Perspective

Alright. I've been in a funk. My husband might tell you that's an epic understatement, but he's not here and this isn't his blog and I have first say here, darn it. But I'll admit, I have a brooding personality, and when things don't go my way, I pout. Lately, a lot of things haven't gone my way.

I'm cranky that I can't keep up with the laundry. Loads make it through the wash and dry cycles, but then sit - and wrinkle - at the "folding station" in our home office. Sometimes they don't even make it that far, and on any given morning I can be found frantically digging through baskets of wadded clean clothing in search of something, anything, that won't make my first-grader look like a latchkey kid when he walks out the door. Doesn't matter if it smells like Tide when it looks like I just pulled it out from a year under my mattress.

Furthermore, I'm frustrated that I have lost all sense of personal space and privacy since leaving the corporate world to stay home with my two boys. I used to take coffee breaks when I wanted. Take a casual stroll on my lunch hour. Meet friends for lunch dates, run errands that didn't involve carrying sippy cups, snack baggies, and an armful of toys to keep little ones entertained just long enough to make it through a check-out line. Now I'm gulping my coffee frantically at 6:45 am because I know that when the baby wakes up at 7:00, a coffee mug becomes a mere target for grabby, curious fingers. The youngest is a clingy little lover, fifteen months old and so infatuated with every cell in my being that for me to take a five-minute shower is both a tragedy and a personal attack on his sensibilities, met with fits of tears and heaving and looks that implore, How COULD you? Every task that requires the use of both my hands has now been relegated to the one hour during which he naps; dishes, making the beds, laundry (ugh), blogging (so you see why it is so infrequent), homework...

Ah, homework. Did I mention I'm in school full time? I do what's necessary for the family and take all of my college courses online. While this may sound convenient, being able to study/test/submit assignments from home (and it is for many purposes), it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to separate academics from home life. I'm a student that requires silence in order to retain anything I read. Having children is anything BUT silent, so study time is put off until everyone's asleep at night. This is also about the same time I need to prop my own eyelids open with toothpicks just to stay conscious, so I'll read a paragraph of Computer Programming, get to the end and realize I have absolutely no recollection of what I JUST finished reading. So I'll start again, the lines of text growing blurrier with each pass, and if I weren't so tired I'd probably feel despair by my fourth unsuccessful attempt to comprehend that one paragraph. It's just not a good system and is a constant source of stress. I honestly don't know how they haven't booted me out of school yet, and I curse myself daily for not doing the smart thing and attending college right out of high school.

I'm also annoyed at how impossibly far we have to make the dollar stretch, especially living in such an affluent part of the country. Everyone's jet-setting and private-schooling and golfing and cocktail-party-throwing and redecorating, and I feel soverysmall as I'm scouring Wal-Mart for sales on store brand frozen meat. Going from two incomes and one child to one income and two children is a bit of a shell-shock. Every indulgence in life is immediately swallowed by remorse and worry about how the money could be better spent, or saved. It's just hard to keep your head high, and even harder not to feel envy or resentment. Mostly, it's hard not to have self-pity. This isn't the life I asked for. Is it?

This morning, I was deep in the mire. I'm still only half-recovered from a head cold that I don't have time for, and the baby was whiny, and I looked around the house, strewn with toys and stupid, stupid baskets of unfolded laundry. And I had to get OUT. I put the baby in the stroller, hid my dark circles behind a pair of large sunglasses, and set out.

It was windy today. Eighty-five degrees in October, and tremendous gusts were creating swirling showers of bright leaves. I'd forgotten how noisy Fall is with its rustling changes. I decided to walk the few blocks down to the historic part of town to mull over life's difficulties at the local bakery. On the way, I forced myself to think of one thing to be thankful for at each crosswalk. At the time, this was no small feat. The baby thought it was hilarious to fling his sippy cup from the stroller every twenty feet and scream for me to fetch it. I, on the other hand, found this to be the farthest thing from hilarious on what was possibly my grumpiest day of the year. As I bent over for the umpteenth time to swipe his cup from the sidewalk, I noticed how dirty my shoes were. Or rather, how loved they were. My favorite shoes. Laceless Converse low-tops, tried and true.

And then it came to me. Grace.

It's 85 degrees in October. Bright blue skies, flurried with rainbowed leaves. I just left the house -- our beautiful house, that we own -- with a little guy in tow who loves so very much with his little baby heart that he doesn't know how to exist without me. I'm walking down my favorite street, in my favorite shoes, en route to the bakery where I'll sip coffee and share a chocolate croissant with my little one. I'll pay the $4.35 with money that my husband earns so that I don't have to work, and can instead not only stay home to raise our sons, but pursue my education, no matter how frustrating it can be. I'll snap photos on my smartphone to remember this precious, momentous occasion. I'll text with a fast and dear friend, the same friend with whom I sat on the patio just last night and shared a bottle of wine as the sun sank -- Oh! -- while the men bathed our babies. And tonight I'll rest easy in my pillowtop bed, next to a man whose snoring has never sounded sweeter to my tired ears.

It's funny how the overlooked, taken-for-granted things can be so truly important, and the seemingly big ordeals can be so trivial after all.

Just a matter of perspective.