It's such a pain being at home with the painters here. I have to keep the family room under control, I don't like to do workout videos with a strange man walking by at any time, I get in his way if I run upstairs to do laundry, Julian has to nap in the living room, it smells...argh!
I took on the serious logistical challenge of making it to a noon Pilates class at the Y today, and still having some time before the class, and not going over the 90 minutes free Childwatch time you get. That meant putting kids in Childwatch at 11:35, so I could have 20 minutes before class, then get them out at 1:05 after the class. Getting them all somewhere at an exact time is a logistical tangle of making lunches, feeding baby, boys go pee, wash hands, get shoes and jackets, strap in the car...whew. But I did it!
Begrudgingly, I went on the treadmill, with a doable goal of 5 minutes. A woman running next to me asked how often I run. "Twice a week?" she inquired. I said, "No, twice ever!" She asked how I like it, and I said, "I hate it! I'm only doing 5 minutes!" She laughed and said, "Me too! But it might be easier with someone to talk to!" and I told her, "Well that's not going to be me, 'cause I'm outta here in 3 minutes!" Actually, chatting with her extended it to 9 minutes, with 6 minutes of actual running. She may have something there about having someone to talk to.
Noon Pilates class...OK, but a little slow. As much fun as I'm having working out again, I know that ultimately, it will lead to the same thing: missing dance. At some point, I'll no longer be thrilled to get anything in at all. The tug of dance will increase; everything else is just a substitute.
As I was leaving the Childwatches with my little brood, I passed a woman putting jackets on her two little boys. She saw Katrina and smiled at me and said, "Oh! You got your girl!" I get this comment all the time, word for word: "...your girl." I'm amazed how people assume that we had a third to get a girl, though I shouldn't be, it's not that uncommon. They're usually surprised to hear me say I'd have been happy with another boy.
The woman I was talking to on the treadmill was one of the few who didn't say something about shopping together, but rather: "you'll be closer, you know, the mother-daughter thing," in the blunt honest sort of way that foreign-born people on the edge of English fluency speak. Our next-door neighbor is like that. I appreciate it.
I thought about her comment, the "mother-daughter" thing. I caught a bit of the ultimate mother-daughter movie, "Terms of Endearment" on TV while I was nursing, then playing with, Katrina yesterday afternoon. I loved that movie when I first saw it, ironically with my mother and sister, in New York. They didn't like it much, but I cried through the whole thing! Even though it doesn't seem as great to me now as when I first saw it, it still always makes me cry. And this time, I was seeing it not as a daughter, but as a mother, with my daughter. Just that realization by itself choked me up.
(Just like me, the mom in the movie had two boys and then a surprise girl. But then she gets cancer and dies. Actually, my favorite scenes are the ones between Shirley Maclaine and Jack Nicholson.)
We finally finished our gingerbread house today. After Christmas!
This is how it's supposed to look:
The reality:
I could blame the artistic mess on the boys, but really, I'm not much better! Lining the candies up on the peak of the roof was Gabriel's idea.
Gabriel joined me and Katrina for another experimental photo session today.
The best shots I got, one or both of them was out of focus. There were some real heartbreakers in there! But it was fun, and I'm encouraged. More to come.
I'm really getting fed up with this blogspot. Uploading photos is a real pain, very limited, and so often fails if I try to do more than one at a time. It takes way, way too much time. And the photos are my favorite part.
12/28/06
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