Nothing gold can stay...

"I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air. " (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

I took a break from blogging for a minute or two. Partly because my house seems to be one giant petri dish meant solely for breeding rhinovirus carriers, and partly because I had a touch of ennui. Such a pretty word, isn’t it? Ennui. I feel sorta exotic just saying it.

I tried explaining this lame feeling I’ve been carting around to my poor husband and I’m sure I only served to confused the man even more. How can I be absolutely fine on the surface and yet feel so sluggish and down on the inside? The same dork in pajama pants doing the running man at breakfast day in and day out that fights this nagging sadness that looms just around the corner and at the blurred edges in my vision? I don’t get it.

I think the crux of the problem is that I am used to working towards something. At any given moment in my life, you can ask me what I’m into lately and I always have a fire-burning passion about something. MMA, jiu jitsu, knitting, sewing, writing, Warcraft, running, yoga, swimming, baking. Something. And yes, I love all of those activities, but I think I might have burned myself out when the realities of my life as it stands now hit.

Life is busy. And not always in the carpooling to soccer/swim/baseball practice, but in the everyday reality of raising a family, working full-time with one of us in school full-time. It’s nuts. And it leaves precious little time for selfish pursuits. (I know it’s selfish to want to be able to sew for four hours straight, and it’s a notion I’m adjusting to. My boys saved me from my own vanity and self-interest, but I am not an overnight success. A work-in-progress at best!)

Each night at 4-ish when we get home, a part of me sighs heavily, knowing that the longest four hours of the day are about to begin. Between picking up after our morning rush out of the house to doing the daily upkeep chores, to cooking, bathing, and cleaning the wild apes running through the house, I’m done by 8 p.m….and that’s assuming the wild apes actually stay in their beds and sleep and don’t stand screaming for 45 minutes until we can’t stand it anymore and go get them.

But today on the drive in, the leaves are changing. My town is green and gold and full of crisp contrasts in every view, and around here, it doesn’t last. Fall is orange and red, full of pumpkins and chilly evenings, tempered with bright, warm afternoons, and it’s gone all too quickly—replaced by overcast, snow-threatening days and sad, bare trees.

Much like this stage in life, right? Our boys are young and they’re needy and it’s a beautiful time that’s fleeting at best. Perhaps I ought to reconsider my viewpoint and be happy they require so much work, because if I remember my teenaged years correctly, the times coming where they want to be on their own and away from the house.

And what would I do without lunches to pack and babies to bathe? Where would I be without 24-hours of Dragon Tales and Spongebob.

Lost, my friends. I’d be lost.

So here's to folding mountains of laundry and endless bowls of macaroni and cheese… beauty in the small details. Happiness in the everyday...