Slowing Down

                                                 

I’ve been slowing down lately. After a conversation with my husband a couple of weeks ago, I remembered that the point of me staying home (from work) was to actually STAY HOME. My schedule was even more packed than it had been while I was working full time. Play dates, meet ups, classes, trips to various places, and community events all crammed their way into the little boxes in my planner…sometimes three per day with overlapping times. On this particular Sunday night when the conversation with hubby took place, I was standing in the middle of my kitchen wondering when in the world I was going to have a chance to clean that “heart of my home” without collapsing from exhaustion. 

“Don’t you have some sort of schedule or list for keeping up with the house?” he asked me. Of course I did. I have a list for everything J But at this particular point, that list was separate from the list of stuff that I was actually doing. The concept  seemed pretty silly. So I went to the laptop and emailed some people, cancelling all but the most essential plans for the coming week. Then I went to meetup.com and switched all of my RSVPs to NO. Then I went to Facebook and announced that I would be taking a little break. Finally, I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone. Ahhhh. 

Our days our much slower now. I haven’t told my 4 year old to hurry up in over a week (because, honestly, she’s four and should be able to plop down and watch the bees buzz around the flowers in the yard if she darn well pleases). I have no more than one thing on the schedule each day, and those things are the same each week. Monday is Alice’s play school in the afternoon, Tuesday is Ethan’s play school in the morning. Wednesdays we walk to the park in the middle of our city to enjoy Family Fun Day, hosted by the local library and a Jewish organization. Thursday is Alice’s gymnastics class. Friday is empty; Alice says “Friday is freedom day!” And it’s true: anything could happen…or nothing at all. Happy Freedom Friday, everyone!