-house counsel is that you're the frontline in the endless battle of making your client's actions legally compliant. You're asked to make calls on the spot, and sometimes you get escalated on. There's no time to hit the books, so you have to either know your stuff... or find a way to make people believe that you do.

So after a long two weeks of difficult work scenarios and life at home being very busy as well, I've got a little bit of breathing room. If by breathing, we mean "sitting in front of a computer typing a blog entry while my hair dries," then I guess I'm spot on.

Unraveling

Little by little, His Honor extracts himself from me. I feel it in every unraveling of the string that binds the two of us together. In the mornings, he comes to our room with his arms laden with stuffed animals and lies between Conan and myself for about 10 minutes before it's time for me to shower. That really is one of the few moments where we are still, his head on either my shoulder or Conan's. We are side by side, but only for a brief moment of the day.

As he bids me goodbye in the mornings, he does not run up to me and kiss me goodbye. I suppose he's in the presence of friends, but I did not think that that type of self-consciousness set in until the pre-teen years. Is he mature for his age, perhaps? I hope that is not the case. Hugs and mommy-cuddles are for right before bedtime, and for breaks during soccer games and for those times when we have tested each other's limits and rubber-band back to each other after the storm of a tantrum. But they are becoming a little less frequent. And that makes me sad.

The past few days, we have been working on a poster with pictures that show his growth over the past near-six (!) years. The roundness of his cheeks has almost vanished into thin air, but I remember the pudginess that framed his eyes so vividly. "Wistful" would not even begin to describe it. Have I started thinking about another baby simply because I miss those days--or am I starting to be ready once again for our lives to be shaken to the core again?

She Keeps on Passin' Me By

When your life comes hurling at you at a frentic pace, you hardly get time to do things like congratulate Ms. THB on her secret decoder ring (congrats!). You also completely forgot that you never posted about the completion of probably your favorite knitted item to date:

It's this beautiful blue color and it's super snuggly!

Knitting and Relaxing

It may not look like much, but it's the start of the famous Shetland Triangle. I'm hoping for the best and making many ministrations to the gods of Lace Blocking.

Conan ordered deck furniture today. I know it sounds so insignificant, but the days are starting to stretch out so much, and there just isn't anything quite like sitting on your deck and enjoying the warm Midwestern breeze in the evenings with a mojito. It's so lovely, things that are green look yellow.