At long last

Finally!!  Tomorrow is one of my two favorite days of the year...the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!

What is my other favorite day of the year you wonder?  The FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!

I believe that moms fall into certain groups.  There's the "Summer Moms" who take their kids to the park every day and the beach and movies and do crafts and go to museums and playdates and the zoo and picnics and the pool and summer camps and...well you get the idea.  The enjoy being free of the routine of the school year and free to hang out with their kids doing fun things.  They try to pack as much fun and entertainment as is possible into their days.

Then there are the "School Year Moms".  Those are the ones who'd rather chew their own arm off than push their kid on the swing for 3 hours.  Er, maybe that's just me.  They like the familiarity of the school days where they always know what has to come next (getting up, going to school, coming home, homework, making dinner, bedtime!!!) and they take much joy in sending their little ones off each day.

I am definitely NOT a "Summer Mom."  Staying home with my kids is simply not fun, they are loud and obnoxious and they fight constantly and complain of being bored and make a huge mess all the time.  Taking my kids out places is even less enjoyable.  The amount of chaos they create at home pales in comparison to the torture they dole out for me when I take them out of the house.  I love them all dearly, but I do not really like them when forced to take them in large doses.  Maybe if I had well behaved children I'd feel differently.  I have a friend who has these well behaved children (several of them, more than I have) and they do all sorts of fun things.  And at times I do wish we could experience those same kind of activities.  But then my own non-well behaved children are fighting and crying and hitting and arguing all at the same time all in a matter of 5 minutes just while I'm trying to get them into the car and then proceed to scream things at me about how mean and horrible I am while I'm trying to drive them to do one of those fun activities...well I quickly remember why I'd rather stay home.

So I fall into the category of the "School Year Mom", although really I'm more of a "Beginning of the school year Mom."  The middle of the school year there is too much time off, starting with 1 week at Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at the holidays, 1 week in February, and ending with 1 week of spring break in April....enough vacation already!  The end of the school year starts to feel like things are dragging on.  I'm sick of helping with homework and all the papers that come home and trying to get everyone out the door on time in the morning.

So tomorrow I will rejoice at no longer having to trek to the school twice a day in the van and I'll happily recycle all the papers and workbooks that were brought home.  I'll wash the backpacks and put them away for the next 2 months.  I'll revel in this freedom...for about 24 hours.  Because by Wednesday afternoon I'm going to be counting the days until I can rejoice yet again.

Life Reflecting Art

Er, reflecting someone else's life is more accurate I suppose.  One of my neighbors loaned me their copy of "Eat Pray Love" to read.  She warned me the beginning was kind of depressing and not that exciting, but it got better.  I hadn't ever had any desire to read this book because the subject matter didn't really interest me, but I was in the middle of "Memoirs Of A Geisha" and I figured depressing HAD to be better than mind-numbingly boring so I was happy to give it a try. 

Interestingly enough, the first part where she is immersed in pleasureable things in Italy, including food, was not difficult for me to read at all.  I didn't find the talk of her divorce depressing and I finished that part of the book very quickly.  Maybe I liked it because I've always thought Italy would be a beautiful place to visit.  Not that it was the best thing I ever read, but enjoyable enough.

But the second part, where she's meditating in an Ashram in India...that was like punishment for me to read.  I was either bored and falling asleep (although I must say it was still more interesting than the Geisha book) or just plain irritated with what I was reading.  I felt like I had as much trouble getting through that part of the book as she did with getting her mind right while meditating.  I couldn't get through that section fast enough, many times I thought about just skipping ahead.

So reading about eating good food = enjoyable.  Reading about meditation & prayer = nearly torture.  I found this parallel to my own life quite humorous.  My husband, who has very similar beliefs as I do, laughed at the irony as well. 

You see, clearly food & I get along very well, and I would totally love to have the freedom to just do whatever I wanted and indulge myself in pleasurable activities.  At this point of my life I'd love to even know what I would do if I did have the opportunity, because right now I honestly have no idea what *I* like.  As for the other, while I'm not opposed to meditating for it's relaxation/stress reduction benefits, the whole becoming one with god and the universe (and, well, pretty much anything having to do with religion) is just not my thing.  In my past attempts to give religion/belief a try I've always found myself feeling annoyed or bored.  Nothing about it appeals to me, just like nothing about that section of the book appealed to me.

At the very least I got a laugh out of myself, and a welcome break from the monotony of that other book.  Hmm, I suppose I should go back to reading that now, bummer.

Product Review

I have insomnia.  The kind where I'll wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to fall back to sleep for hours.  When I have several nights of that in a row generally I turn to medicinally induced sleep by taking some Simply Sleep.  I've heard about this stuff call Mid Nite that is a natural sleep aid that you can take anytime, including the middle of the night.

I finally got some to try.  And, well, it's not as miraculous as I'd hoped it would be.  It doesn't actually put me back to sleep.  What it does is put me in a state that feels like I *could* fall asleep at any moment, but I don't.  So I lay there, aware that I'm not sleeping and yet not fully conscious, for the same amount of time I'd normally have been laying there awake.

So I guess that's better...sort of.  Maybe somehow in that asleep-ish state my body is getting some of the restoration it needs.  My brain isn't going 60 miles an hour thinking over who knows what, it's just thinking I'm not sleeping, I really wish I was sleeping.

I don't necessarily NOT recommend this product, but I can't truly recommend it either.

A piercing question...

No, not the kind of great importance...the kind about, well, piercing.  I think I just might want another one.  Not that I have many, or that the ones I do have are that interesting.  They are, in fact, completely and utterly boring.   My ear lobes have been pierced twice, although the top holes are closed up and I rarely wear earrings in the other ones.  I do like the looks of certain piercings, but mostly I'm not big on stabbing my body with needles in crazy places, I wouldn't even get an epidural.  I have always wanted another tattoo, but that's another topic for another day.  

What would suddenly spark an interest?  Well someone on FB was posting about their new piercing being infected.  (Yes I realize it seems odd to desire something based upon someone else's discomfort.)  The piercing she got is the tragus piercing.  Honestly I'm totally uncool and I had no idea what that was, so I had to look it up, and yeah, I was a bit afraid to find out.  (If you're as uncool as I am go ahead and click on the link, it isn't anything bad, it's on the ear!)  But when I saw what it was I was like wow, I really like that, I want one!

Part of me is thinking, it's cool, I like it, go for it!  And the other part is, I'm old, I'm boring, it probably won't look as good on me as it does in the pictures I looked at, and I don't really want to purposely cause myself pain, do I?

So, I don't know...should I, or shouldn't I?

New blog

Just wanted to announce that I have created a new blog focused on my weight loss journey.  It is called "The Pursuit of Myself", if you're interested come check it out!