Thursday, November 12, 2009

"Meow. I love you, Mommy."

October 17, 2005, 2:30ish.  Those were the first words, accompanied by a hug, that Connor said to me when he woke up from his nap on a Monday afternoon.  It was my first afternoon as a stay-at-home mom.

I would like to say I remember that day as clear as a bell.  There are snippets I remember vividly.  Loading him on the preschool bus for his field trip to the pumpkin patch.  Unloading him from same bus two hours later and falling on my butt in front of the school while trying to pose with Connor and his pumpkin.  Thanks, Carmen, for getting pictures of that!  Playing "kitty" before snuggling him into bed for nap.  Waiting, waiting, waiting with happy anticipation for him to wake up so we could play.  And then the heart-melting meow.  It felt so decadent, so forbidden, so good, so right.







Muddy butt-print and all, it was a glorious day. 

I wish I could remember even more, but it's slipping away.  Crud!!!  I didn't even remember a few weeks ago to celebrate the fourth anniversary of my freedom!  Usually on the 14th at about 5:00pm, I think, "Woo hoo!" to myself for reaching escape velocity and,  "Neener neener neener!!!" to my former coworkers who are still stuck there.  And I have some special feelings for the few people who took what had been my dream job for almost nine years and turned it into a nightmare's nightmare, but since I vowed to keep my blog G-rated I'll keep those "special" feelings to myself.

These days, I'm stressed out again.  With two family deaths and Clint's job change all in the last five months, and the lovely discovery that my personal training 60%/40% commissions is actually the 40% and not the 60% I was promised, there needs to be a stronger word than stressed.  Stressed in bold, underlined, with italics and an exponent of 2 or 3 at the top right.  Stress squared.  Stress to the third power.  Exponentially stressed out.  Stressponentially, speaking, this chick is losing it a little around the edges.

Heck!  That would be a fan-flippin-tastic blog title - "Stress-ponentially Speaking" - but I digress.  What I really wanted to say tonight is that I want to remember, if not recapture, that heart-bursting feeling I had at 2:30ish on the 17th of October, 2005. 

That's why I'm trying this whole blogging thing again.  I don't want to lose any more of the good stuff.

1 comment:

April said...

What a beautiful, thoughtful post. I never even paid attention to the day I became a stay at home mom. I taught school and went on medical disability right after the school term started in January - about a week later. Anyhow, never even thought about celebrating it. I'm glad you took the time to remember what you did and that it was clearly special to you.