Urgent Care

I've been pining for a "quieter time" when I'm in charge of my thoughts again.  Where the pushy conveyor belt of life slows itself long enough for your fingers to loosen, temples to cease fire, and toes to pop up before the lip of your shoes get eaten by the hungry metal seam.

Chomp, chomp.  Just once I'd like to see where it goes.  

Did I do this?  Did I make it all so critical?  Because for a long time everything has been on fire.  Everything matters so much all the time-  engineering lives that depend on me.  Raising a family is strange that way.  You are split in half:  wholly relevant and constantly disappearing.

Chomp, chomp.  

For years, it feels like I've been working in Urgent Care.  As in uh oh, your forehead is warm.  Crap, you need lunch!  PLEASE don't roll in the dog hair!   EEK, why are you wearing booty shorts?

For years, triaging.  All forethought, planning, and scheduling ahead, trying to predict who would be walking through the door in the morning.  Cranky girl?  Lethargic boy?  PMS Mom?   OCD Marine?  But sometimes we are all well and the kids are steamrolling on the couch, breaking legs off dolls just to "cast" them back on, and making "phshew, pshew noises with LEGO people that never run out of things over which to wage a seven minute war.

But I cannot take myself from this Urgent Care mentality- the incessant nag of more.  GAH, can you still read?   No board games, we need Vitamin D!   Man, I never took you to one museum, did I?  And so on.

For self-induced reasons, my insides are in flames that lick their way up and down my thoughts to create worries that feed on fire.


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Grayson starts 2nd grade today  Abby begins all day kindergarten next week.  For the first time in 8 years, I will not be working in Urgent Care.  That decade-long fire is about to go out.

And I'm going to sleep hard like a smiling dog in the afternoon sun.