Quick Five!

It’s my birthday today & I have a confession: 

I’m discouraged.

It’s been a busy summer.  I’ve gotten so little writing done, I can’t even confess the word count out loud.  It’s too demoralizing.  My house is falling down around my ears, & not just in term of cleanliness.  Currently, we’re down to one working bathroom, & of the three sinks in the house, only one drains properly.  I dropped $5,000 on car repairs this summer, a couple hundred on the washer, & another couple hundred just last week on replacement parts for the grill.  And the check engine light on the van STILL comes on whenever it wants to.

When I was young (read: in my thirties) this stuff didn’t bother me.  I was too busy with diapers & preschool & play dates.  Anything I managed to get done on the side (house keeping, home repairs, writing the occasional novel) was above & beyond expectations. 

But I’m in my forties now.  In September, I’ll start my second year of both kids going to all-day school.  This is the promised land for stay-at-home moms who continue to stay at home.  We think longingly of these years & all the things we’re going to get done when we don’t have kids in every single minute of every day.  We dream of all the things we’ll do, the places we’ll go, the successes we’ll have when we’re able to rub two thoughts together more than once or twice a week.

But I’m living in that uptopia now, & it’s not exactly how I envisioned it.  I guess I just thought that I’d be farther ahead by now. Farther down the road to success, to accomplishment, to at least having a reliable van.  Instead I have my in-laws staying with us for a week, & am mortified that I can’t offer them a shower that works properly, let alone a guest room with a door on it.  

So, as you can see, I’ve been digging myself pretty darn deep into the pit of despair.  And we can’t have that.  It’s my birthday!  So in honor of making it through this past year, I’m going to come up with five things I’m grateful for.

1) Health.  We all got a miserable cold while camping in Yellowstone earlier this month & coughing my lungs out has given me a renewed appreciation for the excellent health I usually enjoy.  I know a lot of people my age who suffer with chronic illness, injury & pain.  I’ve been blessed with a sturdy little body & a tough constitution.  I rarely get sick & when I do, it’s not for long.  I’m a lucky duck & it’s good to remind myself of that every now & then.

2) Stability.  Mr. Sey has been the sole bread-winner in this family since we had our babies.  We knew that depending on one income was risky, but I wanted to stay home with my babies, & Mr. Sey wanted that, too.  So we jumped.  And in spite of the rocky economy, Mr. Sey has taken care of us.  We don’t have fancy cars or a lot of functional plumbing, but we have a roof over our heads, food on the table & the luxury of never having to flip a coin to see whose career takes the hit when the kids get sick.  It’s a blessing.

3)  Love.  This kind of goes along with stability, but when I decided to stay home, Mr. Sey & I made a bargain:  He’d make the money, I’d raise the kids.  We’d both parent, of course, but I’d take care of the kids & the house, & in return he would take care of us.  And I’ve never for a single instant doubted his word.  He said he’d take care of us, and he does.  Every single day.  If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.  

4)  Career.  This is a funny one since I just got through telling you that I’m a happy stay-at-home mom, but I actually do have a career.  I’m a writer.  (Surprise!)  I’ve published two books traditionally, two more by myself, & have another one coming along.  So it’s not a huge career, but it’s a career, & it’s more than a lot of people have after they’ve been out of the traditional workforce for ten years.  I call that a blessing, if not a miracle. 

5)  Cake.  Because it’s my birthday & I love cake.  With ice cream.  A lot of ice cream.  Okay, maybe ice cream with a side dish of cake.  Maybe I’m just grateful for ice cream.  I think I am.  I’m deeply grateful for the existence of ice cream & the fact that my knees still allow thrice weekly runs that keep all the ice cream I eat off my butt.  Or at least most of it.

So how about you?  What are you particularly grateful for today?