Twenty-Four

I love the song by Switchfoot, Twenty-four. I’ve always been a person who is fascinated by the passage of time. I can remember being a teenager and having moments of just thinking about yesterday and how different things were and how they would be altogether different tomorrow… So much can happen in a day…24 hours.

Yesterday started crazy, I guess it partially started crazy because I had been a week on my own, our nanny was with us for the summer but went back to Kansas city a week prior. Not a problem, we were leaving 2 weeks later and then we’d be back in our routine…the routine of having help. And 2 weeks isn’t too long, at least it isn’t too long until you have “the day.” I’ve actually loved having it be just me and the boys, somehow it just makes it a hurrah every day when we make it through that day and we enjoy and love each other…not that we normally don’t but you know what I mean, I guess if you’ve ever lived with a toddler or two you know what I mean….they are so loveable and wonderful but sometimes you just want a moment for you….the ability to just take a minute or two…is gone.

So, anyway, yesterday…if only I’d known, If only I’d had a preview….but you don’t get that do you? Life hits you as it comes…so it started with my decision that a day out would be less pressure than a day at home and off we went…the 3 of us going for a ride in the car….and then I remembered I forgot breakfast so we stopped at our little café just for me to get coffee and a bagel but the bagel took forever and I just looked over for a second to see what was taking so long…and then when I looked back Jonathan was trying to drink my coffee and crying because it wasn’t like trying to drink my water bottle and “Bad Mommy “ slinked out of the café, embarrassed but very thankful that Jonathan was ok and it was only a little dribble from a To-Go cup….…and off to the park and that was good and later than day, carrying David down the stairs and encouraging Jonathan to crawl down on his own and then I turn the corner and hear the thump-a-dee-thump and Jonathan has fallen and I am “Bad Mommy” again and I feel awful…again…and later we go outside to play and runnnnn down the driveway but Jonathan isn’t running, he is diving into the mud and eating it and his knees are scraped and oh, how could it be any worse, poor, poor little guy who must feel so overwhelmed by the big world….

Oh how good it feels, at the end of such a day, to thank God that there are no burns, or bruises, or breaks and to lay the little ones down and then walk upstairs and lay ME down to rest….and then there is a phone call and that question you ask , you know, you ask it too, “Who is calling me at this hour of night, I’d better check…make sure its not an emergency” and you go, and you check, and it never is an emergency and everything is always ok….But not today… Life is not what I though it was, 24 hours ago…and it is a voice and It is saying “Carolyn had a heart attack”….and I know it was only seconds but it seemed like hours before I heard the next thing…”She is ok.” Life is not what I thought it was 24 hours ago…and so the day ends and I lay me down to sleep. I can’t say the next day was any better but it certainly had a different perspective. I did not like that David poured coffee all over my laptop…but honestly, It seemed so insignificant and I did not care…Life was not what I thought it was 24 hours ago…she is ok. She is ok, but I am alone….because who can I call? She is the one I call. Who knows me and hears me like she does? And for all my inward focus in feeling alone I can see that what I realize in this moment is how much I love her and how much I do not want life to be void of her and how much I never ever dreamed she would leave me alone. I love my sister and today I realize that saying that has a different meaning….somewhere in my heart there is something more than I ever imagined for this person who has, as my friend, known me deeper and longer than anyone I’ve ever known…and today 24 hours later, a whisper of life without her has shown me just how deep that love goes.

Summer...

As was to be expected the winter in Kansas City was quite a different story than the Savannah winter that we had been used to. I actually liked it, I liked the snow, I loved staying in at night with a fire going…loved bundling up in winter clothes…I missed Winter. And for as much as I liked the real snowy Winter of KC I also loved the first signs of Spring…there is just nothing like seeing the trees all come to life after everything has looked so dead, dead, dead in the snow. And then, for us 4 season people comes the next big hurrah…Summer!

We packed up and drove to Montana on the first of June. We were on our usual trek to spend Summer at our little cabin in the mountains. The car ride would suffice to be a blog in and of itself…after the first day Scott went to Target and bought one of those car DVD players….something I said I would never do…if definitely helped us get through. We had one more day to go in our trip and we stopped at a cheap hotel for the last sleep before we’d get to the cabin. It had gone well and we were almost there…it was our 5 year anniversary and we talked and talked at dinner about how well the trip had gone…we were exhausted but we’d made it…David and Jonathan destroyed the restaurant, flinging cottage cheese everywhere and we didn’t even care…we were almost there! (a large tip was left for the waiter AND busboy I should add)

At least we thought we were almost there…We woke at 3am to Jonathan crying like crazy and we realized that he was crying because David was sick, throwing up all over the place. Poor David, Mr. Squiggly, just curled up in a ball on our bed and sobbed in between projectile vomiting…we decided the best thing to do was to just pack up and drive the last 6 hours…and so we made it, poor David felt better the next day and the summer in Montana had begun…

Summer has gone well, the boys continue to grow and change. David has become so enamored by guitars that he can’t be around one without touching it…Ok, that sounds too mild...David has become so wild about guitars that he will do anything in his power to get next to one, touch it, strum it AND pretty much anything he has in his hands BECOMES a guitar and is strummed by his fingers that can't wait to, one day, know and play a real guitar...yes, thats more like it. Jonathan has become so enamored by shoes that he can’t be around a pair without wearing them. Same as above with D but insert shoes and instead of strumming...walking. And so there we are...and we wonder when they will start to talk, and we look at 3 year olds and wonder what next summer will be like, and we think a lot about the future but mostly we laugh and we play and we enjoy the now of this one Summer of 2010.

Getting Unstuck...

One of my favorite things to do is to read new blog postings...it is exciting to me to click on a site and find that there is a new title, a new picture...something new to read. And, on the other side, I do not like it when the same old page is displayed day after day after day...my thought is, "Come on people...write something, it only takes a minute!"

Well, first off, I probably have no right to think such a thought, first, because it does take me much longer than a minute and second, because I have not posted anything new for the better part of a year now. So, blog-shame on me...I'll own up to it...I've been stuck.

I guess I can blame perfectionist girl in me again for this one. I always feel like I have to have this perfect thought or stream of thoughts written down in order to share something. And so for a while I didn't have any momentous bloggy type thoughts and then when I did start to get some ideas again I didn't want to start back up with THOSE thoughts. I mean I left you with an impending trip/move to Kansas City and so I must pick up there...what happened? How was the move? What was the adventurous new undertaking like?

And there were some ideas...but then who wants to post a picture of the new house in the winter with all the dead looking trees and the snow? And there was some major moving in busyness...and who wants to blog when there is no time to blog? So, I waited for things to calm down and I waited for the perfect stream of thoughts until I realized...I just need to get unstuck. And that isn't going to happen by me chronologically blogging through this past year. It is what it is, lets just pick up and move on...and get unstuck. So here goes...