Something Super Amazing Happened to Me Yesterday!!!

I put my apron on!

crickets chirp

“Uhhhm @Accio?...”

NO BUT LISTEN!!! This is an important thing…

^{Have you read my older posts? Did you think I was joking about my apron? I wasn’t.}

I have not been shy about the fact that I haven’t been physically and mentally well as of late, I haven’t been me. Along with horrible fatigue, general bitchery, ext part of that is the extremely noticeable lack of apron. I know what you’re thinking… “Oh it’s just an apron.” NO ITS NOT! I love my apron. Let me say it again…

I LOVE MY APRON!

My apron is more than just something to keep pancake batter off of my clothes or a kink people, though it is extremely effective for both my apron is a damned horcrux. It is an extension of self, an ingrained aspect of my identity. When I put that apron on the kids back up because they know shit is about to get done. They know they’re either going to start cleaning or they’re going to stay out of my way. They know when I put that apron on that they’re getting rainbow pretty pancakes instead of cereal, arts and crafts instead of TV time, play along games instead of irritated snapping. Putting my apron on is symbolic, it represents my switch to Mrs. Cleaver Brain (favorite of my 26 brains by the way)... And it’s been just sitting there all lonely for about two months now.

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I think that in order to make y’all understand the significance of this I need to tell you how my Friday went. SO... Happy healthy Accio body likes to wake up naturally at 5 am, I have no idea why really I suppose that’s just what my internal clock is set to. No matter when happy healthy Accio goes to sleep, even if its 4 am, my body will wake itself up at 5. Now clearly my body has been neither happy or healthy so everything has been all out of sorts, but my circadian rhythm has been readjusting the past week or two. I’m now able to stay awake through the day, and have been waking up anywhere from 5:30 to 7:15 am, though still teetering this is a really good sign for me. Yesterday I woke up a bit later than usual. I woke up at 8 am, and didn’t get out of bed until 8:30. I laid there semi-conscious shouting instructions at Nine to get him off to school while Rose sat on my legs playing ABC Mouse.

When I realized what was happening I forced myself up, refusing to give into this black hole again. So Rose and I mosied on down to the couch, where I hopped onto discord and Steemit. I engaged, finally dropped a link in the c-squared discord (which got approved, my first curation woohoo!), threw out some of my penny up votes, left some comments all that fun stuff, and put out a post for my interactive story series that should have been out three weeks ago. I was feeling good about myself, like I’d integrated myself back into Steemit the way that I wanted to. In the past five days I’ve gotten a @Currie upvote, a @c-squared up vote, gotten involved in and done some brain work for the @Steemmonsters writing contest/collaboration (go Team Gold!), acquired some Steem Monster cards, threw out a little contest entry for @neoxian’s writing contest, decided to join in on the @c-squared engagement contests, and so on. Lots of good stuff happening on Steemit for me.

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So there I was around maybe 11 am all giddy and proud of myself for my interwebs activities… well, then I looked up. Messy. House. How had I not noticed all of these dirty little details? When was the last time I’d dusted the bookshelf? When was the last time that there were no dishes in the sink? Is there even a floor in the playroom? Looking around and taking in all of these things grated on my nerves, but where as a few days ago they would have sent me into a spiral of overwhelmed angst… My brain just instantly started listing and categorizing the best approach.

As I got up to begin, Rose asked me to make a Father’s day card. ”Well shit…” She was going off for her visitation later, so I couldn’t really put it off… I went and got some paper and colored pencils, she informed me she wanted to make a special pop up card with the cool monkey from Mama’s coloring book on it… and she wanted to make her Daddy monkey brownies, because he is a monkey of course. So we dove into our projects. I started by cutting out the shapes she wanted and little strips…

Then looking around my brains, still squeaking and grinding from coming into motion after a long period of not being used, put some puzzle pieces together. I told her that if she wanted to make her daddy brownies the kitchen had to be cleaned first so, while she colored her decorations I would go and do the dishes. The idea went over very well.

As I walked into the kitchen I spotted it, hanging sadly by the back door. My mind flashed to my steady decline beginning in February and culminating in a complete crash about a month ago, to my weeks of doing nothing, hardly managing to exist, my short temper and general grouchiness towards my clueless kids. It hung there reminding me harshly how long its been since I’ve made pretty pancakes, and how long I’ve been promising to do another lesson experiment, how long its been since I actually cooked something that didn’t come out of a box or made a special surprise for the kids.

I took it down and looked at it for a second, held it, thinking about everything that it represented… “You’re gonna get stuff done Mommy?” I laughed as I looked over at Rose, “Yeah, I think its a get stuff done kind of day, don’t you?” I asked her, as she enthusiastically agreed and asked me to sharpen some pencils I tied my apron strings.

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I put my favorite 50s music playlist up loud and I got to work. I dance-cleaned around my kitchen, feeling so me singing along, Rose singing right along with me from the dining room table, occasionally demanding Elvis. There are times, times when you’re so busy/distracted that you start to forget who you are. In these times breakthrough moments, like running off to the woods, reading a beloved author, dance cleaning to 50s music in your apron, or whatever it happens to be that makes you you are magic. A gasping breath at the surface. Each of these breakthroughs feeds the me in me, giving it strength and coaxing it out of hiding.

I got the kitchen cleaned, not just the dishes. Counter, stove, small things that I’d been overlooking… It felt damned good… just as Rose finished her decorating. If you don’t happen to know how to make pop out cards it’s stupid easy. All you have to do is cut strips of paper at desired length and accordion fold (one way then the other repeatedly) them, and glue. Now… keep in mind that this card was made by a four year old. Could I make a Pintrest perfect card? Of course I could, I was watching Martha Stewart before I was Rose’s age. Am I going to waste time, energy, and patience arguing with my four year old to let me do it so that the craft shes making comes out “nicer”? Hell no. I’m capable of Pinterest perfection on most things, you’ll probably never see it on my blog… because the things I do aren’t for me, they’re for kids… I don’t even really do them, I supervise the kids doing them.

And lucky this happened just after I moved her finished card up onto a shelf for safety, it would have gotten ruined where she left it...

Now we were ready for brownies. I Popped the oven on preheat for 350 degrees and finally asked her what monkey brownies even are. She told me, in quite a condescending tone might I add, that they were brownies with bananas. Well we didn’t have any bananas, but we did have banana pudding. She also spotted the chunky peanut butter while I searched for the banana pudding and insisted that be added as well, because daddy likes peanut butter. So hiding my look of absolute horror and disgust I also pulled out a tub of cool whip to mix with the peanut butter to make it more spreadable. She wanted sprinkles too. So settled on ingredients, we started.

She measured, poured and mixed the pudding and put it in the fridge. (If you want a pudding filling of any sort, use 1 ⅓ cup of cold milk instead of two and otherwise make as per directions.) She measured one cup of chunky peanut butter and ¾ of a cup of cool whip and stirred them together, put it off to the side, and measured/poured/mixed a box of brownies. I popped them in the oven and started clean up, she asked me if she could lick the bowl and I’m not a monster so I told her she could. I turned around from clean up to see this…

She was quite pleased with herself…

Bath time!

We finished her bath right as the brownies were ready to come out to cool, and she wanted to pick daddy a rock. We went out back and she found a ‘so perfect’ rock, and brought it in to paint…

Princess Leia helped…

Nine came home from school and kind of went off and did his own thing while Rose and I cleaned up all of her crafts, and the living room and dining room. By the time all of this was said and done it was about 4:30. I took Rose outside for a little while so she could ride her bike, and I did some interwebs stuff and we cleaned our room. Rose loved the part where i had her jump on my bed to disperse the potion. (1 cup baking soda mixed well with 10-15 drops of your favorite essential oil, I mix thieves and lavender, sprinkled on your mattress under the fitted sheet makes for a smelly good bed! I leave it for a few days before vacuuming it off and repeating, though the smell might be a little strong for some people so you can either use less oil or vacuum before laying on it.)

We started dinner then, I made pork chops. (The kids love my pork chops, because I don’t turn them into hockey pucks like a lot of people do. I put extra virgin olive oil over the bottom of the pan, flip the chops around to make sure they’re coated and bake them at 375 for 30-45 minutes depending on thickness, whatever seasoning you want. I typically do italian style seasonings, but have been experimenting with Spanish style lately.) After the chops were in Rose and I layered and decorated her daddy’s monkey brownies, she changed her mind on the sprinkles to lime green edible glitter (because lime green is daddy’s favorite color) and peanut butter and chocolate chips.

^{Doesn’t that look gross? Ugh. Ex won’t tell me his opinion on them, but apparently Rose loves it.}

^{can’t really see the glitter, but it’s there}

We packaged daddy’s stuff, got her ready to go for the weekend, and mock ballroom danced through the kitchen to Dean Martian and Sinatra while I got the rest of dinner on… then went to the living room and I taught her how to Do the Mashed Potato like my Nana taught us when we were little, honestly I was surprised at myself that I hadn’t done it with her yet. We ate dinner and went outside to wait for her Nana to pick her up so she could play and I could do a little picking up out there.

The rose bush is in bloom, so obviously she’s really excited about that and wants to check them out every time we go out front…

And she’s decided that it’s also a very good meditating spot…

^{I didn’t stage this I swear, she just randomly started meditation. I was so proud haha.}

After I sent her off with her Nana at about 7pm I looked over at Nine. He’s been going through some stuff lately, and with a tug on my heart I really felt that I haven’t been giving him enough attention. “I could really go for a pepsi, do you want to go to the store with me?” He did. So I took my apron off and we went. The corner store is only a couple of blocks up, so we walked up there and we talked, and we wandered around picking things out and while we traversed the isles he mentioned to me that I seemed… better. That I seemed more like when I moved in with them. I explained my health issues to him a little bit more in depth than “I don’t feel well” and I explained that it was being taken care of and I am getting better.

We walked back and sat on the front steps for a little while, just talking about all sorts of things until Ski and Bil came home just after 8 and he had to get ready to go to his Nanas for the weekend to see his dad. All of a sudden the rare occurrence where I have no children under the age of 16 was upon me. I releveld in the quiet and hopped back on the interwebs to do some Steemy stuff… Bil however was feeling chatty, so we had some big conversations that were continued with Ski when she got home at almost 10 until about 11… some more interweby stuff and I went to bed... not having anxiety, not miserable, not angry, I went to bed so happy.

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So do you see now why this is an important thing? Why I classify putting my apron on as something amazing? It isn’t just an apron. It’s a talisman, a physical representation of my best self and just telling Ski and Bil that I’d donned it elicited “Wow, vitamins must be kicking in!”. It means I’m coming up at the edge of the woods and I’m really getting better.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go put my apron on.

^{all images not sourced credit moi, @accio}