My new favorite breakfast. For years, I was an overeasy egg on whole wheat bread with a cutie, but now, I am all about the cream of wheat. I like to put a half teaspoon of lemon curry in it as it simmers, and sometimes I stir in an egg to cook in the last minute. Then I add a sprinkle or two of creole seasoning and voila! A savory, thick breakfast. I really like that the blandness serves as a backdrop for the spicier seasonings. Sort of like tofu.
It's no wonder I have to take prilosec and tums every day.
This week was hard. I have been super-busy, which cut into my lying in bed thinking about things. I have felt lonely. I have these things to talk about, but no one to say them to. I guess that is when I need to remember to pull out a journal. Just to get them out of myself. I have used a personal journal in the past, and it absolutely helps. Writing it out here helps, but of course, this is so heavily self-censored. Trying to extract the reality of the situation without the pure openness that pisses everyone off. It's a challenging dance.
I overindulged in wine last night. It is so hard to get that balance right, too. Sometimes. I only know it is too much when I find myself staring at my messenger list trying to see who is on, aching for some sort of connection, but knowing I will never actually reach out and chat with someone. I just am not fond of putting myself onto other people. If they are interested, they will come to me. Most of the time, though, I prefer the aloneness. And I wasn't actually alone. It wasn't me and a bottle of wine in an empty, grey-walled room with a lone chair and scrubbed pine table. It's never like that. It's never desperate, or excruciating, or even pitiful. Just an every-now-and-then wow, wouldn't it be nice to have just a few people to laugh with, feeling. But I tend to push too hard with my words and make it appear much worse. I sort of enjoy doing that.
So Gabe came in early, and I awoke at four for good. I know some day I will sleep very alone, so I should relish the little, warm bodies that like to snuggle up, but at two a.m. it can be tough. At 10 p.m. it's intolerable. I like to turn on a bit of something, delta waves sounds or thunderstorms, snuggle into a pile of pillows, one between my knees, turn onto my side and drift off into oblivion completely alone. Other bodies ruin that peace.
I spent a few minutes reading through old blogs I used to follow. Most of them were homeschooling moms who loved natural, country life, some Christian, some new age. We all shared an affinity for home-baked goods, hand-knitted pretties, Waldorf dolls, and the idea of a simple life. Most of them now have older children and update their blog once a year or so. Retreating into romanticism is easy when your children are toddlers, but much more difficult when older children are fighting to fit into the outside world of activities, sports, and all the bourgeois cliched traps we fall into. Their lives as mothers cease to be read-worthy, and their interests start expanding beyond the home and children. I have watched this pattern unfold over the two and a half decades of the internet which have shaped, and possibly ruined my life. I guess it always was such. It just wasn't documented for strangers to see.
Sometimes I look at these things and think I must be such an ISFJ. Or maybe ISTJ. Just longing for simplicity. But then think of how, while I love the idea of such things, I am almost just as contented forming my identity around the ideals, but never actually creating that lifestyle. Ideas are 95% of the prize. If I don't follow through on the actual follow-through to create the material lifestyle-well, who cares? It almost certainly exists and is enough in my head. Then I think MBTI is pure crap anyway. People are multi-faceted and complex and capable of change, and cannot be sorted into a simple system. Unfortunately, decades of reading about it have strengthened the pathways to MBTI to interstates in my brain, and I can't ever get away from it. It is there and isn't leaving. Like religion, I guess. It's weird how on one hand, you can absolutely not believe something, and on the other, it is vividly alive in your head.
Last night they said it would snow today. I hope! I hope! I want accumulating snow, so the boys can go out and play. I want them to sled with friends down the road (I know that's a long shot) and just enjoy the pleasure of snow. And I'll make crappy snow ice cream and pretend it is amazing, as the boys make memories that will grow in their souls and carry them through adulthood.
There is something simple and wholesome and homesteading-worthy about cooking up a batch of cream of wheat on a cool morning. I wonder if there is a romantic buzz inside my head as I stand before the stove stirring as I imagine people have stirred porridgy-gruelly breakfasts for centuries. I wonder if my brain is just trying to hold on to the lost dreams each morning as I sell my soul and leave home to earn money. George Carlin was right. They do own us. And we sell ourselves and our friends and coworkers out over and over again, to fight for a small spot of something-whether it matters or not-so we can buy a bit of gruel to stir on a stove to just survive a bit longer.
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