I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they return to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to best use the end of their break. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

On Thursday evening, Josh bought the ChickieNob her first cherry chapstick. She had been coveting one for a while and he was at the grocery store, so he picked one up to surprise her. Needless to say, she instantly fell in love with her lip balm. So much so that when I took her brother to his guitar lesson, she brought it along just to hold it in her hand because she didn’t want to leave it back in the house.

And then she visited the school of chapstick hardknocks.

She did what ever single person has done at some point in her life, that quintessential moment of childhood when you absentmindedly (or in some cases purposefully) twist the bottom gear until the chapstick is up as high as it will go. For a few moments, she marveled at the red brick of waxy lip balm. And then she was taught the lesson every child learns the hard way: that twisting the gear to its limit brings about instant chapstick death.

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I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they return to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to best use the end of their break. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

1. I love long names–the twins each have two middle names for a total of four names each.
2. I have a mortal fear of mayonnaise.
3. I hate surprises so no surprise parties; but I also hate surprises so much that I rarely see a film unless someone else has already seen it and told me everything that will happen. Even with non-scary/sad films. I also made Josh give me a three month window for when he was planning to propose so that I could prepare myself for it.
4. I also don’t like receiving flowers. Seeing them outside the house is great. Inside the house, not so much.
5. When I travel, I carry a picture of myself taken in the Galilee after our boat broke down.

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P.S. Though I often wear scarves, so that one is no longer true.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they return to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to best use the end of their break. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

A few months ago, we received a gift card for $75 when Josh’s aunt was closing up his grandmother’s accounts after death. I know the natural initial thought is: what fun. But we were also told the gift card would expire on January 21, 2013, and we suddenly felt a tremendous amount of pressure to get something that would honour her and help the kids remember her; a final gift from their great-grandmother.

By the time we returned to thinking about the card, we had two weeks left before it expired. My stomach was in knots every time we thought about it. We couldn’t put it toward a trip because we needed to use the money by the 21st and we hadn’t time to travel. While there were things we needed insofar as home repair, there wasn’t enough time to make an informed decision. We didn’t want to squander it on groceries or media. We wanted the gift to be monumental, yet we had no ideas what sort of gift would feel monumental.

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I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they return to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to best use the end of their break. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

So right after I posted that manifesto on defining womanhood and Josh moved the stroller back to the basement storage room, a woman wrote that she saw my posting on the listserv and wanted to know if she could buy it. I froze not knowing what to do. The woman was pregnant with twins, due in August. Josh’s thought was that if I didn’t give it to her, it would one day end up in a landfill because we couldn’t keep something this large forever — and even if we did, whoever had to deal with our stuff afterwards would likely dump it. Whereas giving it to her would mean that another woman gets to use it and have that moment of pushing her twins in it.

But it felt (irrationally) like someone else got my moment.

Read the whole post here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they return to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to best use the end of their break. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

Nothing has been removed from our house. Everything is exactly the same way it was the day before–the same work needs to get done, the same children need to be raised, the same house needs to be cleaned, the same husband needs to be…entertained. And yet, once 8:30 a.m. passed and we entered a space where what was done was done, I felt an enormous stillness. I was in the car, driving the ChickieNob and Wolvog to an appointment I was scheduled to miss if I had gone ahead with my day 3 blood work and I noticed the clock said 8:50 a.m. My feet were supposed to be in the stirrups. Instead, they were on the gas pedal of my car.

I think the most telling moment was that I baked today. I had been wanting to bake for weeks, make cookies for Josh’s workplace to celebrate his new position. I didn’t have any more time today than I do on any other day. The difference was that my thoughts weren’t racing and without my thoughts racing, there was a stillness within the house. I could easily see how to balance the day. It is the difference between trying to think within a house of noisy animals and trying to think in the stillness that comes after you’ve let them out of the house.

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