The School Year is Kicking My Ass (Part 1 of 2)

I didn't realize that I had been living this life of luxury. This is my life before Lucy started school. My life after school started is in the following post. Note the differences.

My Life Before Lucy Started School

5:00-6:00: I get up early and write, either my stuff or for a client. I mean to exercise, but that never really happens. So by the time the kids wake up, I feel fat and sedentary but accomplished. I have purpose. I am woman. I roar a lot.

7:30: I do the dishes from the night before, clean up kitchen. Prep David's lunch. Start prepping hot breakfast for everyone and everyone likes a different breakfast, so I'm prepping three completely different breakfasts, not including my own, which is caffeine and whatever anyone else doesn't eat and I can scrape off the plate with my fingers.

8:00: David gets up, showers. I poach eggs for him. I start a load of wash.

9:00: Kids start getting up. Lucy first and then Edie more toward 9:30. They transition from bed to couch and ease into their day with some cartoons. Maybe they are still dirty from the day before, who knows.

David eats poached eggs, sprinkled with salt, herbs and a nice cheese, whatever we have on hand. Lucy eats egg whites cooked in butter and sprinkled with salt and chives. Edie eats sausage, usually wrapped in a paper cone so she can hold it in her hand and eat it like a lolly pop while standing around.

10:00: David leaves for work. I hand him his lunch, which is usually leftovers reconfigured from the night before, with a salad, usually spinach and lots of vegetables, goat cheese and walnuts. The kids finish up breakfast, kiss daddy good bye and we start our day.


The rest of the day: Well, we live like kings. We usually spend the next two hours bathing. Really. There is playing in the bath, lots of bubbles, swimming in the tub, hair washing a couple times a week. It's an extended affair almost always that involved laughing, smiling, tears when shampoo time took too long or sap dripped into our eyes. There was so much emotion. It was a microcosm of life

Then, there is play with friends, our house, other people's houses, or at fun public places. When it's hot we are outside, in pools, in sprinklers on playgrounds. When it's not nice or too cold, we stay inside, usually with friends and cook, play games, eat and hold impromtu parties.

We do whatever we want. Whatever little thing pops into our heads. We feel like making meatballs, we do it. We take three hours going to the store and picking out ingredients and then, bring them home and with everyone sitting on the counter, we dive into the piles of meat and make the best freakin' meatballs ever. They rock. We are the stuff of legends. And the house is a mess from stem to stern, most days, but these are the days of bliss and we never care.

We don't have meal times or formal meals. We eat out of the fridge when we are hungry. There are always healthy snacks on the bottom shelf of the fridge within hands reach of a kid. Most days the kids eat some kind of home-made soup for lunch. We are soup people. My kids are soup people. Sometimes we spit in the wind and decide lunch is gonna be guacamole and chips. We surround ourselves with towers of books to devour, and dig in until the bowl is empty and our fingers are covered in salt and guac. Who the hell is gonna tell us otherwise? WE ARE FREAKIN' KINGS. The total boss of us.

4:30: I prep dinner, if I hadn't already prepped it in the morning. The kids watch a little TV while I'm in the kitchen. A way to unwind. I am so ahead of myself. My fridge is full. The kids are nourished, happy, relaxed. I have dinner ideas in my head way ahead. I am improvising, creating more technically-advanced recipes, really stretching myself from a culinary perspective. I'm chopping like the Ginzu knife man and little shards of carrots are flying all over my kitchen. I'm freakin' Martha Stewart on steroids. Only nice. And not as pinched.

5:00-7:00: I take the kids to the residents terrace in our building with the monkey bars on it. Every parent in the building with small kids hangs here at the end of the day. We drink a beer and watch the kids play and reconnect. It feels like home here to the kids. They know every child and adult intimately.

7:00: David comes home and hangs with the kids on the terrace while I make dinner. Usually whatever one is prepped and ready to go. We eat together either on paper plates on the terrace with wine in paper cups, or at home gathered cross-legged around the low coffee table in the living room, picking off each others plates and over-lapping each other with stories of the day. After dinner, the kids fall into bed late, exhausted, happy, dirty. David works. I write stuff. And even with our laptops in front of us, we watch DVD's of Dexter and Lost and The Office and manage to chat, cuddle, re-connect. And we also have sex, but you probably realized that.

See? Life of luxury. Now, compare to my life now...(see next post)

xo YM