Break?

Somehow the month of October passed me by without even nudging me from my befuddlement. I wasn’t asleep, my aching body can attest to that, but I also feel like I’ve just awoken from a daze and, in some scary way, been violated by the ravishings of time. I haven’t felt this worn down and morose in quite a while. Those childhood viruses certainly do more than just make the kids sick: they make Adrianne and I work that much harder to make sure the kids’ needs are taken care of. To make matters worse, Adrianne’s been working outrageous amounts of overtime, it’s the holiday season, and I’ve agreed to research and write a Patent Application for an invention Adrianne came up with two years ago. We’ve already been invited to three parties, and my parents are toying with the idea of visiting twice before the New Year– the first visit’s scheduled within two weeks. We are looking forward to the gatherings and visits, but the work that goes into them doesn’t end when the party is over or the guests have taken their leave. Many times– every time– the work continues on for us well into the night and the following morning. I’ve said this before: people don’t remember what it’s like to have young children. If they did, parties would be held at 10 or 11 a.m. instead of starting at 1 p.m. with dinner being served at 4:30 p.m.; or starting at 4 p.m. and eating dinner at 7:30 p.m.

I’ve been toying with the idea of pausing my blog for a few weeks. Not stopping it, but taking a break … a hiatus, of sorts, from writing. I love writing. Heck, I even think I’m pretty good at it. But the kids just haven’t returned to their normal routines: Taylor’s forgoing naps; Simon is trying to throw his off, too. We are knee deep in Christmas gift making– something we started four or five years ago to ease the expense of the holidays on our wallets, and I haven’t had the time to work on my lathe, write, or even read all that much. Our house is literally littered with incomplete projects from the front door, throughout the kitchen, living room, office, and … the downstairs is a disaster with half turned bowls, mismatched pen kits, and scrap wood covered in shavings; and now this patent…. Quite frankly, I’m sick of the mess and want nothing more to just finish everything in one fell swoop, or throw it all away.

It’s not that I haven’t had much to write about. I do. Yesterday Taylor named one of her stuffed animals. She walks around with her brown, stuffed puppy Casey like it’s a member of the family. “Come on, Casey. Good boy. No, no, no. Don’t touch that. Good boy!” Simon, he’s now at the stage where he is starting to be able to tell us what he needs. There is still a great deal of guessing on our part, but he is starting to string words together to make coherent sentences: “Open window, please.” Believe me, it’s a real exciting time in our house, despite the melancholy tone of this posting.

What is making this decision so much more difficult– or easier– is that a friend of mine just stopped writing his blog. He did it … so can I?

I think what I’ll do is take a week or two off from writing. (I’m going to cheat a little and count this rambling as a legitimate post). If I can find sometime between this morning and the next two weeks maybe I’ll have another post ready to go. Otherwise, I’m afraid, I’ll have to put the blog to bed until after the holidays or I’m finished working on all the extraneous projects cluttering up the house.

See you … then?