Ok. Deep breath.

I know I gave the impression yesterday that I am miserable.  Sometimes I am – just not all the time.  I just hate being sick.  I’ve got some sinus congestion threatening to turn into an infection on top of everything else and it’s made me grumpy.   Being lazy is great sometimes, but forced laziness is not.  I can “push through the pain” for the sake of a paycheck, but that’s about it.  Everything else kind of goes by the wayside. I just want a few more productive days to balance out the lazy.

We had a pretty boring 4th of July.  We were supposed to go to a friend’s neighborhood display, but it rained all day Saturday and we ended up skipping it.  The rain did eventually clear off in time for fireworks, but by then I was nursing a massive headache and was pretty unpleasant to be around.  The kids had shown zero interest, anyway.  So on the 4th, we just hung out and watched tv.  We had explained to the kids that we didn’t have the funds for fireworks this year, and they didn’t seem to care – until 10:00 on Sunday night.  We sat down to watch the Boston Pops special and my four-year old started crying that he thought we were doing fireworks outside!  Paul got mad, Ari pouted and said the fireworks on tv weren’t real, I apologized, Paul shouted that we’d get some sparklers the next day, and we settled in and enjoyed the show.  I fast forwarded past Toby Keith to spare Paul any further discomfort but then he accused me of fast forwarding too far and missing most of the fireworks.  Family fun at its best.  Lesson learned.  I guess I thought I was the only one who cared about celebrating, and my heart just wasn’t in it this year.  Funny how the kids didn’t care about the fireworks until there weren’t any.  

It’s the same with everything really.  People like to say that we women put all this pressure on ourselves to keep everything afloat: dinner, housekeeping, holiday planning.  As if the fact that it’s self-initiated makes it optional.  If I take the pressure off myself, don’t make dinner, don’t plan a big holiday shindig, stop cleaning the house – does anyone care?  Absolutely! If there’s no dinner, and the trash is overflowing, and no one bothers to buy fireworks, who is the first person to be interrogated about it? MOM! That crazy lady who does all of those trivial little things out of some antiquated social training.  Those trivial things are only trivial when they’re done regularly.  Suddenly they’re important to everyone else when they come to a screeching halt.  Just an observation.

In spite of all my whining about how lazy my weekend was, I really am grateful for the rest.  We got ourselves hooked on Dexter, and watched the first two entire seasons on Netflix.  The third season is not available for instant play.  Imagine our disappointment.  Last night, we watched Man in the Moon.  I think it was Reese Witherspoon’s first film, and she was amazing in it.  I’ve seen it several times, but rented it for Reagan.  It’s about a little girl’s last summer as a little girl.  If you’ve never seen it, you should.

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