DAY 5/10 #embodiment first
Today’s habit ran rabbit circles in my head, loud and clear: keeping score. No one likes to admit this about themselves. At least, I don’t. But when the mind is fried and you’re all three suffering through all-over-sick, pretty-darn-sick, and moderately-sick, the mind gets bored with all that staring at the ceiling.
And so it makes trouble for itself.
Tallies of this or that. Repeats cringe memories from a thing said too many years ago to count. Who’s sicker? Who got more sleep last night? Who’s heading into the heavier workload? Who got out of bed last time to help with Tylenol-tuck-ins-lullabies-fever-checks-water-consumption-you-name-it? Geesh, we like to make things harder for ourselves, don’t we?
To #breakthehabit the only thing I can do is keep my thoughts to myself. Which is another way of saying, more positively: #keepthingsinperspective.
Which turns out to be wise, because by mid-morning what seemed tremendously important in the middle of the night seems petty, now, reading THE GREAT KAPOK TREE for the fifteen millionth time. Did you know it’s possible to hold a feverish 34-pound child in your left arm, turn the pages of a book with your left hand, open the wrapper of a Halls cough drop with your right hand, and dial your husband’s work number (also wtih the right hand) at the same time? I know other parents do this with additional children on each leg, too.
Time takes on that whump-whump feel of too long and heavy. Eleven in the morning feels like four in the afternoon. Two in the morning felt like time for coffee. So did 3, 4, 5, and 6, all of which I saw the clock tick ‘round to. Riding it solo this weekend, I have to bag the 7.5 mile run on this gorgeous day, too, settle for folding one load of laundry (the essentials) not four, and defrost soup I put up last month.
Where do I find “myself” in all this? The body screams at me, the mind is foggy, the heart is on loan until my child feels better (impossible to devote attention to anything else). Keeping things in perspective seems the only answer to #embodiment first and an integrated lifestyle.
The trees help. The trees ALWAYS help.
