And then I cried.

Wednesday started off a little rough. 

It went a little something like this:

5 a.m. Child climbs over me to get in my bed.

5:30 a.m. Same child makes a few OH I KNOW THOSE gagging noise, I throw said child back over me - none too gently - and rush to bathroom for minor vomit incident.

5:45 a.m. Scrub the teensy bit of minor vom from the floor on hands and knees. Sanatize some things. Start laundry.

6:30 a.m. Text boss explaining situation. (For the record, Karl and I generally try to trade off sick days; it was my turn.)

7:00 a.m. Prepare other people to leave the house. Tamp down jealousy. Feel slightly better when I realize I can stay in my pj pants. 

9:00 a.m. Open work email, confirm scheduled communication and social media posts for a client. Continue checking and responding to email.

9:15 a.m. Continue working WHILST STILL REMAINING WITHIN ARMS REACH. Because Nate.

9:30 a.m. Email and links go out.

9:31 a.m. ALL CAPS EMAIL FROM CLIENT VERY ANGRY ABOUT TYPO IN FACEBOOK POST. Insert scathing words here. (For the total record, the spelling error was in the copy of the text pulled into a facebook post by a link so I didn't actually write it, but, regardless, the client was right. I should have checked it.)

9:32 a.m. Unexpected tears pop out of my experienced, old lady eyeballs. Unanswerable questions begin from 7 year old. (Q: What's wrong? Why are you crying? Is someone hurt?) (A: Mommy's upset because she made a mistake for her job and needs to fix it.) (Silent A: AND THIS GUY - who signed his email with just his initial - is not being very nice about it.)

So, like I said, a little rough. It's not like I have never cried about a client or a job before, but it's been a long time and this was something very minor and fixable. I think it caught me off guard on a morning where everything was out of routine and not the normal Order of Wednesday Mornings. I'm not immune to leaky eyeballs. I'm also not asking for sympathy; in fact, please don't - I'm over it.  The client may have been having a really shitty Wednesday morning himself.

I guess, as we approach the weekend and get ready to go out to eat or go to work or play with our friends and family, I'm just hoping to approach it with more of a Be Kind kind of attitude. So, all in all, a good reminder for me : LIVE A NON CAPS LOCK KIND OF LIFE. 

Put This (Shit) on Pinterest!

So sometimes I feel like I am still trying to hit my stride with this whole parenting gig. I show up for things like PTA meetings/functions and I think, Nah this isn't me. I shouldn’t be here. I don't fit. (Like where should I be? The club? The bar? The gym?)  Some things that seem to come naturally to other parents don't always feel as natural to me. Or I feel too young or too underdressed or too... (insert your insecurity here!).

But sometimes (sometimes!) I feel like maybe I get it right.

Nate's 2nd grade class has a Surprise Reader that comes in every Thursday morning. Parents or family members sign up for a spot and the stage (or the rainbow mat – whatever) is yours to talk or read about anything. His sweet teacher emailed me a few suggestions – ranging from a science experiment (yea, that's a no for me) to making paper airplanes (props? We can bring props? Yes please.) to reading a favorite book.

I wanted to share something both Nate and I love. He has a few books we read over and over and over. One of those is "Ted Williams :: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived" (A baseball book!? GASP.) There aren't many kids in his class that play baseball or softball so I wasn't sure how the book would go over, but, well, 2nd graders are pretty rad and they were totally into it.

 

Oh hey, Ted! If you ever want to be bum rushed by 23 adorable 7 & 8 year olds, just read the sentence in this book that says "And he swung and swung until his hands would bleed." And then, when one of the most adorable girls in the 2nd grade asks sweetly "Is there blood in the picture?" and you squint real close, because, yes, yes the illustrator did actually put a few spots of blood on Ted's bat in the picture, prepare yourself for 23 "LET ME SEEEEEEEEEs" coming at you!

 

I also brought some super old baseball cards. (Most married people have to combine, like, their CD collections. Karl and I had to combine our old baseball cards. I mean, what do people even combine now? Their iTunes accounts!?) Anyway, the kids had a blast looking through the cards and picking out their favorite 80s mustaches.

I regaled them with horrible old lady stories about walking to the neighborhood drugstore (And then thought - crap can I say drugstore!? HA.) to buy a pack of baseball cards for 25 cents mostly so I could get the stick of sweet cardboard-like gum. Raise your hand if you remember this sweet waxy packing and the gum sticks! (Also this is an old photo from the internet, I only WISH I still had some of that gum in the original packaging. Imagine the rock-hardness.)

Then we made our own baseball cards. Well, Nate and a few others made theirs baseball related.  There was also a nice variety of soccer, gymnastics, dance, basketball, cheer and one horseback rider. I'm sure I am breaking some copyright law here with the Topps logo but there were a bunch of blank baseball card templates on The Internets so I'm going with LEGAL. 

All in all, pretty adorable, right?

Sweeps Month is Here. Let's All Cancel Cable and Blog Again.

At this point, I don't know exactly where to start. Blogging obviously is not high on my priority list and, like one of my old bosses said way back in 2005 when I tried to convince him to start a blog and use social media for a client, the trend is on it's way out, right? (HA. I'd love to hear his current opinion on the state of social media.)  For me, there are so many other avenues to connect with people online, this one just sort of fell to the wayside.

Problems with this:

Our family archives are a little more blank than they used to be. Events aren't reflected the same. My brain is getting more spotty, not less, so writing things down is becoming increasingly important. (See also: My planner looks crazy, the to-do lists are long, and second grade is hard.)

My writing is RUSTY at best. (That's the first time I've used CAPS FOR EMPHASIS in, like, forever.)

It's still one of my great loves – to blog, to write it down, to connect with people when they read it.

Advantages to this:

I have more time to focus on the life in front of me and hanging out with those two small people I birthed many moons ago.

I have more energy to focus on some things that needed focusing on in the last little bit of my life – namely, myself and my people.

But like every season of change (Come on FALL!), I feel myself feeling antsy for a change and unclear where to start. So I thought I would come back here – to this space that made me happy for so long – and see what might happen.

Hope you will join me. (Subscribe here.)