Runaway October

“Seren­ity is not free­dom from the storm, but peace amid the storm.”

Peace­ful by Joewong038

I’ll be the first per­son to admit that I dreamed about stay­ing home with my kids. Home­school, organic, nature walks, art projects, muse­ums, a spot­less beau­ti­fully dec­o­rated house, orga­nized clos­ets and more all floated through my head. I just knew that if I could work it out to stay home, every­thing would be perfect.

At the time, my hus­band and I were jug­gling our first­born. I worked early early in the morn­ing, and came home to trade off with Matt, who worked late at night. We thought that hav­ing one par­ent with Declan at all times was the best route. Except that nei­ther of us were sleep­ing well and D wasn’t nec­es­sar­ily get­ting the atten­tion he deserved. We were there with him, but not really. Many times I was so tired at work that I’d fall asleep on the phone with people.

Once I was preg­nant with Rowan, we knew that we needed to do some­thing. We got every­thing in line and I never returned to work after giv­ing birth to Rowan.

That should be the end of the story right? But­ter­flies and home­made bread and rainbows.

Not really.

I strug­gle with stay­ing at home.

Call me lazy, most days I don’t care if you do, but this is HARD.

Laun­dry is never done, dishes always pile up, the boys are always destroy­ing some­thing, some­one always has a snide com­ment about peo­ple who don’t “work”, and there’s no mon­e­tary reward for doing it all.

It’s so easy to sit in front of the com­puter, revive those dying brain cells with ran­dom web brows­ing and just put it off for another day.

Or you can spend the day doing laun­dry, only to find out that while you were upstairs hang­ing busi­ness clothes, a 10 pound bag of flour was oh-so-quietly flung across the downstairs.

Or you can set out all the sup­plies for a craft project and be so excited to see what your kids make, just for it to turn into a brawlfest over one orange marker when there’s two oth­ers sit­ting right there.

Or it means try­ing to write a blog post only to hear a proud “I wiped my butt Mama!” come from the bath­room, where an inves­ti­ga­tion reveals that you need to dig half a roll of toi­let paper out of the toi­let. Again.

I’m not alone in this. I know I’m not the only one who has these days, or inci­dents, or chores. But most days and weeks, I am alone.

It’s hard to have friends when you have two lit­tle boys. Other fam­i­lies with kids are busy with their own issues and those with­out kids, well, don’t want to spend adult time deal­ing with some­one else’s. I feel like a fail­ure when I ask other peo­ple to watch my kids so I can run to the store, or have a date night, or just be alone.

Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s Other Mom Syndrome.

Other Moms have per­fect houses. Well behaved clean chil­dren. A spot­less kitchen. Per­fect outings.

But who are these Other Moms? Are you one? Can you please give me some pointers?

I can’t find moti­va­tion. Why do it now, if I just have to do it again with no thank you, no recog­ni­tion, no reason?

Where can I find the moti­va­tion to do what I need to do with­out sac­ri­fic­ing myself?

My hus­band and I have some­what reg­u­lar date nights, but lit­tle to talk about other than run­ning the house. The things that he gets excited about go over my head. I’ve been out of his indus­try for 3 years now, and who really wants to talk about dec­o­rat­ing and potty train­ing? He, under­stand­ably, has no idea what mitered hems are and what’s the best ratio of borax to Fels Naptha for the next batch of home­made laun­dry soap. We end up wor­ry­ing about money, because there never seems to be enough and I get angry because Matt’s com­pany has owed him a raise for a year now and the miss­ing 10k is unlikely to ever be seen.

I try to find peo­ple to con­nect with on the blog-o-sphere, but am eas­ily intim­i­dated by their seem­ingly per­fect lives, beau­ti­ful pic­tures and well-written, thought pro­vok­ing posts. I can’t find a niche.

Occa­sion­ally, we’ll be invited to a party or event but by the time it rolls around I have so much anx­i­ety about going that we don’t. Which typ­i­cally leads to less and less invites to begin with.

I really want to go back to col­lege, to do some­thing tax­ing with my mind, to grad­u­ate, to have a career, to save lives, to be impor­tant. Finan­cially and time management-wise, it’s impossible.

How will I ever find the patience to home­school? Jee­bus, am I even smart enough to home­school these boys? I really hate math.

Should I just give up on wish­ing for that beau­ti­ful room and buy some ply­wood and cin­der blocks to just get the clut­ter off the ground?

Unlike most mommy blog­gers, I have no solu­tion. I don’t have any encour­ag­ing links or action plans. I just really really need to hear from some­one, any­one, who has the same doubts and issues.

As I get closer to wrap­ping this whine­fest up, I doubt I’ll click that taunt­ing lit­tle ‘Pub­lish’ but­ton up there. It’s just more proof for peo­ple to con­sider me a fail­ure. But, ya know what? What­ever, I can’t hide who I am and the per­ceived issues I face.

So fire away. I know Momma M would just tell me to ‘Get Over It’, but it doesn’t seem to work like that, as far as I can tell.

Maybe I’ve got a veg­etable jun­gle because of Rowan’s green thumb?

He’s pretty proud of that garden.

Do you have any spe­cial helpers in your garden?

——————————

Yep, you heard right. My plain jane kitchen has had a facelift.

Here she is before, look­ing pretty… neutral.

And after! A cou­ple wash­ings with TSP, a cou­ple coats of Valspar Jaunty Green, and doesn’t she look so pretty? To the left of the fridge is where the chalk­board wall will be. I’m excited to get that done. But first I need to fill in the knock­down wall tex­ture and slap on some thick coats of primer before even THINKING about start­ing that endeavor.

Rowan’s being coy.

I didn’t paint the wall with the win­dow and sink in it because it’s one con­tin­u­ous wall the goes into the boys class­room. I don’t think I could han­dle THAT much bright green.

Oh hey! Why yes, yes I am wear­ing only under­wear, a hoodie and Ketchup.

If you look closely at  the first after pic­ture there is a very small space above the upper cab­i­nets that’s use­less still unpainted. I think I’ve decided it needs to be painted too, even though the only thing small enough to fit up there are the cats.

So there ya have it. My other color thoughts for this room were an aqua (but that seems to be my first thought for every room) or a smoky pur­ple. What would you have done?

—

Please don’t for­get to vote for me daily, if you would be so kind. Thank you!

I have a hard time cook­ing for my brood some most days. Some don’t like mush­rooms, some don’t like any­thing spicy, some don’t like food that requires work (such as chicken wings), some just don’t like any­thing like lit­tle Rowan. It can get frus­trat­ing when you’re flip­ping through a cook­book list­ing off deli­cious recipes and every­thing gets vetoed by one per­son or another. It’s also frus­trat­ing when you give up and choose some­thing and it doesn’t get­ting eaten quickly enough to not grow slimy in the fridge. I know. It’s hard to believe that hap­pens in this house.

Matt, the boys and I stopped by a Half-Price Book store the other night, and I res­cued a cou­ple beat up low­fat cook books for a dol­lar a piece. Can you imag­ine the groans that caused? “Low­fat? You mean ‘Fla­vor Free’ right?” Etc etc. But there are actu­ally quite a few recipes that I think will end up being keep­ers. This recipe is one of them.

Seafood is not some­thing we nor­mally eat. I’ve never been huge fan, Matt doesn’t see what the hype is about, and kids will be kids, right? My brother on the other hand… We made a dou­ble batch and picked up a pound of shrimp on sale for less than 5 dol­lars. Every­thing else I pretty much had on hand.

Even a large serv­ing of the dish comes in under 350 calo­ries. The pasta makes it very fill­ing, and the broc­coli gives you lots of good vit­a­mins. Am I the only mama blessed with kids that gen­er­ally love vegetables?

Par­don my bad pic­tures. The sun had gone down before I started din­ner. Oops!

Pasta in Gar­lic Sauce with Shrimp and Broccoli

Adapted from The 99% Fat-Free Cookbook

This clear, thin gar­lic sauce is a note­wor­thy change from the heavy mound under which pasta typ­i­cally is buried. It lends both a per­me­at­ing fla­vor and a gloss to the pasta, set off by flecks of seafood and veg­eta­bles.

Yield: 4 servings

Ingre­di­ents:

• 10 gloves garlic
• 1 cup 99% fat free, reduced sodium Chicken Stock
• 8 ounces uncooked thin-strand spaghetti
• 2 table­spoons water
• 1 pound broc­coli flo­rets (About 1 large head)
• 1/2 cup sliced white onion (About 1 small onion)
• 1/2 pound cooked medium shrimp (About 24) peeled, deveined, and halved
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
• 1/8 tea­spoon red pep­per flakes
• Salt and Pep­per to taste

Direc­tions:

• Put the gar­lic and stock in a small non­re­ac­tive sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Sim­mer for about 20 min­utes, until the gar­lic is soft and eas­ily smashed with a fork. Trans­fer the con­tents of the pan to a food proces­sor or blender, and purée until smooth. Set aside.
• Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta, stir­ring to make sure the strands don’t stick together, and cook over high heat to desired ten­der­ness. (3 to 4 min­utes for home­made or other fresh pasta, 8 to 10 min­utes for dry pasta.)
• Mean­while, put 1 table­spoon of water in a non­stick fry­ing pan and bring to boil over medium heat. Add the broc­coli and onion and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook for 3 min­utes. Add the shrimp, dill and the remain­ing table­spoon of water. Stir, recover and cook for 4 to 5 min­utes more. Remove from the heat.
• When the pasta in done, drain it in a colan­der and return it to the pot over very low heat. Add the gar­lic purée then mix well to coat the pasta. Add the broccoli-shrimp mix­ture and the sea­son­ings. Toss together until well blended and serve immediately.

Nutri­tion info:

• Calo­ries  316.1
• Total Fat 2.5 g
  • Sat­u­rated Fat 0.2 g
  • Polyun­sat­u­rated Fat 0.9 g
• Monoun­sat­u­rated Fat 0.2 g
• Cho­les­terol     110.5 mg
• Sodium     613.3 mg
• Potas­sium     416.4 mg
• Total Car­bo­hy­drate     49.7 g
  • Dietary Fiber 4.8 g
  • Sug­ars 2.1 g
• Pro­tein     22.2 g
• Vit­a­min A 30.0 %
• Vit­a­min B-12 14.1 %
• Vit­a­min B-6 15.8 %
• Vit­a­min C 115.2 %
• Vit­a­min D 0.0 %
• Vit­a­min E 7.2 %
• Cal­cium 7.8 %
• Cop­per 9.1 %
• Folate     39.6 %
• Iron     25.0 %
• Mag­ne­sium 10.6 %
• Man­ganese     18.5 %
• Niacin     30.3 %
• Pan­tothenic Acid         6.3 %
• Phos­pho­rus         14.5 %
• Riboflavin     22.1 %
• Sele­nium 36.7 %
• Thi­amin 36.0 %
• Zinc     8.8 %

Rowan has always had what we affec­tion­ately called “Old Man Hair” — Really fine, wispy and eas­ily messed up. Recently it has got­ten too long for me to be eas­ily amused by spik­ing it up, so it was time for a hair­cut. Since it was to be his first hair­cut we were going to go to one of those salons for kids, but we arived to find that they had per­me­nantly closed their doors. Makes sense in this econ­omy, I guess. Declan was sad, he had talked about get­ting a hair­cut all morning.

So, we just fig­ured we’d do what we always do: Buzz ‘Em!

Declan Before:

[singlepic=258]

Dur­ing:

[singlepic=259]

[singlepic=260]

After! So handsome!

[singlepic=262]

Rowan was quite unsure about the whole experience…

Before:

[singlepic=263]

He did really well.

I’m sure the buzzing feel­ing on his head felt funny at first. About halfway through we had to stop to let him nurse so that he’d hold still for the rest of the “styling”.

Dur­ing:

[singlepic=264]

[singlepic=265]

After! Yay!

[singlepic=267]

Look at all that beau­ti­ful hair! Declan and I had a con­ver­sa­tion about what to do with it. He wanted to wad it all up and put it in his lit­tle tin lunch­box, but I won out by telling him that the birds needed it. He thought it was really cool that the birds could use his hair to make nests out of. Hope­fully I can find a nest full of hair so he can see how his gen­eros­ity is being put to good use.

[singlepic=266]