Keeping Calm and Carrying On

At 7:15 am,  rolling out of the warm sheets and stretching my aching lower back (when did I develop such a bad back?),  Dr. Fabulous and I, deep in our cerebral and witty morning conversation (not!) somehow meander into an anxiety-provoking topic.  He laughs and says:


"You know, you only have 2 more years of being at home before you are back to work."





Oh yes, I know.  I think about it on a regular basis and when I'm not thinking about it I am actively avoiding the thought taking up room in my consciousness.  Then I have nightmares about being back to work as a school psychologist but I don't know what I'm doing and I'm just waiting to get fired for being lazy and inept.  Though it is 2 years away, clearly, I already stress about the prospect of working outside the home.  


He laughs and confesses that while he doesn't think about it much at all, I should think about it because if I want to put together either a new career or resurrect an old one, I got a lotta work to do.


I know this. Dr. Fabulous is the King of Telling Me All Things I Already Know but he is also the King of Reminding Me Of All Things I Know I Can Be and All Things I Am Not Achieving because he  knows me better than anyone, and sees through my B.S., defense mechanisms and backpedalling.  My problem is I have no desire to return to my old career and I am petrified of beginning a new one.  There are so many things I want to do and not enough hours in the day to do them.  Plus, I have four tiny distractions that do not take kindly to mommy's extracurricular activities that do not involve them directly.  So, if I cannot tackle my dream list with productivity and success,  I feel stuck and act stuck and inertia takes hold and ticks on for months.  Hence the lack of blogging, photography, and 3 months of NO WORK on the wannabe-book.  


He's laughing now, because I'm probably looking like a trapped animal with bed head and morning breath just trying to find an excuse to prolong my Stay-At-Home Motherhood a bit longer without actually giving birth a fifth time.  Which, by the way has crossed my mind.  


But there is no time to take action on procreation right this second as three children need to be roused and readied for school today and I'm already running late because sleep was too good and the bed was too warm.  


But he's reminding me that it's time to get serious about what I'm gonna do and how I'm gonna do it.  And in the spirit of getting serious I decided to tackle some more items on my To Do list.  


Like this one:

Tell me, who has "Clean 7 month old poop off of the ceiling of minivan" on their To Do List?  Raise your hand?  Maybe, you had it on there once, but I bet it didn't sit on your list for 7 months, along with the poop, dangling over the poor soul who found themselves in the passenger seat of my Honda Odyssey (which is actually no one but me on the weekends since my husband insists upon driving).  


In fairness to me, when this incident occurred (which is a crazy story in and of itself) the poop was indeed EVERYwhere, all over CB, the dashboard, the side window, the door, the seat belt.  I spent almost an hour cleaning and disinfecting the car after 30 minutes of bathing her.  I just neglected to notice this smear on the ceiling of the car and it didn't come to my attention until about a week later.  By then, it was dried, non-odorous, and appeared to be common dirt.  I kept making mental notes to clean it up, but my mental note pad continuously gets misplaced in the empty caverns of my brain.  I guess I just stopped seeing it.  


So, I finally wrote it down.  


And perhaps, at some point today, I will actually take care of it.