Vermont summer nights have brought us late bedtimes, visiting cousins, fireflies and slugs. Deer have discovered my perennial garden and I am restless while sleeping... waiting to see the motion detection light come on and then to shout out my window like a grumpy old lady as a sweet little doe scampers away.
The twins are like monsters without school, Myles is working 7 AM-7 PM this month with about 2 free weekends. Otherwise it's a 6 day work week for him. We barely communicate. Apparently the kids sense that something is "off", and have a hard time figuring out how to get our attention in positive ways. I barely want to have play dates because the girls ruthlessly torture their friends with verbal abuse. They know just how to hurt feelings... and mine too. So I've done a bit of an overhaul with how things will operate in the house - from earning their treats and allowance, to a zero tolerance policy with attitude and rude language and most importantly - reinforcing the benefits of positive behavior. It seems to be working. The only problem lies in my energy level to keep up the consistency. Any glitch in my "system" gives poor results, no doubt.
A Facebook "friend" (we've never met) who recently gave birth to twins updated her status as being: "scattered, smothered and diced". I couldn't relate more. I am a greasy, fatty, chopped up Waffle House hash brown. I wanted to tell her that things would really improve once the kids were older... but that would have been a cliche and a lie. Twins do have the bonus of a built-in buddy when they grow up, but they also have a significant amount of "twinny" baggage to deal with socially. And to be a parent to their twin-ness is complicated. (For example, inviting 2 friends to play usually works better than inviting 1, and telling one they did a great job making their bed when the other is being a grump and won't cooperate makes me feel like I'm picking favorites.)
Fortunately the end of this month will allow Myles and I to take a trip to Southwest Harbor Maine for a friend's wedding. We have enlisted the help of his dad and sister for the weekend and we'll take a 6 hour drive out there. Hopefully we won't want to kill one another by the time we get back and we can have a bit of relaxation... it is our 6 year anniversary on the 28th after all.
The following Monday we head to Nantucket for the month of July. No Myles, save for 1 weekend. It should be altogether weird. I don't have better words - and I don't know how I'll feel. Part of me doesn't care how I feel. I'm really tired of figuring out feelings, mine or anybody else's. It's pretty lonely. Pretty empty. Pretty depressing.
Last night I had a dream that I was running a marathon - the Middletown CT Marathon (which doesn't exist). I started out with a group of friends, running at what we thought was the front of the pack, but somehow we got separated. My running seemed slow and frustrating. My feet like cinder blocks, my stride short and useless. I turned to a friend and said, "just so you know, when you are running in a dream, it's impossible to lift up your thighs and really pick up the pace." She seemed confused. But I knew I was in a dream. So I switched to a side step. It was much easier... skip skip-skip... We eventually finished, and I crossed the line sideways. Nobody was there to greet us. The following day Myles was scanning the results in a local newspaper. "How'd I do?" I asked. "6 hours 25 minutes, " he said in a monotone.
And that's all I remember. Frantic. Empty. Scattered. Smothered. Covered. Chunked. Diced.
