Checked out or Plugged in?

I may be stating the obvious but I haven’t felt much like blogging lately. In all honesty, I didn’t expect the weeks since school let out to be so positively blissful. In years past the summer has been something I approached with short, deliberate breaths and clenched fists as if preparing to open a Tupperware dish with unidentifiable and long overdue contents. Imagine, if you will, that instead of opening that Tupperware dish and discovering ricotta cheese that looked like Spanish moss you happened upon a bottomless container of sparkly whipped cream and dancing fairies.

That has been my last two weeks.

I have largely disengaged from the internet, trading my Google reader for excursions to the pool, trips to the library, afternoons planned around Sonic happy hour and mornings that don’t start until 9am. Or 10. Whatever, you probably stopped reading back at the dancing fairies part.

The stark reality for me is noticing the profound difference in how I feel.
It is profound.
It is very different.
We’re talking clouds lifted, seas parted, veil withdrawn, I am HAPPY.

I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I suppose the answer is rooted in the conversations I have forced ad nauseum upon my husband and friends for a while now, pertaining to this: What am I supposed to do with my life? My time?

I have no problem filling up the calendar on a daily basis, the problem is it doesn’t seem to be full of things that satisfy, elevate, or excite me. Here I am, stay at home mother of 2. It’s a path I chose and a path I’m grateful for, but the fact is this full time job of mine is to take care of children who are largely not around. Once they leave for school I have to figure out the next 8 hours on my own. Sounds dreamy, right? I won’t lie, it often is. When my kids were little I fantasized about the day I could grocery shop ALL BY MYSELF, work out ANY TIME I WANTED, or ponder the Home Depot paint samples for HOURS ON END without little hands groping from the cart for all the colors of the rainbow. I’d be considering the right shade of taupe, flashing samples under natural AND fluorescent lighting to be sure I had the right look for the right room and when the little one in the cart would grow impatient I’d toss some goldfish their way for good measure. It’s okay that I’m not wiping faces, fetching snacks or tossing aside my “nantucket buff” or “Chestertown linen” paint chips to address a potty training emergency, but there’s a flip side. A flip side that reveals that instead of craving ADULT conversation in the midst of kid chaos I’m at a point in my life where I will settle for ANY conversation just to break the silence.

There’s an easier way to say this, I was just hoping to make it sound more fascinating and less like a tired country song. Bottom line: I think I’ve been lonely, and I’ve been bored out of my mind. There, I said it. I’ve been bored. B-O-R-E-D. Which is not to say I haven’t been busy, but busy is just doing everything on your list. Happy is being able to do it with fun people, and right now that means Samantha and Drew. I’ve missed them the last 9 months - I didn’t even realize how much until they got out of school, I got off the computer and we all put on our swimsuits. I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth so when you see that I’m not posting, it’s probably because we just woke up. Soon we’ll be eating mangoes in our underwear, watching “Psych” on Netflix and testing every new frozen yogurt establishment so we can declare a winner by August.

H-A-P-P-Y.