The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

I took an hour bath this morning.  I was cold after my tiny yoga/getting the kids off/john off session and so I filled the tub with hot water and climbed in and opened a real book and read read for an hour or maybe . . . more. I don't know because I ignored everything and I only know when I got out, not when I got in. I'm letting my hair dry crinkly and frizzy and I'm wearing comfort clothes and watching the clouds outside my window get heavier and darker.  They look pregnant and I want to yell at them, Just give birth already!  Let that heavy water fall right down on us.  I know I'm ridiculous but that doesn't seem to stop me. These days, now the fifth day, of the children all being gone for a few hours (six may seem like a lot to you, but to me, they seem like a blip in the day), I find I am fiercely jealous of my hours alone.  I turn my phone on silent, I shut my shutters and hide in my bedroom at the back of the house.  I pray that everyone will forget tha

Woo-wee, what a summer.  None stop action from beginning to end--just like it always is--John'ts birthday trip to the pacific northwest, Colorado, Girls Camp, Calgary, Thomas Family Reunion, Idaho and a whole lot in-between! But now, the third day of school is in progress and I find myself home alone with not only a few minutes, but a few hours to spare. I'm not sure what to think.  I am not sure I can trust this feeling of calm, of peacefulness, of actually picking up something and it staying picked up for more than three minutes. I have, it seems arrived. Where? To the time where I have some discretionary time. It's not that I haven't had it before.  In fact, I've always had it until these last three years where the kids schedules have started overlapping and intwining until I had no time at al EVER.  And I got used to that.  It was the norm.  I remembered vaguely having time to read and write and sit and cook and BE, but that seemed like a