Freeing Up Brain Space
So I know. The blog-aholic who normally resides here has now seemingly dropped off the face of the earth and the assumption is that this third addition must really be a doozy...
But he's not. Actually, he's the easiest baby I've had (which I'm hesitant to say as we're not safely out of the colic-zone just yet.) But so far there's no sign of it setting in and Jack is one star newborn, getting up twice a night max, going right back down after each time, and sleeping through clatter and crashes and yelling that are more disturbing to our neighbors and any passerbys than they are to him. (Madalyn is the lightest sleeper God made, and so this is quite a treat.)
I guess I haven't written because I don't have a single creative juice flowing. In fact, the only thing flowing around here is milk, and spit up, and you get the idea-
The daily grind, though never dull, is on high demand, and its sucking every thoughtful cell right out of my brain. (Not that there were that many to begin with.) Like just now- as I was writing that last sentence- I had to go dish out two spankings to the toddlers standing on their headboards and chanting war cries in the room next to me. My hand is stinging as I type, and to go from Jekyll to Hyde and back again like this in attempt to write anything worth reading might just be enough to generate some sort of multi-personality disorder.
I mean I've started to compose posts in my head for weeks now, but then later when I sit down to write any of them, they seem very strange things to actually write about, like a Kandinsky picture contrived in the dream world (which they are) only minus the brilliance.
Like I said, it's not that Jack's at all difficult, but rather that after 3 weeks of no more than 3-4 consecutive hours of sleep at a time, well it can make a person a little loony.
For example, we were at the playground- E. and M. and me- and it was HOT. Not an inch of shade in sight. And I discovered that if you happen to be wearing parachute pants and get on a swing, angling your legs at a particular angle towards the sky and going a particular speed, you can get a nice parachute effect going- and in result, a nice breeze up your pants. A beautiful ventiliation system of sorts that can be a real life saver when you think you just might melt right into the dry mulch but feel too guilty about making your kids turn around and go home right away.
And so there I am- experimenting with the perfect angle and thinking very deeply- WAY more deeply than anyone should think on parachute pants- and I actually begin to think these thoughts might make for an interesting read.
RIGHT... I mean you're yawning already, aren't you? That is, if you didn't close your window sentences ago...
Then there was last night, when I was nursing Jack on our bed, watching some re-run in the dark while Shaun talked on the phone in the other room, and I hear a BZZZZZZZZZZZZ- whap! Just like that, right by my right ear.
Now I'm a well-known, self-proclaimed bugapohobic and so I thought maybe I'd dreamt it or imagined it, but still couldn't resist sitting up and turning to look at the pillow I was propped on, just in case. Sure enough, an ugly bug was perched right next to where my head had been on the pillow. And for some reason I took it very personally.
So WHILE NURSING I go and get a tissue and flush it and begin to think on bugs, and how the real reason they freak me out so much is because I have five facial cavities they could crawl into. If I were earless, mouthless, noseless- no big deal. (Oh, and maybe without eye sockets, too.)
I then sit back down and- what do I do next- I begin to think up a post about bugs and orifices- really believing this is eye-opening, insightful thinking on why bugs freak us out- the whole hole thing- and then hours later realize- um- who wants to read THAT??
Other thoughts from the Twilight Zone have centered on my new-found tv friends- (well actually just friends rediscovered since the last breast-feeding marathon;) Regis and Kelly, Ellen Degeneres, Paula Deen, Beth Moore on Wednesday mornings, and even the high-strung, about-to-crack (as Shaun puts it) Sandra Lee on Food Network. I also am intrigued by Emeril. Mostly because he irritates my grandfather and I like to try to figure out why- pinpoint exactly what irritates him. Is it the "BAM"s or the hair plugs...? I'll never know. But I prefer it that way. Makes it more fun.
Still more thoughts- MOST thoughts- have centered on coffee. Is it a miracle juice or sleep aide? Because when I'm not tired it makes me tired- but when I'm comatose-tired it's the best thing since sliced bread and Starbucks doesn't seem so over-rated. Why IS that?
I'm also catching myself forming some unusual habits like making lists of things Shaun and I will do when we're retired empty nesters; things varying from going to Aerosmith concerts, to joining James and Betty Robison to dig some water wells around the world, to entering ballroom dancing competitions... and on and on...
Perhaps this is some sort of two-fold, self-soothing technique to tell myself 'life won't really be so unbearably dull when these precious moments with our babies are far behind us as nothing but memories,' and somehow at the same time I can hear 'one day I will have all the time in the world to do what I WANT TO DO.'
OH DON'T WORRY- I'm stopping the madness here. But there you have it.
There- you- have it. Everything I wasn't going to write about after all, after all...
I figure I should keep up the practice of writing even when I don't feel like it because this month's nothing compared to what's around the corner in August, when Evan starts school for two days a week and turns 4 on the 30th. (I'm not going there yet- I don't have tissues on hand.) Meanwhile, though, I'll be attempting to attend three Bible studies at about the same time because I can't pass any of them up! I'll be in prison with Paul for the BSF study on Romans, and then Break Free with Beth... again... and then who knows what WIC will have me doing when they announce their fall studies.
This brings me to my final recently recurring random thought which is how I've gone from feeling rather isolated and unconnected in one city, to having to narrow-down social activities in another. There was purpose in the wait for friendships like the several God's given me here, but I'm so glad that wait is over. I'm so glad God sent people bearing pot roasts and lasagna and beef strogonoff and chicken tetrazzini and sweet and sour chicken and stuffed peppers to my door after I had the third baby, when Shaun had to head off to DC. (Thank you- all of you.) I'm so glad my children have friends their ages and I have friends like hearted and minded. But if I don't slow down long enough to record something- anything- during the frenzy of fellowship and living, then it might not ever get recorded... and then what memories will I have to draw back on when my kids are grown? When I'm pulling on my leather lace-up fly pants for an Aerosmith concert trying to remember what life used to be like way back when...