I fly home on Friday.

For perhaps the first time I am beginning to understand the mystique around the word Friday. Just saying it is enough to make my heart flutter, my mind less cluttered, my feet lighter. Like a charm or a spell, it pulls my mind irresistibly toward the future.

Friday.

In just a few days I will be home again. In just a few days I will belong to myself again.

I've developed some unsavory habits.

Most nights I don't make it to bed until 10:30 or 11:00. Each night as we prepare for bed I tell Ma that tomorrow is the day that we will be in bed by nine. I say it again when we're up by 6:00, wakened by the screaming of morning children. And still, we don't make it to bed until 11:00.

I've begun eating like a desperate person. I don't taste my food. I don't savor my food. I grab what is easy and stuff it in my mouth, bite after bite after bite, waiting for a small head to walk around the corner of the table. What will it demand I do for it? Eat. Eat quickly. Eat now. It is your only hope. I've developed a black raspberry and marshmallow shake habit. An almost every day sort of habit. I assume my body is attempting to make up for the missed calories. Pump them in! The straw, use the straw, it's faster!

(I do not regret the nearly every day shake habit. Only my desperate way of eating everything including my nearly every day shake.)

I brought two computers with me:

• a work computer - for working
• a personal computer - for writing

My work computer is out almost all the days. Work, work, work. My personal computer is out none of the days. No writing. None at all.

Soon, I will be able to sleep like me again. I will be able to eat like me again. I will be able to write like me again.

One thing I know with a certainty born of a three-child experience: I will do everything I can to ensure I am never a working mom. There is not enough patience, not enough kindness, not enough laughter, not enough time for exploring and learning and loving, not enough adventure.



Friday.

A New York Adventure

I've been in upstate New York for two and a half weeks.

I'm going to be here one week more.

I've learned a lot while being here.

Things like, I can drive a minivan like a champ. Or rather, like a soccer mom.

And I can get a tantrum throwing child out of the closet with laughs and smiles.

And I can make a pouty child throw a full-blown, crying in the bathroom for 20 minutes tantrum with barely a word.

And I still try to hard to make things happen for other people when they tell me they are important even though they don't act like they are important which means they probably aren't that important.

But mostly what I've learned is that life is crazy and unexpected in both good ways and bad and if I try too hard to hold onto it I'll miss all the good parts and most of the bad and I'll give myself a blazing headache.

Betrayed by the Library

The other day I was wandering about the library.

My library employs several shelves for the express purpose of displaying books. These shelves are meant to tantalize you and also to show the incredibly large selection of reading material the library offers on every subject.

I was browsing one of these shelves, wishing I had the time to read the book on cooking with onions, the history of women's footwear, and the book about hiking with small children (do I have small children? no, I do not). I stood in front of that shelf dreaming of having the time to read those books but remembering the two and a half shelves of books in my room waiting to be read and my goodreads to-read list stuffed full and the list I keep in my head of books I'd like to pick up when I've got a little extra time.

I realized that I will never be able to read all the books I want to. And then I felt terribly betrayed.

I've always known there would never be enough time for all the things I wish there were time for. I will never be a master carpenter, a master cook, a master seamstress, a master musician, and a master of everything else that I've taken a fancy to over the years. I don't have the time to even have a small sort of skill in all these areas.

In the same way I knew I'd never be able to read all the books I'd like to.

Knowing is not the same as believing.

Standing in front of that shelf I finally understood what I thought I already knew. My library promises me everything but everything is not a true possibility.

Simply put, I cannot do it. For the first time in my life ever, I knew beyond a doubt that even if I poured all my energies and attention into a single purpose, I could not possibly succeed.

The betrayal I felt was not bitter. Just very sad.

Summer Bucket List

I've been thinking more about the idea of a summer bucket list. I'm still not ready to commit to one. Particularly since I will spend a large portion of this summer in upstate New York.

But, if I were to have a summer bucket list, it would look something like list:

• pack the perfect picnic
• become a whiz at whipping up delicious, homemade popsicles
• never, ever let the freezer be empty of homemade, delicious popsicles
• make my own swimsuit
• make two more
• spend as much time as possible up the canyon
• read outside in the sunshine every day
• hang out at the pool with a niece or nephew at least once a week
• put a strip of summer fun color in my hair
• make a funfetti layer cake from scratch with lots of sprinkles on top
• eat the cake
• grill watermelon

It's the first week of June. That means I have three months to revel in summer fun. While I'm not committed to the summer bucket list above, I am committed to summer fun. This is happening.

May Books

I'm going to make this quick because I'm behind by five days. How embarrassing.

I had a poor showing this month. I've been concentrating on other things. Even so, according to Goodreads I'm three books ahead of schedule for my yearly goal. Yes, I'm awesome.

• The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
• A World Without Princes by Soman Chainani
• A Breast Cancer Alphabet by Madhulika Sikka
• Selected Poems by Rita Dove
• Yoga for Runners by Christine Felstead

The Forgotten Man was my favorite. I am not a fan of Roosevelt and someone needs to rewrite the history books to show an accurate portrayal of how he affected the depression, both positive and negative. Rita Dove's poetry was beautiful but a little beyond me. I think I need more practice reading poetry. (Any suggestions on where to start? I'm a little lost with poetry.) A World Without Princes was unexpected and well done, I thought. I like the symmetry of the endings between the first book and the second book. I intend to purchase Yoga for Runners and I loved A Breast Cancer Alphabet.

I counted up the books I have left to read on my shelf the other day. First, I organized them by type based on my current reading strategy (five books a month from five different categories with the extra book club book each month). I have enough classics to last me a year, enough fiction to last me more than a year, about half a year's worth of both children's fiction and nonfiction and three or four month's worth of history or biography.

The only book from my shelf in May was The Forgotten Man. My nonfiction and book club books for June will come from the library. I hope to pick the other four from my shelf. Which sounds hopelessly boring and not summer fun at all.

Tyrant

Ma flew to New York this morning to help care for my sister-in-law as she recovers from her surgery. Ma will also be watching her three, adorable, New York dwelling grandkids. Lucky Ma.

With Ma gone, I'm in charge on the home front. Do you know what happens when I'm in charge on the home front? Stuff happens.

The Little Brother comes home in three weeks.

Ma comes home in two and a half weeks.

I forced my father to sign up for evernote this morning. Through text message. Like this: If you do not have evernote on your phone or iPad please add it so I can share with you.

(When I navigated to my sent message just now, I was pleasantly surprised to find I said please.)

I've been toggling all morning between work and evernote, creating lists for each room, adding things to do when I think of them or I get a text from Pa.

I also intend to create a calendar on a currently unoccupied whiteboard with all the days left between now and then. Each day will house a list of the things for use to do. If we get something done earlier than the day it was planned for, we can slot something else in it's place.

There is no end goal. We will do as much as we possibly can with the time that we have. We will not run out of things. Nor will I let either of us slack. There are things to be done and we must do them.

I'm basically a tyrant.

Sewing Machines: An Accounting

I spent Saturday getting the Ma's serger up and running. We had taken it in to the shop months and months ago. The repair man was appalled. "You messed up the programming, which you shouldn't be able to do. How did you do that!?" We hadn't touched it since bringing it home.

(Is anyone surprised that we were able to mess up something you aren't supposed to be able to mess up?)

I gave myself a sunburn reading the manual. There were a couple of parts I didn't understand and reread several times. I forgot to notice how long I'd been in the sun.

Giving up all hope of coming to an understanding, I threw Ma in the car along with my trusty serger manual and we headed to the Bernina dealer. I showed the sweet lady my confusing points. She was just as confused as I. I gave up asking for help. It turned out okay. I was able to do what I needed to and it was while I was sewing that I had an epiphany about the confusing parts. There's still one thing in particular I do not understand. (The line means to thread the needle, the dot means to pull out the needle and unthread it. So, the dot on top of the line means . . . that you both need a threaded needle and no needle that is not threaded??)

I had to do some rearranging to get the cutting station set up. Currently, the only usable machine in the sewing room is the serger. That means we have access to one quarter of our machines.

We have:

• a standard bernina sewing machine, a couple of decades old at least
• another standard bernina sewing machine, maybe a decade and a half old (belonging to me)
• a bernina sewing machine that can be an embroider machine, half a decade old
• a serger that does both an overlock stitch and a cover stitch

These machines used to be shared among three of us: me, the Ma, and the Little Sister.

The Little Sister has inherited a sewing machine from her husband's grandmother. That means those four machines are shared between two people. May I point out that there are two standard sewing machines for two people, which makes perfect sense, and the other two have distinct purposes. This means we can both be in there embroidering, sewing, and serging at the same time. We're almost never in each other's way.

We're contemplating purchasing another machine. Most sergers can't switch between the overlock stitch and the cover stitch. Setting up your machine to do one after it's been doing another takes a good twenty minutes, and that's if you're fast. The Bernina dealer has a supply of sergers that just came back from the schools. They are newer, easier to use, and inexpensive. They don't do the cover stitch. Our solution? Set up our current serger to do the cover stitch and leave it as a coverstitch machine. Purchase the new model just come back from the schools to be our serger.

Clearly, two women need five sewing machines.

When we do things, we do them in a big way.