The Weight

I feel as though a great weight has been lifted, just thinking about borrowing the money to pay my credit card and thus leaving my bank account intact. Ahhh! I feel like I can breathe again.

After a couple of weeks (well, months, really, if I'm honest with myself) of not really living life, I decided to get out and do the kind of things I used to do before the event completely took over. I did my first Silverlake reservoir walk since June (I've been too exhausted/busy/nauseated/it's been too hot to deal with it this summer), then got B and I into the hot tub (set to 95 degrees) when we got home. At first he was terrified and clung to me like a little monkey (which I actually enjoy - he's usually too squirmy these days to want much snuggle time with me), but it wasn't long before he was on his own playing with my flip flops and confidently diving into my arms over open water. I am sort of hoping he'll just magically figure out how to swim without any formal (read: expensive) training. It could happen, if I get him in the water often enough and he gets a feel for it.

Then I put him down for a nap and dove into one of my favorite escapist projects - making food from scratch that you could easily buy at the store. I finally put to work the pickling supplies I bought a year ago and made five large jars of dill pickles. I used Japanese cucumbers because they were the only ones available; I haven't made pickles in over twenty years so I have no idea if I missed some important step or just missed the mark with the ingredients, etc. But it was my fantasy when I was pregnant with B to be the kind of mom that makes fresh bread and cans preserves and pickles and has a new baked treat on the table for the kids when they come home from school, and I'm determined to follow through with that. My memory tells me pickles are pretty hard to screw up. There's no "gel stage", no timing, no taking of temperatures. Most people don't even bother with a hot water bath, as I did. So I think they'll be pretty great. 

It felt good to embrace life and forget my troubles for the day. In the never ending saga of "what to do about our sleeping arrangements", I have come up with yet another potential idea for how to create a bedroom for B. I may have my handyman over for an estimate. Can't hurt to get an estimate, right? Few things would give me more pleasure than arranging and decorating a real boy's room for B to be a toddler in. I have a toddler bed and furniture set all picked out from IKEA. I can't wait to see him in his big boy bed covered by the onesie blanket his auntie made him, while I read him a story. Good times ahead. Good times.