Frankly Speaking

There are so many, many, many things I’d like to do.

They occur to me in spits and spurts throughout the day, little ideas or thoughts or tasks that come up and then – poof! - before I know it, they’ve bubbled back down, usually disapearing all together before I have the chance to even write them down.

I have a notebook. My mother bought it for me; a birthday present that served a purpose. Here I could record all of the little ideas that writers’ are supposed to keep track of and tackle when time allows.

Time, however, is not allowing much beyond the essential and on most days, the essential seems to take until at least 10 p.m.

I’d like to tell you that my daughter is almost one-and-a-half, and the dog’s never had it so good. Her main goal, it seems, is to feed him half of every meal in addition to every other cookie she is served. Sometimes she pretends she’s not doing it, only to have the dog stroll by with Cheerios stuck in his fur, or a raspberry stain colouring his beard, all casual cool.

I’d like to tell you about my husband’s emotional eating, and how I would’ve cleared that story with him, but he’s out picking up an ice cream cone. Case in point. Have you ever lost 50 pounds  of baby weight then tried to keep it off while living with an emotional eater? I’d tell you the rest, but I’m too tired.

I’d like to tell you about the biggest and best parts of the week, the hardest parts and the easiest parts, and everything in between.

For now, though, I think it’s safe to say that even though I’m really too tired to  connect the words to the keyboard, the ideas are there. And man oh man, does it ever feel good to have a few ideas bumping around again.

That’s something to keep me going between now, and the time I get my second wind – which is likely to either come soon, or sometime around my daughter’s 23rd birthday. At this point, it’s a little hard to tell.

I have done almost nothing except blow bubbles for the last two weeks. Okay, fair enough – that’s not entirely true.

We’ve gone through three or four once-full tubes of bubble-blowing juice. But we’ve also tackled three different playgrounds, passed our swimming lessons, built innumerable sand castles, consumed untold numbers of juice boxes, swam in no less than three lakes, walked in the woods, and eaten 8 million calories worth of carbs.

In short – we’ve been on summer vacation.

The thing is, the past two weeks have been unlike anything I’ve experienced in a summer holiday at any time in the last 19 years. This one rolled on and on at a child’s speed, with every block of time tied to an activity suitable for kids. And for a change – we actually had some fun.

We didn’t use the time off wisely to fix the gaping hole in our kitchen ceiling (the rain’s stayed out so really, why rush?). We didn’t paint the powder room, or weed the garden. We didn’t clean anything – and I do mean anything. The only laundry that was processed were beach towels, and even then, it was only done under duress: we couldn’t go back to the beach without at least one towel between the three of us.

Nope, we accomplished nothing. Except the things we really needed to: savouring time as it passed slowly (check), watching the sunset with sand between our toes (double check), getting far enough North to feel the air change (check), and teaching our daughter that in the summertime, nothing can sometimes be the best kind of something (check, check, check!).

Tomorrow is back to school at our house. In the last 8 hours we’ve cleaned, cooked, shopped, scrubbed, washed and prepared. With everything put away and everyone settled in for one final nap, my husband told me this has been the best week of his life. And he meant it. And I couldn’t agree more.