Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Mom Mode, Again by Konnie Enos


Okay, confession time.
This is my fifth attempt at writing my post and all the others crashed and burned. Usually because they started sounding like pure drivel. Though at least twice it was because I could not make any sense of my point or how to get there.
At about two this morning I decided it was because I was just too tired so I closed my laptop and went to bed, for a few measly hours of rest. I’m not sure four hours of fitful, and interrupted, sleep is very helpful.
Yes, I knew I had a post to get up. I’ve known for a couple of months now I’d be doing the post this week. However, for the last few weeks to a month, every time I need to get things done, and even plan time to do it, someone comes up with “but I need this and you have to do this for me”.
Instead of doing finances or paying bills, I’ve had to drive people to or from appointments or school or take them shopping. Unfortunately, tis the season.
Every single time I thought there was nothing on the schedule that I had to worry about one or more of my family members would come up to me and say they needed, or wanted, to go someplace. In a couple of instances they told me we had to get something done and there wasn’t a lot of free time to do it in.
As a result of taking care of my family’s needs, I have missed my writer’s group meeting at least three weeks in a row now.
Even when I’ve wanted to write, and thought I might have time, what “free time” I had was spent trying to catch up on finances and clearing out my emails, which I’m still behind on, so I haven’t done any writing. I can’t even remember the last time I opened any of my files.
This busy mom mode has gone on so long I’m beginning to feel I will always be running my kids hither and thither and have no time for me.
Pretty bad.
Especially when you consider three of my four children still living at home are high school graduates and two of those are in college.
I mean they are old enough to be on their own, paying their own bills, and taking care of their own transportation without bugging mom, or dad for that matter.
But even knowing they could move out at any time or that our youngest is a senior in high school and so very close to old enough didn’t leave me with expecting any reprieve, most particularly not in the near future.
My youngest hates both school and change and has declared he was never moving out of this house.
Of the other three, my oldest daughter still at home does want to move out and is trying to work out her plans to do so. She keeps hitting roadblocks.
My youngest daughter has had her plan in place for years and is following it step by step. She graduates from the local (read inexpensive) community college in May and will then move on to university, armed with a degree which can get her employment which pays well while she continues her education. She’s determined not to incur any student loan debt on her way to getting her DVM if at all possible.
So of those three I have known for some time my girls are planning on moving out, just not exactly sure when. Sometime in the next year? However, I felt I would be stuck with my son for life.
There is also my oldest son.
For years he told us he was moving out as soon as he turned 18 even though that was in the middle of his senior year in high school.
Then he told us he’d move out when his best friend turned 18 so they could move in together. So a few months after his birthday.
Then he said they were waiting until graduation.
Then they were waiting until after his friend returned from spending the summer with his brother.
Then they were waiting until they got jobs.
Somewhere in there my son decided to join the Army instead, something he’s still working on but he’s also broke.
He keeps talking about getting a job but so far he’s given more talk than action.
For a young man who insisted he’d move out as soon as he was old enough, he now seems quite content to stay right where he is, because his eighteenth birthday was last year.
Maybe by his next birthday.
Happy birthday Anthony.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

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