Category: Sunday Contentments

It’s been a rough week. Power outages. Cars in the shop. Sick children. Sleepovers. Multiple birthday parties and a banquet.

Sometimes the best sort of contentment is the kind where you get through a week like that and you realized, “I survived all that?!”

Yes, I did survive that. Most of it anyway. Still got one more children’s birthday party to go.

Pray for me.

I’m the only one home this morning. Hubster took the girls to church, so I have the house to myself. It’s lonely, and yet refreshing after a couple of very busy days. I wore myself out Friday by volunteering for a few hours at the school carnival (it was extremely hot and I ended up hoofing it around the baseball and soccer fields for an hour taping up signs). Then yesterday after waking up rather late, I spent most of the day getting to, then watching, then returning from the show Riverdance, which we managed to snag last minute tickets to. Definitely worth the effort to go see, but watching all those lithe and athletic dancers do their thing has left me feeling like a roly-poly slug.

Still, that didn’t prevent me from sleeping in again this morning (Sunday mornings are the only time I get to spend alone with the Hubster… ahem) and from lingering over breakfast this morning. I had a quiet hour or two just eating my soft boiled eggs on toast, sipping tea, and reading the Sunday paper. Honestly, there isn’t much more I want out of Sunday morning than that. Just a little bit of quiet time and a good bite to eat while I catch up on what’s going on in the world.

And that is the key to contentment. The idea of contentment is that simple pleasures are the best pleasures in life. I used to demand a lot more out of life, expect more fun, more excitement, etc. And I spent a lot of time, effort and money pursuing those big pleasures. But those pleasures never lasted, and I usually felt used up and exhausted after I’d experienced them. These days, it’s a whole different game. These days, all it really takes to make me happy is a nice breakfast, some time to sit and read, a cup of tea, a quiet (or not-so-quiet) hour with the Hubster… You get the idea.

If you don’t have any simple pleasures, find them. Make them small and keep them small. Trust me, you’ll enjoy life a lot more if you do.

We’ve had quite a weekend. Yesterday, I removed every toy and fun-related item from the girls’ room. The reason? At 10:45, fifteen minutes before their swimming lessons started, they were having meltdowns, arguing with me, hitting each other and in general making it impossible to leave the house to make it to the lessons in time.

So I gave up trying to leave and instead put both girls to bed (yes, in bed at 10:45AM) and then proceeded to remove all their toys, games, and other items I know they enjoy playing with and I locked all that stuff up in the guest room. The guest room is now overflowing with toys and junk, but the girls’ room is surprisingly neat for once…

It was one of those motherhood moments that I hate, the moment when I have to play the tyrant. I’m very good at playing tyrant. “Do what I tell you to do now or there WILL be consequences, young lady!” I can get loud and scary at the drop of a hat and make my kids cry when they don’t behave. And I know it’s a necessity at times because in the end, the goal of motherhood is to produce civilized human beings who will contribute something useful to society, and we all know kids are as far from civilized or human beings as we can get so us moms have our work cut out for us. Still, it’s a lot more fun being the mom who hands out kisses and cookies than it is being the mom who thunders so loudly that chunks of plaster fall from the ceiling.

The kids spent most of yesterday in their room while I went about venting my irritation (okay, it was outright anger because really, how hard is it to get into a bathing suit and go to the Y? And how many times do I have to tell these kids to get into their bathing suits NOW or else?)… Where was I? Oh yeah, venting my irritation/anger into house cleaning. I got a lot of laundry folded and a lot of stuff picked up and put away (though not any of the kids’ toys in the guest room; that mess is going to take weeks to sort out now), and I still felt angry and guilty as hell when the Hubster came home. However, Hubster agreed with me that if the kids couldn’t keep their acts together long enough to get into swimsuits and out the door, especially in light of other numerous behavior issues we’ve had lately, then clearing out their room and sending them to bed was the best possible outcome I could have devised that morning.

Or as he didn’t say, “Honey, at least you didn’t kill them!”

But that was yesterday and this is today. Mother’s Day, in fact. And today my children are all about kisses and handmade cards and opening presents and going out for Italian ices (with only a little foot dragging when it comes to things like putting away their laundry and making their beds). Today they are my darling angels again and I can be calm and kind and the dispenser of kisses and cookies. I don’t know how long this will last, but I’m going to enjoy it while I can.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there. And good luck with producing your civilized human beings who will make a worthwhile contribution to society.

Beetlejuice, our last cat, passed away in March of 2009. He was going on 18 years when he died. So we’ve been without a cat in this house for over a year, and the girls have never known a kitten.

That all changed yesterday…

The orange and white tabby is Hiccup and the dark grey one is Toothless, both named for the characters in “How to Train Your Dragon.” Our neighbor’s daughter works at a local vet clinic and cares for abandoned animals as part of her work. They knew we were thinking about getting another cat, and so they let us know these two were available. Hiccup and Toothless were so little when I first saw them, they just barely had their eyes opened. I’ve had to keep the kittens a secret from Princess and Pixie for a month just so they wouldn’t drive me crazy with requests to go next door and visit before the kittens were ready to come live with us. So they didn’t even know about the kittens until they came downstairs yesterday and found them asleep in our living room.

I owe a huge thanks to our next-door neighbors for these two. The kittens are in very good health, even though they were abandoned at birth. They’ve had all their shots and worming medications and they’re even litter trained. I also owe thanks to the vet office our neighbor’s daughter works for. They gave us kitten starter kits with packs of dry food and wet food and cat-care manuals, plus the kittens’ shot and vet records to date.

Hiccup and Toothless are racing around the house right now, figuring out where everything is. They stayed in the master bedroom last night with the Hubster and I, and it sounded like we had a thunderstorm going on under our bed. But they’ve been well-behaved and have gotten over their initial shyness. We’ve pulled out all the old cat toys and scratching posts that we had in storage after BJ, Lydia and Fritti passed away, and I can’t tell you how good it feels to have two little fuzz balls in the house again. The place has been too quiet during the day when I’m working at home. Somehow, I don’t think that will be a problem any more.

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone!

It’s one o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and I am kicking off the day much later than I wanted to, which always puts me in a foul mood. I’m the kind of gal who wants to wake up with the sun, get a jump on the day and get started on knocking out that to-do list. Unfortunately, I am also the kind of gal who suffers from bouts of insomnia, which makes waking up with the sun pretty damned difficult at times. I had to deal with insomnia last night, so now I’m groggy and running late and I hate that with a passion.

What I hate even more though is being in the aforementioned foul mood. I don’t like feeling cranky and whiny and angsty. It’s a very physical feeling for me, one that knots up my guts and hangs over my head, further ruining my bad day. So for today’s contentments, I want to look at how I can get back to my usual cynical-but-sunny self. Here are a few ideas.

Exercise. Physical activity does help. It gets me moving and helps me shake off the grogginess that comes from a bad night of sleep. Plus when I complete a workout, I feel like I accomplished something. I took care of me, worked to burn off a bit of fat, made myself stronger, etc. In other words, I did something that made me feel like less of a slug.

Hot tea. I love tea, especially with milk and sugar. I can recall in those first few months after Princess was born, when I walked around in a hateful sleep-deprived fog, the best moments I enjoyed where the ones where I sat at the dining room table in my jammies and bath robe, sipping a hot cup of tea while Princess vibrated away in her battery-powered bouncy chair. Tea is soothing, hot tea perks me up, and of course there’s that little bit of caffeine and sugar that gives me a quick, if artificial, boost. So a cup or two of tea is an instant mood lifter.

Work. I’m talking some minor task here, not one of my major projects that requires gargantuan efforts on my part. Accomplishing something small, like getting this blog post done, makes me feel like I’ve knocked off at least something on my to-do list. And you know I am all about the to-do list. The more small things I can get done, the shorter that list gets and the better I feel.

Go outside. Science has shown that sunlight, along with exercise, is an instant mood lifter. It certainly helps me wake up, because hey, it’s daylight! My body responds to daylight by waking up, just like it responds to night time by sleeping (in theory; humor me and just ignore the whole insomnia thing for a moment). So if I can get outside, even if it’s just to sit and tap away at the netbook, that will help.

Hot shower. This is right up there with a hot cup of tea. Hot water, one of those little perks of civilization, makes all the difference to my mood. Cold water kills my mood though, so I always try to be careful about not running a shower at the same time I’m doing the laundry or washing the dishes.

So those are my mood lifters today. So far I’ve already done the exercise and the hot tea. I’m going to try to get outside for a bit, though I don’t know when since I do have that to-do list to knock out first. Maybe by this evening, I’ll be able to get out for a walk.

In the mean time, if anybody has any ideas for how to handle the insomnia? That’d be muchly appreciated!

Maybe it’s a bad thing, but I’ve become a bit lazy lately, and I don’t exactly care. For the last year or so, I’d been getting up at 4:45 to work on the Heat Flash Erotica podcast and then plunging into the rest of the day. I finally reached the point where I had to stop this. First off, it felt like I was living in a separate time zone from the rest of the family. Second, I had reached a point where I was so tired, I wasn’t getting up a lot of morning, and when I was, I was pretty much a walking corpse.

So I changed my schedule to let me sleep until 6AM, and some mornings I sleep later than that. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. My schedule is still killing me (I need to cut back on work, and come this fall, I will definitely be pushing a few things off my plate for good). However, I feel more human when I wake up in the morning.

And then there are mornings like Friday…

One of the best things about sleeping in until 6 or later is that I get to snuggle with the Hubster. I love snuggling with that man. He’s warm and cuddly and he smells just right when I curl up next to him. Last Thursday morning I really didn’t want to get out of bed. But we had to get the kids off to school and Hubster had a meeting and I had work… So as we were climbing out of bed I suggested to my darling mate that the next morning we simply go back to bed after the kids went to school.

And he said yes.

Long story short, there was much cuddling and snuggling Friday morning, interspersed with napping and other activities. Yes, I’m an erotica writer. No, I’m not giving you the details. I will simply say that it was one of the best mornings I’ve had in a long time, and I highly recommend that if you ever get the chance, get the kids out of the house one morning (to school, to the sitter, to Grandma’s, etc.) and then go back to bed. You will not regret it.

So there’s my contentment for this week – a loving husband and a serious bout of laziness that has set me to rights after a very long couple of weeks. Hope you’re just as content wherever you are.

I normally wait until Sunday morning to do most of my blogging for the week. It’s how I stay ahead and make sure all my blog posts are done on time. However, I have family in town this week. My parents arrived yesterday evening and will be here all week long for Spring Break, so I know I’m going to be very busy. Thus I am falling back on Plan B for blogging, which is blog the night before.

So you’re reading this on Sunday but I’m actually writing this on Saturday night. I just spent the entire day with my parents, the Hubster and the kids. We’ve had a great day. Everyone except Hubster slept late (Hubster had to go out grocery shopping so we wouldn’t all starve). After a lazy start and some lunch, we headed out to Nauticus, a maritime museum in Norfolk, to see an exhibit called “Real Pirates!” Hubster, the kids and I have actually seen this exhibit before. It was on display in the Museum of Science and Technology while we were in Chicago last summer. But it was just as good the second time around, and I managed to catch a few more details. Basically, the exhibit tracks the history of the slave ship Whydah and the pirate captain Sam Bellamy up to the point where Bellamy captured the Whydah and kept it as his new pirate flagship. Neither ship nor captain lasted too long after that, but it was fascinating to see how slavery and piracy collided in the 1700s, and to look at the expedition that eventually found the wreck of the Whydah 300 years later.

The exhibit is a traveling exhibit, so if it comes your way, I highly recommend you see it. You can find out more about it at these links –

Expedition Whydah – www.whydah.com

Real Pirates (National Geographic) – www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/real-pirates

Pirate Ship Whydah – www.nationalgeographic.com/explorer/whydah/index.html

Pirates of the Whydah – www.nationalgeographic.com/whydah/story.html

And yeah, if you haven’t guessed by now, the exhibit is a National Geographic exhibit. It’s very well done with lots of interesting stuff to see, so look it up and go see it if you can! Meanwhile, I’ve got an egg hunt to prepare for. By the time you read this, I will be up to my neck in little children screaming for plastic eggs stuffed with chocolate. Thankfully, we’re not hosting this event at my house.

I’m stealing a few moments this morning to just be lazy. Well, more like a few hours. But I feel justified. This weekend, we have gone through two birthday parties, a karate belt test for both girls, and hair appointments for myself and Pixie. We have been on the run from the wee hours of yesterday morning, and we still have one more birthday party and an Easter egg hunt left to go. It’s madness, I tell ya.

I hate when my weekend gets eaten alive like this, especially by children’s birthday parties, because I am really not a huge fan of children’s birthday parties. I find them to be grossly excessive in terms of presents (does a child really need to get twenty ZooZoo pets all in the same hour, with accessories?) and setting (how much to rent an entire gymnasium for a child’s party? Oh, and that giant inflatable slide? That had to cost an arm, and maybe a leg too). And the food? Ugh. If I have to eat one more grocery store bakery cake with that gods-awful whipped frosting, I think I’ll toss my home-made cookies for distance.

And yet, I have been guilty of hosting the same parties, I will admit. I apologize to everyone whom I inflicted such travesty upon.

But for now, in this moment, in this hour, I am birthday party free, enjoying the morning on my couch, with my favorite cup of tea close at hand. I had a good breakfast of Toad-in-a-Hole (basically eggs fried in toast). I’ve gone through the entire Sunday paper. And now, I think I’ll head outside for a bit to practice karate before I have to haul myself and the Princess off to party number three.

My wish list of things I’d like to do with what little time I’ll have to myself today…

• Doodle, either on the computer with Art Rage. Art Rage is my favorite graphics program right now, and it does a lovely job of simulating water colors and other natural media. Lots of fun for drawing freaky cartoons! Lately, I’ve been drawing freaky little cartoons of robots who speak in Steam Punk. I’ll have to scan a few and post them here sometime.
• Practice karate. I learned the opening moves of a new weapons kata this week and I want to make sure I’ve got them stuck in my head. I hate forgetting kata, especially a good weapons kata.
• Laundry. I’m almost all caught up. I wonder if I can knock out another couple of loads today…
• Bake a fresh loaf of bread in the bread machine.
• Take a looooooooooong, hot bath.
• Finish prepping my blog posts for the week. I like to stay ahead, you know?

A long list of things to do, I know. And not all of these things will happen, of course, but I can dream, right?

Enjoy your Sunday, folks.

The day has gotten away from me. I slept late, worn out after a Saturday filled with swim lessons, karate lessons, and a children’s birthday party, followed by staying up way too late playing a video game I have become enamored of. So I slept in, got to spend a bit of quality time with the Hubster, and as a result I am running four hours behind today.

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

It’s Spring, a season that brings out both the lazy streak in me as well as the compulsive obsessive streak. I want to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather. At the same time, I want to burn my house to the ground and start all over again from scratch, as I believe that would be quicker than trying to fix everything that’s currently bothering me about it. I want to talk a nice slow walk in the balmy afternoon, and I want to run three miles and spend an hour practicing karate in the local tennis court. I want to lie in bed, and I want to get up early so I can get a jump on house cleaning.

What’s a girl to do?

I live with it. I try to relax, and work at a slow but steady pace. So far today, I’ve spent the morning with my husband, had breakfast with the girls (soft boiled egg on toast, my favorite!), gone for a 2 mile run, did 25 minutes of karate practice, and repaired my favorite pair of jeans which have been hanging on my door knob for several months, waiting for me to iron a patch in the rip along the center seam. Hubster has taken the girls off to Norfolk Botanical Gardens while I work on blog posts for this week, laundry, and some cover art for a client who I swear is just begging to have me come find him and bitch-slap him into the next millennium. I’m doing my very best to just enjoy the quiet time and ignore that single annoyance.

I’ve got my favorite Hawaiian shirt on, along with my favorite, recently repaired jeans. Chris Isaac’s Baja Sessions is playing on the stereo while I work, and I indulged in a little bit of artwork this afternoon, as you can see above. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s good.

As soon as the weather turned warm, I started coming up with plans for things I’d like to do around the house and the yard. I’m gardening again this year. I have waaaaay too many seedlings sitting on my window sills, waiting to die at my hands. I have books on craft projects for the home that I’ve book marked, trying to decide what I want to make first. Slip covers for the dining room chairs, or small hanging hampers for the laundry area to help sort my delicates and whites? Or maybe three matching gardening aprons for the girls and I?

Spring, it’s the season of possibilities where I feel like I can do anything and absolutely nothing at the same time. Reality will set in as the weather gets warmer, and by June I’ll be wondering how I’ll survive until October comes with cool weather. In the meantime, I’m going to dream and clean and laze about and scheme.

How do you plan to enjoy your spring?