a typical day...

4:30 a.m- the dogs wake up and start walking around the bedroom.  The click-clack of their nails on the floor fills me with pure rage .  I love my dogs but at this moment, I would give them away to anyone who asked.  I can't let them out yet, because their stampeding down the hallways will wake Drew.  And my number one goal is to never wake the beast, so I tell the dogs to sit down and put my pillow over my head.

5:30-  Drew crawls into bed.  I try to pretend he isn't there.  And then he whispers, loudly, "I 'miling at you mommy".  And I love his smile so I roll over and give him a hug, and we are up for the day.

5:45-  I make Drew oatmeal, he's too hungry to wait for the bacon and biscuits I'm making.  "Me no like oatmeal".  We fight for 15 minutes.  He finally eats the oatmeal, like he does every morning.

6:00- wake chris and luke.  They swim year round and for summer league so that means two practices.   Tell them to eat and get ready, and head to get myself ready. I spend 20 minutes making myself decently  presentable to the outside world

Shower,  brush teeth, scrunch spray in my hair, mascara.  Get my work clothes out of the dryer (wrinkle setting, this momma don't iron) and I'm ready.

6:30- "Boys, brush your teeth".  I say this 45 times.  Chris will get distracted by the TV.  Luke will lie and say he did when he didn't

Drew will just scream and generally act like an ass.  Pick out clothes for drew and get anything else he needs for school that day. 

Wake jimmy up, he gets to dress the terrorist and take him.

6:40- "we need to go, let's go!".  Someone says, "I still need to brush my teeth!"

 Grrrrrr.

6:45- We leave. 9 times out of 10, someone has forgotten something.  Too late now!

7:00- drop the boys off.  Sit in the parking lot for 10 minutes, trying to soak up some peace before work.

7:30-3:30-  work.  Deal with my other "children" all day long.   "Can I eat?","Can I go home early", "Will you take my ones?", "I need this day off", "I see you are eating, on your way to the bathroom, talking to someone, on the phone,  etc, but I need you now!"  Love them all, but it's just like being at home.  Chat with them, have fun between the chaos, talk to customers,  listen to complaints.   Deal with broken equipment, scheduling mistakes, incorrect food orders.  It is always something.

And then they steal my phone. ..

3:30- bank for work, possibly the store for a few things we need.  Pick up the big boys from one place,  head to day care for the drewfus.

4:30- home.  So tired already.   Make an afternoon cup of coffee.  Pick up around the house.  Wash a load of laundry.  Follow everyone around turning off lights, ha. 

5:30- figure out something for dinner.  Chris eats his first plate and immediately says, "can I have more of everything?".  I swear he never stops eating. 

              

6:30- either showers and downtime of TV or we have stroke and turn practice,  so we head to the pool.

Drew likes practice, he gets a lot of attention.

8:00-  bedtime for the children.  I'm usually dead on my feet by now, so jimmy and I hang out on the couch til I go to bed.  Which is usually not later than 9:00.  I'm so lame.

This is a calm day.  Some days work is crazy and I'm trying to do a food order, count down cash registers and give two job interviews all at the same time.  And during school, the nights are crazy with baseball,  or basketball for Luke on top of the swimming.

I love this life.  I am exhausted constantly.  I don't have lot of time for my friends, which I hate.  But what I didn't tell you about throughout my day is what really matters.  The sweet moments with my kids.  Watching them grow up to be strong,  smart, healthy and talented young men. Watching jimmy be an amazing father to them.  Knowing that in ten years, it will AL change and I'll miss Drews' s early morning smile.  (I will NEVER miss the DAMN dogs in the morning!!)

And a few swim meet shots of the older boys, so I don't leave them out!!

What makes me miss you...

I miss you in the morning when I first wake up .  When I'm fresh from sleep, and it takes a few minutes and I remember that you're gone.

I miss you when I'm driving to work, because I would call you, when the kids weren't in the car and I could actually talk for a minute.

I miss you when a random person calls work, asking us to sponsor their breast cancer program,  and he asks if I've known anyone who has battled the terrible disease.

I miss you when a daycare teacher upsets me, and I don't know if I'm overreacting.   You'd be the first person to tell me what to do.

I miss you when I see your mother's ring on my finger.  I've always been told we look like and I never really see it.  But when I look at my hands, I see your hands.

I miss you when I think of my brother's baby being born.   Or when I think of my sister going back to school, or getting married.  Or anything else you should be here for.

I miss you when I take a video of drew being cute, cause I know you would love it, and share it on Facebook.

I miss you at the swim meets.  You loved to watch your boys swim, and I cry every week when you aren't there with me.

I miss you everyday.  I miss you all the time. I never knew how much I needed you.   I never appreciated you the way I should have.

Cleaning out...

I have opened this blank page to write a post at least 15 times.  And I don't know what to say.  I'm tired of being the "depressed, my mom is dead so I'm crying in the bathroom" chick.  But I have nothing else to talk about.  It's my life right now.

My sister and I went to mom's this weekend to start the process of cleaning out here things.  It's been a month.  It wasn't easy.  On the way there, the fields on either side of the road were brown and wilted looking.  It made me think of when I brought her home from the hospital.  When she went to the hospital, it was still cold and everything was dead.  On the day she went home, it was warmer and the fields were bright green.  She kept talking about how bright and pretty everything was.  I cried until I got to her house.  Pulled myself together and went inside.

Thank God for my sister.  When we are together, we are able to find humor in tough situations.  Jokes and sarcasm pulled us through it.  That and a few awkward photos.  It felt wrong.  Wrong to be going through her things.  Wrong to be sorting through 49 years of memories and deciding what we should keep and what should go.  Wrong to read her cards and letters.  Wrong that all of her years of loving amounted to nothing more than a pile of papers in a Rubbermaid box.

I found the poem she wrote me when I was so angry at her for being upset when I wanted to move out.  It was about how hard it was for her to let me go, even though she knew it was time.  The words have a double meaning now.

I found that she kept every award I'd probably ever won.  All my report cards.  Hundreds of pictures.  All the poems I wrote when I dreamed of growing up and becoming a writer.  The "book" I wrote about a lost kitten.  The auto-biography I had to do in middle school (Ms. Walls' class... some of you probably remember).  So many things.

I found the mother's day ring she wore, the necklace I bought her with the boys' birthstones on it.  The red blouse she wore every Christmas.

So many things.  Things and memories are all I have left of the woman who made me who I am today.

And the memories are hard to get to.  I find I can only think about the last few months of her life.  I try to think of her and I see her in the chemo chair.  Losing her hair.  With the oxygen tubes in her nose.  Talking to people who aren't there.  Getting confused about her medicine.  Sleeping. Crying. Frustrated.    And her final, struggling breaths right before she died.  That is what haunts me.  That is what I see when I close my eyes at night, when I wake in the morning.  I am so, so thankful that I am the only one who saw it.  So glad that it happened too quickly to wake Laura up.  Because I can't get it out of my head, I can't find room for the good memories.  I can't see past it.

Random things

Here are all my current thoughts, dumped in one central location.

Picked up mom's death certificates.  Also called her phone to hear her voice on her voicemail message.  Did all of this right before work, which resulted in hiding in the bathroom and crying repeatedly.  Note to self- save this kind of behavior for a non-work day.

Also... I can never, ever listen to this. Never again.

I tried to call her yesterday to tell her something.  Literally dialed 9 of the 10 numbers before I realized what I was doing.

Last week was a long week.  An emergency room visit with my uncle.  An emergency room visit with my husband.  Then my husband being sick all week, I worked basically Wed-Sat nights, and then we had a big cleaning day at work so I was there for most of Sunday.  I barely saw the kids, barely saw the husband. Didn't get anything done around the house, didn't get the grocery shopping done or my workouts done over the weekend.  It was a total disaster.

I'm ready for a new week.  Ready to spend the first part of the day at the pool with my older boys.  I promised them on Mondays in the summer, we'd send Drew to daycare for the first part of the day (he needs to nap anyway) and we would have some pool time.   After that, I have to some how squeeze 15 loads of laundry, cleaning my bathroom, grocery shopping and cooking dinner into the rest of the day.

And now I have to get started.  I need to get my workout in, the dreaded p90x.  If  I have some spectacular results, I might share them with you.  I took all my measurements first, and a terrible "before" pic.  Wish me luck!