I was just finishing up work last night when the little angel breezed in. She is very firm with me -- when I say "three more emails," she stands over my shoulder and holds me to it. I was trying to fudge a little last night, so finally she flopped on the chair in my office in frustration.
"My feet need to feel the fresh air, Mommy," she huffed. "Hurry up and let's go for a walk."
And that? Was the best thing I'd heard all day. We abandoned the laptop mid-email.
The neighbor pulled into her driveway at 3:30. My home office window faces this driveway, my peripheral vision disallowing ignorance of their comings and goings. The 3:30 arrival kicks me into gear, reminds me if I haven't showered yet that I am somewhat pathetic, that my daughter will be out of school in an hour, that I have two and a half hours left to go before I really have to stop to make dinner.
Three-thirty is often when my blood pressure starts to rise, realizing I'm not going to finish the list I made at 7:30 that morning in time for dinner.
The list isn't realistic. But that doesn't matter to the panic, and that's something I'm working on but circumstances don't always reinforce.
Sometimes I let my mind wander to my life if my workday ended at 3:30, if it were me unloading my car and following my child around in the sunshine. If it were me off in the months of summer. My neighbor to one side is a teacher, to the other a guidance counselor. Jobs fraught with their own troubles, for sure, but these don't matter when I'm stressed and daydreaming about what it would be like to be someone else, someone in the sunshine. Reality doesn't matter in daydreams. Regardless of how much you love your work, daydreams make the world go 'round.
I let my daydreams play as day continued into evening and I went back to my computer after giving the little angel a bath. Just as I used to take the Sears catalog to my room when I was a kid and circle everything I would buy if I had a million dollars, I find myself reimagining my days if I pulled into my driveway at 3:30, finished with work.
And I wonder if she looks at my darkened windows when she leaves to teach at 6:15 am and envies me, still asleep.
This weekend we "vacationed" (by this I mean: we drove to see family and went to the zoo) in fabulous downtown Des Moines, Iowa. I didn't see any flood waters, but I heard from my Cedar Rapids-based brother-in-law that a) flood "water" is a term that should be used loosely, as there is a lot in the water besides water and b) flood water is powerful enough to move just about anything in its way. It was depressing to hear of how much had been lost in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, cities I've lived and worked in.
On the upside, my in-laws are safe and still in their house, which is more than a lot of folks up there can say. (And in Iowa, they are "folks," trust me.) Also, we had a wonderful time. We stayed in a hotel, which made the little angel delirious with happiness, we went to the zoo, we grilled out and the little angel and her five-year-old cousin A. immersed themselves in their cousin M's American Girl collection, which I have to say is very impressive. Those dolls had crutches, roller skates, and tap shoes with real taps on them. It was all I could do to keep from seizing them myself. I got to see three of my nine in-law families, including my MIL and FIL. We had to skip traveling to see them at Thanksgiving last year due to finances, so it was really important we get to see them this weekend.
This morning, of course, the little angel woke up, realized it was a school day, and started having a fit. I told her we were running late (as usual) but today, I just really didn't care. She randomly changed her tune.
"You'd better hurry, Mommy," she said. "Otherwise your work teacher will be mad at you."
GOOD POINT.
---------------
Talking about how to spot stroke and heart attack today at BlogHer.
