It's a limbo week, and that's where I am. Feeling stuck and rudderless in every way imaginable. This is the last full week of "summer vacation" and we have no plans and I have no spontaneity left in me. I was going to try to find somewhere for us to go this week, last minute and depending how we all felt.
We had some options: Vermont to my cousins, a few mid-week days at the beach. But I hadn't counted on Irene and her aftermath. Or on how much my boys after their first week away at sleep-away camp would want to just go home so much. To be, in fact, desperate for HOME.
So here we are.
I have mountains of laundry and unpacking to do, which I am way too slowly working my way through, thoroughly unmotivated but tired of looking at the suitcases in my living room.
And I am so not doing my best mothering right now, finding my boys on these beautiful last summer days mostly inside: one on the Wii, the other on the computer. We live in New York City. I can't just toss them out into the backyard. There IS no backyard.
And I'm on the computer, too. But I'm not writing as I need to, just aimlessly surfing and noting how many more comments and readers other bloggers have. Those by now completely irrelevant BlogHer recap posts that are almost but not quite done? Still undone. I just don't have it in me to finish them.
Until the upstairs neighbors came home late yesterday all of Ethan's friends were out of town. Jake still has no friends. (And I feel sad and guilty beyond guilt that I haven't been able to do anything about that yet.) So playdates aren't happening.
And the two of them together are just awful right now. Awful. Jake in Ethan's face, talking non-stop. Ethan screaming at his brother to shut up and leave him alone. So separate screens is the best I can do right now. Sigh. Biggest sigh ever.
And I am feeling how much this is not how I wanted to parent. I always pictured us as a minimal TV home. Envisioned myself to be the mother leading her kids on nature hikes, visits to the zoo, days at the beach, rainy afternoons spent painting and sculpting, reading books, exploring the city's museums together. Hanging out with other families, frolicking.
But then again I didn't count on autism, and boys who fight all the time, and my utter exhaustion.
When friends write about how they wish they had another week of summer and how much they are enjoying this relaxed time with their kids it just hammers at my heart. Because that is how I want to feel, it's how I expected I would feel. I DO love my time with my kids but individually, because going out or doing anything with them together is. just. awful.
And we are all together 24/7 until school starts right now. And I don't know how I'm going to make it another week and a day.
So I am one of THOSE moms, desperately waiting for school to start (Thursday the 8th for Ethan, Monday the 12th for Jake). And I hate that. I hate feeling this way.
And it's so my instinct is to hide when I feel like this, to disappear. And that's what I was planning to do. But then in my surfing this morning I saw all the tweets about folks who had linked up their posts with (this week's SNSS guest) Shell's "Pour Your Heart Out" linky.
And then I remembered that amazing fact that Aunt Becky had recently written about in a post, how writing actually helps us heal.
And then I thought "I'm a blogger, Damn it! I'm not going to curl up inside myself and hide away, I'm going to write about it."
So here's my ugly, all splayed out on the page... screen... whatever. It's not my best post. But it's all I've got today. So it will have to do.
(P.S. Updated this afternoon: It worked! Feeling much better now, about to drag the kids out to the park. )
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