I know that Thanksgiving is over. So over, in fact, it feels like it happened 3 years ago instead of a mere week and one day ago. However, since I’ve been told that we should be practicing gratitude with every new day vs. with a side of turkey, gravy and pumpkin pie, let’s travel back to last week for just a minute.
To briefly set the state, I had the week off from work and my kids had most of the week off from daycare and school.
Parts about Thanksgiving break that were great: time off of work, extra snuggles with the kids, staying in my pajamas until noon. Parts that sucked: time off of work, extra snuggles with the kids and staying in my pajamas until noon.
Yes, the same things I love about Thanksgiving—or any extended at-home vacation time—inevitably turn into the things that irritate me. More time off work means I spend more time at home, which is great until I remember the ever growing housework to-do list and feel compelled to complete all of the things in a matter of hours. Extra snuggles with the kids is awesome...until all children and all children’s favorite blankets and cars and juice cups and milk bottles and crumby graham crackers are in my bed and I’m getting kicked in the head. I LOVE staying in my pajamas past the appropriate hour, that is until I realize I haven’t left the house or received fresh air in 8 hours and I start hyperventilating because I’m lazy, good for nuthin’ bum and I shouldn’t I be taking the kids to like a museum or someplace?
And then I read this this Motherly article and realized that my angst isn’t really about crumbs or 3-day old sweatpants or unnecessary panic attacks. It’s about me being kind of an asshole. It’s about me not remembering that I chose to be a parent and, and even though my heart still tells me that vacation equals relaxation, my brain is reminding me, “No, idiot. Parents don’t get vacations. Not real vacations anyway.” It’s about me not accepting my life for the horribly wonderful thing that it is.
You see, the author does a phenomenal job of taking the top irritants of parenting life, such as being pelted with “Why?” after “Why?” after “Why” from incessantly curious young children, and turning them into reasons to be thankful. And while I have to admit that she takes some pretty lofty liberties with this idea from time to time, such as,
I am thankful that my husband doesn't notice when I get my hair done because he thinks I'm pretty anyway.
(Really? You really don’t want your husband to just like, notice things? Really?)
she’s also quick to redeem herself with a dose of down-to-earth simplicity, like this:
I am thankful for Target. Because Target.
(Yes. Target is both the problem and solution to all of mom’s problems.)
So yeah, I love-hate this article. I love it because I realized something: holiday vacations require me to make a sudden, brain-cramping transition from 9-5 Work Mom to Full-time Stay-at-Home Mom, like my kids hired me from some parenting temp agency. And that sucks. And that’s hard. And that makes some of my assholey thoughts and behaviors understandable and therefore a little OK. But I hate this article because it also made me come to terms with the fact that I am all too often trying to fix the moment I’m in. I’m trying to make an unrealistic dent in my to-do’s, make kid time impossibly less messy, make my time at home painfully more productive. I’m trying to make moments better or make them how I think they should vs. just leaning into then and enjoying them as they are. And that means this article gave me “one to grow on.” And that’s just...annoying.
Nevertheless, I’m going to give this whole “gratefulness reframing” thing a shot because Thanksgiving vacation kind of gassed me. And also because the impatient words coming out of my mouth more and more lately are telling me that I may need to readjust something. (For instance, this morning when Kid A asked me why we were out of apple juice, I answered, “Because we are. So...just like...DEAL with it!” It’s just apple juice, dude. Well, you can imagine how well THAT went down.) And maybe you will try it too. If so, let me know how you do? If nothing else, we can celebrate our epic fails over a glass of wine and be thankful that we’re drunk because...that means we have people in our lives...who drive us to drink?
Yeah. This this is definitely going to take some practice.
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