Slacker

There is a lovely blogger named Gayla Trail who says that her biggest piece of advice to someone who is struggling with his relationship to gardening is this:  he needs to cut himself some slack.  He should allow for disappointments, and pay close attention to what works and what doesn't.

Girl never met a hairband she liked more in her hair than on her wrist...

Now, listen, I don't do gardening. Have you SEEN my front yard? (We can't even talk about my back yard. No really, we can't. But if I disappear someday it is probably because our "back" neighbors have taken out a hit on me.) We are doing well if we keep the grass cut and the bushes trimmed (ish) Somewhere deep in the DNA of every Southern woman rests an older woman that will eventually wear a funny hat and grow tomatoes...but that person is dormant in me. Very dormant. So dormant that said person might actually be dead. Time will tell.

Anyway, someday I will remember this advice and apply it growing veggies, but for today, I'm applying it to growing my family. When it comes to my children, I am truly terrible at cutting myself...and anyone else...some slack.

This is as close to gardening as we get. Tending the grass now and again. Maybe eating it, depending on your age.

Now this is mostly a good thing. Every family needs that person that is the "engine", the person that pushes everyone else to grow and achieve. But sometimes it sucks to be that person and sometimes it sucks even more to live with that person... or so I presume.

"I just woke up. I just need a minute here, Mom"

 Usually I only figure out that I'm pushing myself and my husband too hard AFTER it's already happened. We don't really fight much, Tim and I. Sure, we disagree and fairly often we will verbally spar in a humorous-but-competitive way. But about twice a year, someone will politely request that the other person stow the lawnmower after using it, and it somehow degenerates into two primates shrieking at arguing with each other and angrily flinging playfully tossing a Boppy at each other while declaring that the fact that SOMEONE shoved the wedding cake into the other's face after a SOLEMN VOW not to do so should have been an indicator that THIS WAS NEVER GOING TO WORK BECAUSE WHO THE H DOES THAT?!?!?! (This happens to everyone right? No? Just us?) You see where I'm going here. Something small inexplicably boils up into something big ...or several something bigs...and it leaves everyone feeling hurt and pissed off and generally ill-done-by.

G feels ill-done-by also; the food is too slow

After some reflection we usually conclude that said argument happened because we're low on sleep and low on patience and low on quality time and just generally... low. And that the wedding cake shove-age/failure to stow lawnmower is not truly a deal breaker and that it's time to get back to the advice that I started with, namely cutting oneself and one's partner some slack. Allow for disappointments and figure out what works. Let things...and people...be imperfect and figure out how to love through flaws and despite flaws and maybe even because of flaws.

I sort of love the way she never really smiles for pictures. It's so Addie to do her own thing instead.

 Now, I know it is not really the " done thing" to blog about things like marital spats or how you are NOT achieving or succeeding. But if I had a motto for my life it would be "Tell the truth, it's the only thing worth taking the time to type." (That would be kind of a weird life motto because I don't actually type all that much. And some of what I type is fiction. So that would not be my motto. But I'm going to leave it because my brain is now too tired to think up a better one, and the blog title already tells you I'm a slacker.) And the truth is, sometimes we argue. Though not very often, thank God. But it is OK. We survive and we get better and stronger, and then we thrive.

Thriving!

After the weekend's Official Semi-Annual Dust-Up, I decided to spend the day just hanging out with the kids. Not rushing to cook, or clean, or meet friends for a playdate, or work out, or do errands, or really do much of anything. I was a slacker. We ate leftovers, I didn't clean my house, or do laundry, or check my email, or do a single errand.  I accomplished nothing. Except for...and this is the all important exception...loving my family.

What's not to love? I ask you!

Frankly, it was fantastic. And somehow doing nothing felt a lot like something I needed to do, at least for today. (Though I'm pretty sure if you followed this kind of regimen on a daily basis you'd soon be featured on a Hoarders episode). The truth is that my life...our life....is so completely and gloriously imperfect, and messy, and a total work-in-progress. But I love it. It suits me. Even when, and maybe especially when, I'm being a slacker.