I Need a Stuffy Today
I am so tired this morning. I sped to our new home to get the kids from school yesterday, then almost fell asleep on my daughter’s bed chatting with her about art class. This bed is fast becoming my favorite place in this house - she seems to always have super cozy beds but it has to also be her energy I’m responding to. It’s like a little mushroom cottage in a fairy tale.
The stager - for whom I’m very grateful - put this little lamb in a room we used as an office. (We are selling our old house and renting our new one.) In fairness, our old office was also used as a guest room and did have a bed in it, but it was funny to see that lamb when I first walked in two days ago.
After yesterday’s scurry and flurry of activities (in which I lost my keys - and then found them on top of the car after many panicked searches in the house) seeing the photo of the lamb this morning, I’m like oh my god give me that lamb I’m going back to bed.
Some nights my son gives me a stuffed animal from his arsenal of stuffies and orders me to sleep with it. At first I have the same reaction. “Oh haha, that’s so sweet, thank you! You can keep it though. I don’t need a stuffy to sleep.” Then he insists and I’m like, “You’re gd right, give me that stuffy,” and I’m so happy to have a soft cuddly thing in my arms.
(Side note: re-reading those words, they sound like those of someone who is baby crazy which I absolutely am not and never was. I loved my babies, and there were delicious moments of I-don’t-know-what (bliss? cuddles? cuteness?) but I also felt like, “this is probably the worst part of parenting” even as I was going through it. I was like wow, this sucks in lots of ways! The first being, omg my back muscles from cradling a newborn in my arms for hours upon hours. Which maybe wouldn’t happen if mothers were supported more in our culture and there were more eager arms to hold that baby, not just an extra grandmother or two but a whole community of willing participants in a child’s wellness? Just a thought.)
I picked this picture to show you how the ivy wants to take over the sidewalk at our old house (in my head this picture’s titled Nature Cometh). It also reminds me of the day before my second child was born, when I was in labor and walked this sidewalk in the early morning after being up with contractions most of the night. I was seeking comfort and wanted to find it in nature, but walking outside ended up feeling very exposed. My well-meaning neighbor with a heart of gold and several German shepherds later reflected to my husband that he had seen me walking (and no doubt experiencing contractions) and was concerned for me.
This sticks so hard in my head, a misunderstanding of what health looks like to a pregnant woman or a woman in labor, that labor needs to be heavily managed so that it goes well, etc, etc. If nature cometh, and the baby cometh, and that’s a natural part of life which we accept . . . I dunno. I wish my neighbor had reported, I saw your wife and she looked so fierce trawling the street, so focused. How was the birth? That would have felt like a caring community, not one full of medicalized panic.
Here’s a photo of my vehicle yesterday, which housed a lawn mower, cleaning supplies, bedding, and other ephemera (including our owl lamp) which I had to unload at the new place in order to go pick up the kids after school. (I do have help doing all this work, I don’t want it to sound like I’m doing it all solo. At the same time, the internet is a very public forum so I prefer to write about my own days, since I’m the one who knows what I do and don’t want to say. And anyway aren’t I more interesting? Lol, jk. In the case of the car, however, I really did unload that all by myself *pats own back*)
Here’s where I found my keys after my panicked search.
I just tried to crop out my neighbor’s house to be considerate (mind if I post your property on the internet??) and look what I found in the picture - those trees in the reflection behind my keys! Those trees were with me in that panicked search, watching over me, and I didn’t even know. (Heart emoji, tree emoji.)
I (stupidly??) made a wellness appointment for this morning for one of my kids so I’m going to go address the coffee situation so I can adress the clothing-for-public situation. But first, I hope you are saying this to yourself every night.
It used to be on a sticky note by my bedside, and then I said, “Know what? Why don’t we cross-stitch that sh*t and immortalize it for our house?” My task is to say this to myself even when I’ve had a bad day, or a lazy day, whatever my mind thinks is not good enough, and my longterm goal, once it’s finished, is to hang it right by my pillow.