The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

(And we need to get our internet fixed!  It was down again last night . . .  So here's yesterdays) I slept in Saturday morning until 9am. This is actually unheard of for me (unless I travel east).  I wake with the birds.  7:30am is actually pretty late for me to get up . . . but 9am.  Unheard of. And so needed.  I was in bed fast asleep by 10:30 pm Friday night (after the grandma hour date John and I had--dinner and a movie all before 9:30pm--no crowds anywhere!  It was the best). I know I've been mentioning having a hard few months where my anxiety has been a bit higher than normal, but what I was really experiencing was pretty hard long days every day.  I couldn't really get a grip on reality.  I'm still not totally sure what is real and what isn't.  That's the hard part of anxiety, it makes you doubt yourself and everything and everyone around you.  And this, by far, is nothing compared to what I've been through. I know...

It turns out that having teenagers/young adults is actually time consuming.  I know, news flash for all of you who've walked this path, but I just didn't quite understand it.  I was reading Rachel Hollis' Girl Wash Your Face  (which by the way is delightful) and she has this chapter on new borns and how hard they are.  As I was reading it, I could not help but think . . . wait, I feel that same way . . .  now  with teenagers!  I don't get sleep, I'm constantly worried they're going to get hurt or kill themselves or worse, and I can't control anything and I mostly don't have any idea what they need or are saying . . . and you really never know if you're going to get any sleep because they come home late, or when they do come home they want to chat (if you're lucky) or just stomp off and don't want to talk at all and then you're worried for a whole other reason. Time consuming AND stressful. What the heck? I guess parenting is just ...

My mother was a scatter brain.  Honestly, I don't think any of my siblings or myself can count the times we've been forgotten at ballet or wherever we were.  My aunt would regularly give me a dime to keep in my ballet bag so I'd be able to call her to have her come pick me up (yep, I had the BEST aunt EVER!).  My Mom would be in the middle of something and then totally forget what she was doing.  She'd go to the grocery store and come back without the one thing she needed there . . . I have to say that I thought she was disabled.  I mean, who could forget THEIR OWN CHILD? Right.  There were only eight of us!  And two or three were pretty much already gone!  And how can you go grocery shopping and forget the dish washing detergent?  It's the REASON you went!  Yep, I was sort of punky and if you know my mom, well, she just listened to me tell her a thing or two and said she was sorry (sometimes she cried) and I thought, Oh, man, Mom, whe...