MIA

A Facebook friend asked where I have been lately.  As in,  "why the heck aren't you posting your usual cheesy status updates every 20 minutes?"

How do I tell her that I've been cleansing my soul? How do I tell her that I've jumped off the freight train of adulthood and have been riding the  kiddy carousel for the last five months?

In August,  I begin my respiratory therapy program.  It will be 20 hours of school and clinical rotations a week,  beginning every day at 7 a.m.  It doesn't sound like much,  but it's a scheduling hardship with two kids that don't begin their school day till 9 a.m. and a husband that has to leave the house at 7:30.  It's the beginning of a different kind of stress.  It will be rewarding, but  deeply challenging for me.  I have never started the day without my children,  let alone leaving the house at 6:15 in the morning.

I've been hemming pants, planning a London trip, mowing the lawn, and baking banana bread.   It's the final phase of being a stay-at-home mom, and I'm milking the opportunity for all it's worth.  I volunteer at the kids' school,  ride bikes with them to school, and spend 2 hours a day, twice a week,  hiking.  Truly,  it's a deleriously-rich way to spend time.

Pleasurable, almost stress-free days do have a way of making my existence almost hedonistic. I've read every Duran Duran tour review,  and condition my hair quite frequently.  But those small indulgences have taken me back to a place I haven't visited in so long;  my childhood. 

I haven't felt the need to vent or share my joy. I haven't been reading, and  writing seems almost laborious to me.    It's been a deeply personal time.     When I go to bed at night,  I pluck the latest Sudoku  or word game magazine from the nightstand, and settle in for an episode of Dexter.    This all will change.  Soon enough I will plaster my Facebook wall with rants, raves, and small victories.  I will be writing papers for school, and reading about the biochemics of respiration.

But right now I have to go pick up the kids.  And think about how  the hell I've collected 6 tubes of mascara in such a short stretch of time.