Catching up

Blogging has been the last thing on my mind lately. Survival is pretty much the name of the game these days. I should be thanking my brilliant genius for making us go to Paris last month, because it will be awhile before we roadtrip again! Let me recap the 3 things that have left me a little unhinged:

1. We got back to London from Paris on a Friday night and Mark left for Tokyo Saturday morning. He was gone for a week, and during that time I totally killed it. Did some job research, meal planning, started reading 2 different books (The Invisible Man and Nora Ephron's Heartburn), and planned a fun activity every day to do with Henry. It was a good week, but I was ready for Mark to come back on Friday evening and be my husband and Henry's Dad. :)

2. The following Monday, Mark was a little late getting home from work, and I hear a knock at the door. I open the door and it is Mark with his bicycle, and blood and scrapes on his legs, hands, and arms. He'd crashed his bike in the rainy commute home, and after a trip to the emergency room, found out he broke his right thumb and his left arm. So. That was about a week ago. He had surgery on his hand on Friday. It's basically been a crazy mess around here for the past week. Henry always reminds him - Dada fall down, Doctor fix it. Mark couldn't even open anything or dress himself or feed himself the first few days, but his arm is slowly healing (luckily it was just a radial head fracture, and not the radius itself) and he's devised some funny ways to feed himself and brush his teeth. I admire his tenacity and creativity, I really do.

3. The biggest and dumbest thing of all: I've been talking with Henry about giving his pacifier to the baby animals at the zoo, or the baby fishies in the river (he is 27 months old and we try to just keep the pacifier to naps and night night time only, but he's been more insistent about it lately during the day and has lots of tantrums all the time. I'm over it!), so Thursday morning when we were standing in front of the Globe Theatre watching boats pass by us, and he chucked his pacifier right into the Thames. And I thought, well this is it - it's time to get rid of Henry's baba. He used to go straight down for naps and sleep for 3 hours, but now there is weeping and wailing and down to only about 2 hours of nap time. And night night time has turned into an epic excuse factory to keep him from bed, and I basically have to put him down laughing or he will be too sad and just cry cry cry. It breaks my heart! But we are 5 days in now, and there's no turning back. It's getting better now.
Whenever he asks me for his baba, I ask - where is your baba?
In the river! Threw it off the bridge!
or
At the zoo with baby animals!
It doesn't help that my dad has totally laid the guilt trip on me for taking it away from him - comparing it to someone throwing my iphone into the Thames. Rude.

Anyway, it's been a crazy past week, and I'm ready to turn a page. I have a few things on my radar that are just for me, which help me feel more like a human and less like a caretaker with nothing left to give. Taking care of a toddler and a broken husband is a lot of work and I have not taken care of myself at all the past 2 weeks. I really need to learn the art of balancing taking care of others and not letting myself fall by the wayside. It is a complete mystery to me.

One way ticket to somewhere, please.

Hello from a sad little office in DC, with a forlorn-constantly sighing me sitting and dreaming of a far off place called Oregon, staring at this $130 ticket we received this morning for being a day late on changing our zone sticker (burn in hell, street parking).
We just returned from a week away in Portland and the Oregon coast where it was sweater weather and Henry waved for the first time and the night we got home started "scooching" as we're calling it. He literally uses his strongman arms to pull his entire body across the floor. If his goal is to impress his mom and dad, job well done.

Henry learns to wave. from julie rowlett on Vimeo.


Anyway, I'm just dreaming of being back in cooler weather, doing different things, hanging out with my guys all day long, and watching Henry grow up. Sometimes being a working mom is the exact opposite of the life I want. But it does inspire me to reflect on my life and try to figure out what it is that I do want.

this is how my day goes.

wake up. nudge TH to get up and go running. go back to sleep.
wake up. TH is still there! nudge, nudge. ok, he's up. he runs. i sleep.

shower. work.

mid-day: meet TH for lunch. he sees me from down the street and waves. we make silly faces at each other. then he sticks his arms out and runs toward me to give me zombie hugs. yes, nearly every day he does this. it is always funny and i pretend to be embarrassed, but i love it.

finish work. go home. procure food (bare bones fridge lately, folks!).

watch the daily show and make fun of politicians.

and that, my friends, is my life. i love it.

doesn't the bow-tie just kill you? i love it!

Gahhhh

I'm feeling very melodramatic lately, as a certain number of events have recently taken place in my life to make me feel so inclined.

1. Boy drama
2. School decisions
3. Work hatred
4. More boy drama
5. Listening to angsty music (read: Blonde Redhead, Sage Francis, Glos)

I don't want to go into too much detail on the ole blog here, but I can't seem to make any concrete decisions about boys, school, or work. And it's extremely frustrating. I've been seeing a couple different guys over the past few months and one of them is kind of sticking, but I'm not so sure I want it to. It's so hard to find comfort in a relationship and to find somebody who you can rely on as a source of love, comfort, support, understanding, fun, and stimulating converstaion. I used to find this fairly often when I was younger. The older I become, however, the harder it is to find a boy who fits into these categories. I feel like I had it recently...and then ran away from it. It was too good.

I have been accepted to some AMAZING grad programs both locally and further up the eastern seaboard. I'm very excited but really scared to make the change and possibly make a move. I know which school I should go to, but I'm thinking about applying to a community college just so I don't have to deal with the scary.

Work is kicking my trash lately and I have been calling in sick and going on vacations to get away from it. I have a really great opportunity to gain some professional and more advanced experience, but I'm terrified. And I don't know if I'll take the offer. I just want to sit at home and do nothing.

I have run-away syndrome. Something starts going well in my life and I get scared and the sabotage begins. I know I can change this - I just need to find my motivation.