Thankful for everything, really

Save your fork, there's pie!

So, I totally get why ladies of a certain type like to go away to spas and other quiet places where fluffy towels are provided and the only noise is the soothing tinkling of new age music. 

We have had a truly lovely Thanksgiving weekend.  The Mister was off for three days—a treat—and we had all these incredibly fun, warm, shiny people over to our house for turkey and all the fixings (meat-eaters, try this stuffing). On Saturday we even got all picturesque and trekked out to a tree farm in the mountains above Santa Cruz to cut down a Christmas tree. We picnicked in an old apple orchard and drank wine out of plastic tumblers and the kids picked pears and ate them off the tree. Really, it was just so...nice. Nice in a way I always hoped my life would be.

The Mister with our fresh kill

But here's the thing.  It's Sunday evening, the sun is down, and all that's left is the dealing part: making dinner and cleaning it up, bath time, packing lunches for the twins' first day of daycare tomorrow, putting all those damn lights on the tree, folding laundry, and well, I just now realized that that  I haven't been alone for a minute in a long, long time.  My children even accompany me into the bathroom (this is potty training, not a lack of boundaries).  

And then today at the playground where the twins screeched for me to push them higher, higher, higher and Woody dropped his ooey, gooey ball at my feet, demanding that I throw it again and again and again and I looked down and realized I had worn my darn clogs to the playground again, the ones that fill instantly with sand and make it all but impossible to walk, I just had this crazy vision of some silent pool in some cuckoo place like Sedona and even though I am so, so thankful, truly thankful, for my sweet life, I just wanted to go to that quiet pool and immerse myself in all that warm, quiet water and be alone.

 

Instead I went to Wallgreens to buy Christmas lights and gum and low fat Triscuits. Which, if you look at it from certain angles, is its own kind of blessing.

Maggie & Ollie like dessert best