The Depth of Faith

When we were at the beach this fall, with no prompting, Sadie laid down in the sand and proclaimed that she was making "sand angels" instead of snow angels. I remember again thinking that God has touched my daughter in a very real and special way, and a way that as an adult, I am lucky to witness this.

There have been a over-flowing handful of moments in my life where I have felt God's presence in a dramatic and tangible way. Without exception, all of those times were times of joy and celebration. For those friends from Mt. Vernon days, there was Youth Encounter in high school, and so very many youth group events at Good Shepherd where we all felt physically touched (or "zonked by the Holy Spirit" as my mother used to say).

In adulthood, those times continued. The moment Mark asked me to marry him was certainly memorable, but even more poignant for me was about an hour after that as we walked across a field from the restaurant where we got engaged over dinner, I remember looking up in the dark sky of Irvington, Virginia and thanking God, feeling His presence. 

When Mark and I were married, as we stood on the black and white tiled floor of the altar at St. James's, I remember an instant where I felt like God was sitting right there with me, in a very real and tangible way. While the moment of Sadie's birth was incredibly special, there was another moment when Mark and I were putting her to bed in the bassinet that my mother used for all of us, and she must have been only a month or so old, when I looked down at Sadie's face and I just felt God there, right there, and I just wept from the magnitude of that feeling. 

Last Sunday Mark and Sadie hung all of our colored Christmas lights in the back yard. Mark agreed that he would do a "test run" for Sadie to see them lit, but this would be the only time they are turned on until December 1st. We warmed up some apple cider and the three of us sat on our back porch's steps, drinking from our mugs and looking out over our tree-lit back yard. He was there. It was tangible. Big tears rolled down my cheeks as I thanked God again for my family. Our next door neighbor called and said we looked like a post card sitting out there.

So, I feel like I have my whole Faith-thing down in moments of joy.

But not so much in moments of darkness.

And yet, that is, by the essence of the term, that is when Faith is what it is. It is pretty easy to Believe when there is proof everywhere around you. I have no problem Believing in God and Jesus and the fundamentals of Christianity when I look at my daughter and it is clear to me, proven to me, that she is not of only me. That something higher than me created her, blessed her, blessed me by giving her to me. Those moments when I felt touched, it was easy to feel like God was there. Whenever two ore more are gathered in my name, yes, I agree!

But it is the times of just one, of only one gathered, of one walking alone on the beach, it is less clear then. Notwithstanding the poem Footprints, it is really hard to accept that it is then, we are carried.

We are not in a period of complete darkness right now. We are not undergoing any health scares. All of our parents, Sadie's grandparents, are all still alive. We are entering Mark's and my favorite time of the year, Christmas carols are already being played, the manger is set up (well, one manger of the ten plus that we have). Tangible signs of our practiced Faith are abundant.

But we continue to have changes. We continue to find something lacking in our lives. So many things are easy, but the ones that are hard, that aren't perfect, those seem to cloud the others. The days fly by. Days of working in an office, planning travels, conference calls. Dinner is upon us and I nuke some broccoli and put in a Trader Joe's pizza.  "I hate this food" someone says (and here's a clue, it wasn't Sadie who said it!) and I think to myself "Why can't I get this right?". Why are most moments still rushed, hurried, alone, not blessed? Snarky comments. A computer locking up. Not having time to learn something. Being rushed in a bed time routine. I hear myself saying "Sadie, I am counting to three right now..." so many times, she has started begging me "Please no more counting!!".  Last night I was exasperated and said "Sadie, why are you acting like this???"  Because I am three. Because this is what I do. Because I need to test you every few days to make sure indeed your love is unconditional. "Do you still love me?" she has said a few times. Of course I do, I tell her a million times. I hate that she asks though. Then again, she has asked me many times why there are lane dividers on highways. I guess the questions just keep coming and I shouldn't make too much of any of them.

So back to Faith. Faith in times of change. Faith in times of happiness, but in times of frustration too.Still learning.

Head and Body

I love to color. I would not say that I am artistic, though I have attempted my share of pottery and painting classes over the years thinking that there must be some creativity in me yet unleashed, but they never revealed anything great. In fact, as much as I have some incredibly creative friends (my best friend in college is an art teacher now, yet none of her skills rubbed off on me), I have never found the patience to "practice" art enough to actually have a hope at getting better at it. I practice running and other forms of exercise; I practice reading; I attempt to practice cooking; and oh yea, I do practice law. But art... it is one of those things that I would sit in various art classes over the years and just not have the patience to enjoy it. I was just bad enough to want to improve, but too bad to think it was possible. And this didn't really bother me actually, I just figured it wasn't my shtick and moved on to something that I showed tangible improvement with, such as running.

But oh, I love to color, with Sadie.

Being the third of four children growing up in the 1970s, we didn't have much in the way of "art supplies". I remember my father's old dress shirts being used as smocks, so we must have painted. And I remember a roll of newsprint that my mother kept in the basement and we would tear off long sheets of paper to do something artistic with, but I don't really remember what. As much as my parents relished in creating time consuming (and pricey) fourth of July projects every year of my late teens and 20s, this was not a childhood memory of mine.  The packet of construction paper that my mother kept in her closet had permanent fade lines (the packet must have sat in the sun on our kitchen table or something, so one side of a piece of red paper was more like a tannish brown from fading).

Today I told Sadie the story that I never had new crayons as a child. I thought this story was timely and important since Sadie loves taking the paper off of her crayons and sharpening and resharpening until they are nubs, and now we probably only have 45 or so crayons from the packet of 64.  All of my crayons growing up were hand-me-downs (or communally owned) from Lisette and Scott. In fact, I remember one day seeing my mother come home with a brand new box of 64 crayons when I was 6, and I remember the feeling of excitement. She had bought them (plus 20+ spiral notebooks and the like) during a Sunday afternoon trip to a drug store called Dart Drug, presumably for school supplies. I was thrilled, my first set of new crayons. And I laugh as I remember my older sister telling me in the nicest way possible that they weren't for me, or for her or Scott, as Lisette had somehow discovered that my mother was pregnant with who was to be my younger sister, and the crayons would be for the new baby!  This is not a sad memory or a 'woe is me' memory at all, for it must have been later that night that we did confront my parents and they did share the wonderful news of our expanding family, and I didn't bring up the crayons. But I honestly don't ever remember getting them to use. I really do think that my mother bought them for Carolyn. My mother still has a crazy habit of buying things to use YEARS in advance if the price is right at the time (thus the construction paper, probably decades old by the time I used it).  She is one of those people that never is without a box of spaghetti noodles, but the 12 that she has in her cupboard are probably more than 5 years old.

But back to Sadie... I love to color with Sadie. And she is just really beginning to love art. In fact, just over the past couple weeks, she turned the corner on her own and started putting bodies on people as she drew them. Last March, the pediatrician asked Sadie to draw a happy person on, of all things, the top of the tongue depressor with a ball point pen. I was so proud to see Sadie's perfectly shaped happy face. And then from the sides, right next to the ears sprung arms and then below the chin, sprang legs. The pediatrician laughed and said that while a child knows his or her body parts, the cleared vision is of the face so that is what is drawn.

And so, just recently, Sadie has started drawing the body. So instead of asking me to do the outline of it so she can put on shoes, arms, and plenty of rings and bracelets, she does it now. And the grass is often green, and the sun yellow. The letters are written in a cute vertical fashion. And while the "E" usually has 4+ horizontal lines, the "S" is now front facing. And she can draw petals on flowers. I used to do the petals, and she did the nectar. We were a team that way.

So long longer am I hearing, as much, "you draw it Mommy."  Or even worse "I am not good at writing."  Sure there are times she isn't in the mood or would rather peel the crayon paper off. But more often than not, my role now is to tape the finished product up on the door.

I love how she is growing up. I loved every minute of today with her. No tantrums, no sullenness.

She saw a statue on Monument that had an angel figure on it (Jefferson Davis, for you Richmondites) and she asked me what the angel was doing. I said I wasn't sure, and a few minutes later she said "I think she is pointing to heaven, so others will know the way, and maybe she is doing that so Lily will know the way back and she can come back to us on earth."  She is deep.

I am glad to be at the head and body stage, even if it means that I am not as needed to color. Because she has a lot bigger questions going on with which I can help.

"Do you [ever] work?" she asked...

The "ever" was implied, not actually said. But definitely implied.

This comment was said to me this morning. As I was taking Sadie to school. By someone who probably meant well, but it just didn't come across that way.

As a working mother, I have often felt like I needed to justify why I do what I do. Its a complicated decision, not one that either Mark or I took lightly. And one that we seem to revisit endlessly, especially during the last year. Do I need to work? There is not an easy answer to that question. In this economy, giving up a very well paying job is something that we can't take lightly.  We bought our house on Monument at the height of the real estate market and then renovated it from four apartments to the great single family home that it is. There are several houses that have been foreclosed upon in the block just east of us, and countless houses that have been for sale for the last 6-12 months, and remain unsold. Public schools in our area have certain drawbacks (and benefits, I agree) and the private schools are not inexpensive. And job security isn't something that is abounding in our community, let alone our field.  It is not easy to turn down a well-paying job at 41, especially in a field that is notorious about its obstacles to re-entry. I don't judge the women who have decided to stay home -- and I am jealous of them. But for us, this just isn't a smart option, right now.

When I went part-time this summer, it was after a lot of hand-wringing. I was giving up the goodwill, friendships and working relationships, client relations, and a multitude of other things at one place to start fresh at another firm, to make less money, but be guaranteed less hours. Again, a decision that we didn't make lightly. And one that the transition to hasn't been easy. I come to work, do my work, and go home. I don't hang out and socialize like I did at my old firm -- in fact, I pretty much don't talk to anyone. Am I happy there? Well yes, I am happy what being there does for my life. I get far more Sadie-time. Less money, but less stress.

I am an attorney. I have been an associate and a partner at a large firm. Long hours, endless deals... these are not unknowns to me. I have billed dozens of 18 hour days. I have missed family holidays. I have cried and slept in the office many times. I know what all of this means. I am glad I did it, but am more glad that I am not doing it now.

But just like some people "work from home", there are times that I spend now "homing from work" and I am not ashamed of this. There are times that I linger longer than maybe is necessary with Sadie in the morning, or I run home at lunch. I schedule an appointment during the work hours. I feel like these balance out, though. Because before I give Sadie her bath, I am notoriously on the blackberry at 7 pm at night. And before I go to sleep myself, I am sending more emails and tying up loose ends. Gone (for now at least) are the days where I am tackling substantive work projects for hours on end at night, but in the world of 24-7 accessibility, there is not a night that goes by that I am not responsive, and responding!

So maybe yes, I do work. My hours aren't necessarily set, or maybe they aren't conventional. But they are meaningful. 

I won't lie -- I see women getting promoted to senior executive positions in companies and part of me is jealous. I used to think that was a path that I would be on. Having my first child at 37 effectively means that most of my friends my same age, at 41, have teenagers. Teenagers that need guidance and attention, certainly, but not the same as Sadie commands. Those moms, in my opinion, have more time. And sometimes I feel like they have more drive. It wasn't long ago that I had that drive. Today I took a shower before work and got here before 9:30 -- that's about the most drive I could muster. My daughter will be a teenager and maybe at that point, I will also free up. But gosh, at that point, I will be dealing with osteoporosis, among other things I am sure.

My life is what it is, and with it, I am happy. Content? Well rested? Stimulated intellectually? Hmmmm. But non-judgmental, yes. Most definitely.

Advent, Lent and Ordinary Time

Growing up Catholic, I knew the the "seasons" of the Church calendar at one time. Now, not so much. But I do know the Big Three, and for different reasons, I love each of them.

Advent, of course, is the season anticipating Christ's birth. I am not ashamed to admit that I have taken the Christmas season (which technically follows Christmas) and super-imposed it onto Advent. I love the carols, I love all of the decorations. While we read Sadie her favorite book "Fancy Nancy's Splendiforous Christmas" almost every night, I can't fathom waiting until Christmas Eve to put up and decorate your tree. We will be lucky if we wait until the day after Thanksgiving to do ours. I just love everything about the anticipatory feeling of waiting for Christ's birth. And I love the whole manger concept, that it was the pure souls of the animals who received Him first. Sadie has another book called "Room for Little One" that has the most beautiful illustrations of the animals who invite the Tired Donkey (and Mary and Joseph) into the stable "There's always room for a little one here." after they invite all the other animals needing shelter and safe care. It is like the first time we turn on the radiator heat in our tall drafty house... there is just instant warmth. We love Advent.

And the last few years, we have loved Lent too. In the past for me, Lent was always a time of suffering and doing-without. I remember the rainy season in college in Williamsburg, and to me, that epitomized Lent. Duck boots, eyes cast downward, sprinting from class to class. Waiting for Spring. More anticipation, but not like the happy anticipation of Advent.  Until, that is, my third tri-mester with Sadie.

Lent with Sadie was not a season of doing-without.  It was indulgent, and not just in terms of food. Everything in my life was full in the most marvelous way. I truly felt like Jesus rose for us a few months early and I had him all to myself. Never before in my life did I feel that I embodied a Blessing in my belly like I did with Sadie those last few months of pregnancy.  Lent has always meant something more to me since then. It doesn't mean suffering, it means contemplation. It means making yourself ready.

And there is a lot to be said for Ordinary Time. In fact, we could use a few more weeks of it honestly in our house. Just some stillness. The weekends fly by with such rapid speed now that I blink, and they are over. And yet my nights of insomnia or restlessness and worry, those seem to drag on. Sadie calls me at work and begs me "when are you going to come home Mama?" and my heart breaks for her. And yet I get there sometimes, and she chooses a silly television show over our time together and I realize that she is growing up and really doesn't need me the way that she used to.  And then, hours later, I lay in her bed with her and she holds my hand as she falls asleep and I pray inside my head "stay like this forever little girl, know that I adore you."  The moments pass though, there is too much to be done, to get ready for this or that, to clean up from that or this.

I want the next two weeks to fly by, and yet, I want some moments to last forever. 

Saturday we took Sadie apple picking at Carter's Mountain Orchard. Sadie was so excited about going to the mountains, she had been asking about it all week. We turned off the main road to take the road up the mountain and she was gleeful in the back seat. "I love it here!!" she called out. Just from the beauty of seeing it. Just from the elevation lifting her upward in a car. She was gleeful!  She is such a celebratory child. And there I am, teary with emotion "remember this moment remember this moment remember this moment" I told myself as I watched her see the Purple Mountains Majesty for the first time in her life.

I found this picture today... it was a picture my parents took at their house the day Mark and I announced to them that we were pregnant. This picture is all seasons, Lent, Advent and Ordinary Time. Nothing guaranteed that this pregnancy would last... I think this picture was probably taken within a week of a positive test. We didn't know what exactly we were anticipating by this point. And honestly, things felt  pretty darn ordinary here.  We were just enjoying it. We were hopeful.

That's what I want for right now. I just want a few weeks of being hopeful. Not worrying about the consequences. Not wondering if I have made a good or bad decision in the past.  I want just a mini-season of Hope.  Maybe after all, that's what Advent is.

Slowing Down

After traveling the last two weekends, I was excited to be in town for this one. Lots of friends I know go out of town weekend after weekend but this is not a lifestyle that I adjust to well. Both the last two weekends (one in Duck with Sadie's godmother and her family, and then last weekend in Irvington for a wonderful Webb family wedding) were mentally and physically consuming, wonderful memories -- but coming home to a house that needed the weekend of attention, not getting it, and three loads of laundry to run starting at 8 pm on a Sunday night. I fell out of the rhythm of working out, we ate out a ton,  yada yada yada.

So I was so excited to spend this weekend at home. My list of what to do was long and detailed.

And then, Friday, our new nanny got run into in our car. Thankfully, Sadie was not with her. And I say this first because Sadie was not injured. But second, honestly, I can think of nothing worse right now than getting into an accident and having the running commentary of my three year old detailing the next hour while you waited for a police officer, sorted through insurance information, made sure that the other driver accepted fault, talked to witnesses, etc. I adore my child, and I wouldn't wish her presence on my worst enemy in that circumstance!  She has an uncanny ability right not to see the "crack in the armor" and exacerbate it enough to fly a jet airplane through.

So the weekend started out with my Friday night plans getting out of sync, and we opted to eat out instead of in. And then we got a great dinner invitation from a couple in Sadie's class to have dinner with a few other parents and their kids on Saturday night. We had a ball there, but of course, the laundry didn't get done or the closet organized, both of which were on my Saturday evening agenda. Aren't I fun??

But truly, we had a blast at this small gathering. Sadie and the other girls ran around non stop for 3 hours. Mark and I had great conversation, and great wine, with two other couples. We literally had not a care in the world. I realized how much I miss going out and being social. But when I am away from Sadie all week, and we pay sitters $15 an hour when we go out without her, it is really nice to go out and bring Sadie with us and not have to watch her like a hawk the whole time. We really had a great time!

And tonight, we had the Willow Oaks Halloween Party. This is one of our favorite parties year after year. They have a DJ there and the kids love to dance. This year Sadie is really good at the chicken dance, the YMCA song by the Village People, and so many others. I really enjoyed dancing with her too!  She dances with true Misage style concentration -- her tongue is usually out.

But one of the best parts about this weekend was what she and I did yesterday for an hour and today for about two -- we collected food for her plastic pink butterfly named Bite. This butterfly is something Mark picked up one day at a convenience store counter, literally at the check out line, which you can wind up and the wings will flap. I don't believe it works anymore. And while it was immediately loved, it (I should say "she") was lost for the last couple months. But she has been re-found, and now she is hungry, Sadie is constantly reminding me. She doesn't eat what we eat, at least if given the choice. She would rather have milkweed (which Sadie knows grows on trees) or yesterday we discovered how much she really liked clovers from cloverpatches. Today we added some branches to it. And both days, we had to bring home hundreds of yellow and red and brown leaves that had fallen into the median of Monument. And some fresh new grass that seems to be growing on some places in our neighborhood park. We spent hours crouching around, she and I, choosing just the right assortment of things to bring home to Bite to dine on.

During those hours... Sadie was largely focused on the task at hand but she would talk to me while doing it, and many times she told me how glad she was that I was helping her. I was impressed with how important she believed this all to be. And how she didn't give up on the game (it wasn't a game she told me a few times). The weather was beautiful, and while I looked at my watch a few times, I am so glad I spent the hours doing just what we did together both days.  She teaches me to live in the moment, in the hour, in the day... instead of conquering the task list.  This is a lesson that I have resisted from every teacher for the past 41 years. I am so glad I am learning it finally, now.

She's never met a stranger she didn't know...

Yesterday, Sadie was a flower girl in her cousin Ryan's wedding in Irvington, Virginia.  Sadie had only attended one other wedding in her life (well, not counting our wedding, in which Sadie likes to tell everyone she was a baby in my tummy because one time I thought it might be easier to just tell that white lie when she got all teary and asked if we left her alone in a hotel room while we got married, since she couldn't conceive of her not being with us for such an important event) (and shockingly, now she loves to repeat this untruth any chance she has). So in any event, she wasn't really prepared for her flower girl role. Mark and I wanted to play up the excitement because we both love weddings, and we really love any reason to get a family together from far and wide (especially for an event for which I don't have to stuff a bird or clean my house, or both!).  As our parents are getting older and even friends and family our age have passed away recently, being together really is a reason for celebration!  But Sadie, at 3.5, can be... well, um... let's just say "unpredictable" especially when she needs to perform. And as you readers know, we have had our share of change of late which adds to a little bit of chaos in said 3.5 year old's predictive behavior.

So as much as we had the wedding on our calendar and told her about her role, we didn't want to make it into too big of an affair. And we weren't able to get to Irvington early enough on Friday to actually attend the wedding rehearsal at the small Catholic church in the next town over. Kudos to the bride who was more than fine with that. I figured if we got Sadie to walk down the aisle once, it would be a success. But knowing my kid, she would do it great for the rehearsal and then refuse a repeat performance at the actual wedding, so we left the rehearsing up to those who really needed to know where to stand, the grown-ups.

So upon entering the Church 30 minutes before the wedding and seeing Jesus on the cross, she asked loudly for everyone to hear "WHO IS THAT??"  I had to laugh, since I had grown up Catholic and everyone Catholic knows that you never see a cross in a Catholic church that doesn't have Jesus upon it; and yet we are raising Sadie in the Episcopal faith where you never see Jesus on the cross. I said to her "That's Jesus" thinking that telling a lie in a church of all places wasn't really an option.  She paused for a moment and then said "What happened to him up there?"  I am not sure actually how we got off of that track onto the flower girl role, but we did.

And truthfully, I have no idea how she looked going down the aisle of the small church since I was hanging in the back, ready to give her the appropriate shove-off if she needed it (or more importantly, the glare if she dare turned around like she might want to come back). But she made it up the aisle without a pause.

 And while I am proud of her for that, I have to say, I am more proud of her for what resulted at the reception. My girl, she simply rocked!

There were only a few other kids there, but the band was fantastic and the grown-ups were all in the mood to dance. And Sadie didn't sit many songs out. She had no hesitation to show her dancing moves in the middle of the floor, shaking her hips, hopping along. Mark and I watched her ask unfamiliar male faces (most of whom were in their late 20s and had attended Hampton Sydney with the groom) if they wanted to dance.   All of them had a ball with her. One guy came up to Mark and I afterwards and said "She's hilarious... you can tell she's never met a stranger she didn't know."


And I thought to myself, and I sit here thinking about this now, that is one thing that I love most about my daughter. She has gone through some phases in her short life where she has been a little shy, and has clung to me, or her nanny, many times during some transitional phase or another. But now, she just really has come into her own. She seizes the moment. And she reminds me to do that too.  She is just a really happy and outgoing kid!

I have always been an extrovert. And as the third of four kids... I was never shy. For if you didn't speak up in my house, you wouldn't get fed!  But you don't always expect that personality trait in an only child.   But at least for now, we seem to have the life of the party living amongst us.

Accepting Half-Assed

One of the hardest things about motherhood has been learning to be satisfied with getting things done half-assed.  My father was an eye-doctor who worked with the same partner in the same building in Old Town, Alexandria, for more than 40 years. He sold his practice a few weeks after he turned 65 and he and my mother sold their house in Mt. Vernon and moved to Williamsburg, Virginia. While I had no legal skills with which to help him on the sale of his practice (I am not sure my father understood how inapplicable my legal skills would be to family matters like estate planning, real estate matters, and sales of small businesses when he agreed to pay for my law school education), I remember sitting down with him and asking him if we would consider going just cutting back, maybe consulting, taking a few extra days off a week or setting a more relaxed schedule instead of retiring completely. And his answer was "I can't do something half-assed."

That's how my father has always been. If he set his mind to cleaning the rec room or the garage at our house growing up, it meant that he would take every single item out of said space and wash down the walls, vacuum the floors... I recall getting a steel wool pad out to clean our basement floor with him more than once. Every Spring and Fall he would take every storm window and screen off of our house (in my mind now, while they have been gone more than seven years, I can count 15 windows), wash them off with Mr. Clean in the driveway, dry them meticulously, and wash and dry all of the windows on the house, then put back all of the storm windows and screens, and finally, wash the driveway!  He not only would wash the chandelier in the dining room and kitchen when company was coming, he would actually wipe the dust off the light bulbs too.  My mother had a similar cleaning mentality, so I can't sell her short by not mentioning her. We didn't have a cleaning lady growing up, but even with four kids, our house was never dirty or ill-maintained.

My first few years on my own, I probably met most of the standards of my upbringing. Even when Daisy and her perpetual state of shedding arrived, my homes were always pretty clean and organized (though admittedly, due to a cleaning lady). When I set my mind to a project, it was completed in the time and order I expected. I remember deciding I would make my own wedding veil instead of spend $200 for something that looked relatively simple. But instead of just one veil, I made three of them as I wanted to make sure that I had one fresh one for my wedding portrait, and just in case it got ruined I made an extra one for the wedding day and just in case it got ruined before the wedding, I made an extra one after that. Of course, none of them were ruined, so now I have three perfectly good wedding veils that I hope Sadie will find use for one day.

After graduating from law school, I moved six different times before Mark and I got married, and every time I moved I made sure that my bed was made and my bedroom fully organized before I would go to sleep the first night. Then I would spend the next few days unpacking every single box and organizing things. I never let things go unfinished.  Maybe my fetish was unhealthy and a little more of being just "Type A" or OCD, but it was my way of life.

I am almost a complete reversal of that person now. And every several weeks or so, I try to revert back to my "full ass" ways and end up flailing about for a few days barking orders at my husband to help me maintain order in the house, and collapsing into bed exhausted at night after fully finishing several tasks. This morning it hit me that I would be happier if I just accepted that this is the Stage of Half-Assed.

Mark's been out of town for three days. Sadie misses him and wants to talk to him repeatedly, but bedtimes have been a breeze because he sublet his half of our bed to her. Last night our routine was crazy -- I got home at 6, picked up a fed-ex package from my neighbor, walked Daisy right away with Sadie (it is my hope that her UTI's have been caused by holding her urine too long), realized that I had locked myself out of the house with the backdoor but the nanny didn't hear me so told Sadie to stay in the back yard while I ran around to the front door, let myself in the front door with said nanny only to see that Sadie was no longer in the backyard and had followed me and was now alone on Monument, grabbed her and admonished her but not enough to cause tears and thus ruin dinner, assemble dinner, spend 20 minutes trying to bribe Sadie to eat one more bite of something nutritious and withhold dessert, admonish Daisy is for barking at the table to eat Sadie's "something nutritious" (avec peanut butter) other than her own food, answer the phone call of Daisy's vet to discuss test results which are largely inclusive while Sadie begs for television time and Daisy is still begging for leftover peanut butter which is somewhere invisible to me but smellable by her though out of the reach of her lengthy tongue, quickly change out of work clothes, read some books, play a game, bed for Sadie at 8:00, complete with five stories in our bed (and she has learned to choose the five longest books she can find now) and trying to explain (or debate, rather) that the world and the earth are the same thing.  Last night I left her nodding off at 8:45.

I came downstairs and there gleaming in our foyer was a perfectly white box with a silver handle on it, my new iMac computer!!  It looked so inviting!  It was like it was chiming "set me up set me up" from the box. I even had a message from my father on my blackberry telling me how quickly he was able to set up my mother's a few weeks prior.

On the other hand, the cleaning lady was coming today, and I really needed to straighten up for her. And  the dinner dishes were still on the table in the kitchen; there were bills to be paid and mail to go through. And I needed to get out my Disney folder to organize it to call for dinner reservations at 7 am this morning; and I wanted to get my exercise DVD and clothes all laid out so I could work out from 6-6:40 this morning; and I promised Mark I would call him and let him know what the vet said when I talked to her after dinner; and so on and so on and so on.

In the end, I took the iMac and set it up on my desk upstairs, and reached facebook and sent a few emails from it. I clicked to open iPhoto and then closed it down, it would take more time than I had to learn it.  And I got the Disney folder out and laid it on the kitchen island and the put dishes in the dishwasher and started it. But nothing else on my list got done and I was in bed at 11 pm. And the poor cleaning lady came today to a house that is probably at its most cluttered state.

I know there are mothers out there who still maintain an organized house, a fit and exercised body, and get their mail sorted every night. There are countless chat rooms and blogs out there with helpful hints toward achieving the same. But I am not one of them, and frankly, I am tired of trying to meet that standard.  I think I am ready to accept the merits of Half-Assed.  My parents had two children already in college when they were 41 like I am -- they had far more energy raising toddlers in their 20s than I do raising them in my 40s. My mother used to lament that my father worked all the time but that's a laughable complaint now, as I remember his schedule and compare it to my own husband's (and mine!), who is out of town at least a few times a month and lives on the blackberry for work even while home.  It is just a different world now.

In reality though, my parents don't try to hold me up to their standards when they come visit (or even by email). My mother still sticks to some rules like a thank you note needs to be sent within a few days of receiving a gift though, and my father couldn't understand why I couldn't get the iMac up and running while the three year old was awake, so they haven't completely abandoned their old ways. But they largely look at me and my siblings (who are probably more Full-Assed than I am, admittedly) and tell us that we are doing a good job raising creative, imaginative, passionate, loving, good-natured and intelligent grandchildren for them, all things that they aspired to do with us. But I am my own sense of pressure most of the time, and like I said before, every few weeks I revert back to languishing about how organized I used to be.

So the struggle will probably always continue, in my own mind and my own journey. But today at least, half-assed feels damn good.