Wednesday

I used to be a morning person. Nothin' better than starting the day at 4am while everything is quiet and dark... long before the hours where I had to be anywhere or do anything.

Mornings now are the worst part of my day. I get the best pain relief at night when I take the pharmaceutical cocktail and can just climb into the nest and not feel guilty for being an unproductive human. Mornings are when every step hurts, it's hard to get the kinks out. Whatever position I sleep in has frozen my spine in that position and it takes awhile to get my bones, joints and muscles on board with new movement. And... of course... it's the longest time between pain meds... I can't take new pain meds until I've eaten and I'm in so much pain in the morning that eating is the last thing I want to do. I've weaned myself off of coffee, not intentionally. There were a few days of weak coffee and a few days of complaints about my strong coffee and I just realized it was easier not to drink it. It's not really a broken habit, I back off my coffee consumption every Summer to some degree. I'm sure I'll be back to the weak/strong coffee debate by our first frost.

Also. In the morning the cats feel entitled to have breakfast by 5am and by 6am they're all three in my room dancing on my face trying to wake me up. Talk about a rude awakening!

I won't allow myself - most days- to stay in the nest all day. I dress, sometimes put on makeup and join the rest of the house in the living room for our tv marathon/Mawmaw's naptime. I know that it would probably FEEL better to stay in bed all day and there are days mentally and emotionally that I don't really want to be around people but I have removed myself from so much of life... getting out of bed is important.

My mom has these bursts of productivity where she'll chop down a tree or cut the grass or build a birdhouse (I'm exaggerating a little bit) but then is so wiped out that she'll sleep for an hour. Then she's back up and at 'em.

I group my activity into one or two events a day and the rest of the day I try to stay still enough to not aggravate the pain but move often enough that I don't get stiff.

My morning activity is usually whatever process it takes for me to not stink, not have greasy or frizzy hair and be appropriately dressed. Sometimes that's all I can manage. This morning I got up and did all of that and then went to the bank, picked up some groceries and came home. That was it for me until time to cook dinner. I wouldn't have cooked dinner but I really wanted these english muffin pizzas that I make and I had the stuff to make it so I used that burst of productivity to make dinner.

Cooking is a bit of a stress relief for me too. I get pretty overwhelmed in the late afternoons when the dogs are wound up and barking and the Basement Clown Posse is upstairs raiding my pantry and messing up dishes. I watched three hours of Grey's Anatomy today and I HEARD about fifteen minutes of it. That got a lovely stress headache going and so when my mom put on her nightgown and I knew she was in for the night I went upstairs and watched a documentary I had wanted to see. It was the perfect attitude adjustment for me.

I watched a movie called "First Position" about a young ballet students who are competing on the national level. My sons all took dance and my brother danced... and my sister-in-law... and it was a good time for us as a family. I mean, we did the baseball, football - manly sports - as well but we went to a a great dance school and did the Nutcracker for several years and there was a lot of time invested and my boys worked hard and were, for the most part, treated well and it was a good thing. This movie took me back to that time of our life.

I have friends who are still in the thick of parenting and I hate to be the cliche older woman who obnoxiously says, "you're gonna miss this" to every mother who is trying to get three kids to soccer practice in three different places, have a decent dinner, help with homework and all those things that consume our lives while we're parenting but trust me. You're gonna miss it. I'm just so glad that God allowed me to do those things as a young mom because if I had waited to have kids in my thirties... I would be no kind of mom at all. His timing is perfect. Maybe before my grandkids are born there will be some miraculous surgery or procedure that can fix me.

For now... I'll just keep on getting up every day like I've got a reason to. Putting on clean clothes and doing the glam routine even if the only beings that will see me that day are the cats. Keeping a schedule. Making sure I have some shape and form to my life. Or just that I have a life at all.

Hope you've had a happy Wednesday. Thanks for stopping by.