Even as I sat down to write this daylog I am told, “I want apple juice Mommy.” So perhaps I will not have much time, as usual. Can’t…seem…to…rub…two…words…together…without…
interruption.
I have been meaning to node but not able to manage the time. I have a ton of wedding gifts I was supposed to wrap and have sent out. I am supposed to be wrapping a gift for a friend who is about give birth (any second). I am supposed to be wrapping housewarming gifts for my sister who moved to Chicago a few days ago and must be standing in her very own apartment right now. Thinking of this reminds me of the first place that was ever really my own, and the giddy lightheaded feeling I had when I flicked on the light to behold the miracle of electricity. Somehow, getting an electric bill in my own name made me feel more like an adult than buying the house did. I was twenty-one. So is my sister. I miss her already but now I have a great excuse to actually make it to Chicago.
I celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday on the 29th of January. It was not really anything too amazing, though I don’t know what I keep expecting. Brass band, sunlight, Godiva chocolate, a private, romantic dinner with my husband… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I really don’t expect that. But I would not turn it down either. I got money instead, which is not bad. It isn’t a lot of money, but somehow, having folding bills in my wallet makes me feel more at ease. I hate having that conversation that goes, ”Honey, can I have a small sum of money which I pledge to spend on something important and perhaps even beneficial to you.” It is not his fault that I don’t have a paying job. I have chosen to stay home and mother my children. I remember the suffocated feeling I had when I was working. I remember looking out the window in the middle of a shift and forcing myself to stay in the chair and not bolt right out the door to frolic with the squirrels. And my husband is not really the cash ogre I just made him out to be. I will not deny that we are on a very tight budget. Fortunately I am not enamored with shiny new things. I dream of art supplies, canvas and paints, wire and batting, floss and needle. I dream good speakers, a CD burner, a coffeepot, fantastic kitchen knives and pots that don’t stick. (Wait, that stuff is shiny…)
I am waiting to move. This waiting takes up a lot of energy. It feels like Hans will never be ready with his house. I am very used to waiting. Waiting to turn eighteen so I could move out of the house. Waiting to see Jay, sometimes six months, sometimes nine months, each of us in a different state, writing frantic love letters and breathing heavy into the phone. Waiting for the babies to come, each of them way over due. Waiting to move.
Looking at all these books (forty boxes moved in and about sixty will move out). I jokingly told Jay last time we moved that I would not haul his Iron Maiden up one more flight of stairs. So now, where we had seven crates of albums, we have whittled to four, mainly jazz and blues, children’s and classical with some David Bowie, B52’s and Kate Bush.
I chopped off a foot and a half from my hair. Another thing I have to do is get it in the mail. I am donating it to Locks of Love an organization that makes wigs for kids who have lost their hair to chemotherapy. My head is much lighter. I kept some of the hair for myself, with the intention of making a doll. It is the hair I grew through two pregnancies, thick and strong and smelling of lavender. Now it is in a box. Katie was in the bathroom with me when I cut off the big braid. When it came off in my hand I made a sort of involuntary gasp and Katie said, “Mommy, you broke your hair.” She was rather alarmed. I can not say if I like it or not. I forgot that under all this weight my hair is pretty wavy, so I am not used to it yet.