back to life, back to reality (?)

Well my relaxing dip into zero responsibilities ended yesterday with our new director calling me and asking questions about some things. I am excited to go back to the food bank, but because I am still in charge of the scheduling, I am not excited to have to be back to looking at my phone every morning and feeling a twinge of anxiety every time I see the blue light flashing. Always hoping and praying that it is not someone with a main position that is calling out at the very last minute. Unfortunately that is generally the messages I get at 6:30 am. 

Yesterday I pulled up a blog post from 2013 about my hatred and distrust for smartphones, and absolutely nothing has changed in my opinion about them. I still believe that while they might have good tools about them, as a whole smartphones have ruined humanity in just over ten years. I maintain that I would only miss the camera, because I like sending pictures in real time. If I don't do it then, I never will.

Sometimes Owsley will just come up behind me and take a picture. Sometimes he stealth takes pictures of you at the worst times. Yesterday we took this picture and he asked why his eyes always squinted and I told him sometimes I have to remind myself to try not to squint in pictures. Gage also happened to be walking by, and this was the remarkable result.

I wrote the portion below last week while the kids were gone.

Parenting my kids as teenagers has been easier (knock on wood) than parenting them as toddlers and young children. I've never been a big fan of small children. We could go all psychological and try to find the root cause of that, but I'm really done blaming any personality quirks on anyone else. Maybe my idiosyncrasies aren't my fault, but as an adult they are my responsibility. And now that my kids have begun growing into their own people, there isn't much competition or sibling rivalry between the two of them because they are both into such different things. Owsley no longer wants to follow in Gage's footsteps, and in return, Gage isn't always correcting Owsley and telling him how wrong he is about everything.

Unless someone's mental illness is rearing its head, our house is a pretty peaceful place. And even then, no one is an active attacker over here. Our our battles typically reside in our minds and we just want to be left alone.

All that being said, the peaceful vibe has gone into bonus mode over here. The moment your child is born, or you take on the responsibility of a child, this wall is put up that you didn't even know existed. You are suddenly unable to completely relax because you are now responsible for another human's survival (and come on, the first four years of a kid's life are basically you just making sure they don't kill themselves.) You are suddenly unable to reach the level of ease you felt in your life prior to having children. And even if you aren't worrying, you can never truly reach that place again because you know at any moment someone is going to need something from you. 

I was explaining this to Peppy yesterday and he knew exactly what I meant. There's a difference between being left alone and being alone. When you are truly alone you can let all those walls fall down, and when you know your kids are somewhere safe, you can rest in a cloud of nothingness. And that's what I have been doing. Absolutely nothing. 

Ok, I did clean the house yesterday. But on Wednesday I wrapped up in a blanket and just sat on the deck in silence. I've only left the house once and that was just to run to the store to get Peppy a coke. He hasn't left the house at all. I do have some things I need to do today, but not much. It has been pretty refreshing to have nothing to do all day long. We've had dinner really late and not needed to adhere to anyone's schedule. 

A feeling of just being with no responsibilities. I really appreciate that gift.