Happy Mother's Day to Me

I feel really guilty about saying this, because I really love my children, obviously I do, but every year on Mother's Day, what I really want is a day off.  It's rare I get even a couple of hours to myself, let alone in my own house.  All I wanted to do was go wherever I wanted to go or do whatever I wanted to do, even if that meant nothing at all.   



Chris granted my wish, (I'll return the favor on Father's Day) but when the weather forecast for Mother's Day called for a day of rain, I asked if I could take my Mother's Day day off on Saturday instead.  So this morning he packed lunches and loaded the kids in the car for an excursion to the Tamarack Nature Center. 

Chris said he and Oliver had talked about what Oliver wanted me to do on my day off.  Except when Chris asked him to tell me what those things were, Oliver couldn't quite remember and with a hint of question in his voice, said, "Join Paloma's [next door neighbor girl] family?"  With Chris helping to jog his memory, Oliver finally remembered he had really wanted me to "plant some flowers and go on a walk and look for dogs."

The only walk I went on was the few blocks to the running store to buy myself a new pair of running shoes to replace the ones I had worn down to the sole and had planned to throw away at the end of our trip to China.  But I did see all my favorite neighborhood dogs and got tons of slobbery kisses to brighten my day.  And I did plant A LOT of flowers.  All my window boxes are now stuffed with flowers and I can't wait until the plants are fully grown and bursting with color.

The only mishap in my bright and sunny, and quiet, day was I managed to smash a storm window over my head.  I was trying to open one of the windows on our three-season porch so I could access the window box from inside, when the top of the window popped out of the frame, tipped towards me, hit my head and shattered.  I gently lifted what was left of the window off my head and I felt mild stinging on my scalp.  The last thing I needed on my day-before-Mother's-Day-day-to-myself was a shard of glass poking out of my head.  I obviously couldn't see if anything was stuck, so unsure of what else to do, I knocked on my neighbor's door, and in the oddest request I've ever made of them, asked if they could make sure no slivers of glass were stuck in my hair. 

The broken window aside, the rest of the day was exactly how I had envisioned it.