quietness....

I feel bad when I crave the quiet, but when I actually sit in it, and bask in it, I can't help but love it so. It was our fall feast at church today, and the day was full of busy happenings. I did take my walk this morning, I baked some cookies, did some cleaning, made Paul a Santa Claus beard....

He and I were Mr. and Mrs. Claus for our trick-or-treat room. Our room looked, smelled, sounded like Christmas. A little Manneheim Steamroller, some lights and candles, a plate of cookies, lots of Christmas candy, a pile of presents for the kids....

I ate cookies today. I didn't eat too much of anything else, not too much of it anyway. But I ate cookies. Cookie dough, and cookies. Now I am mad at myself. I am sick of saying to myself, "tomorrow is another day", but what choice do I have? I can't just say, "oh well, I eat cookies now, so what. I'll just gain back all my weight." Of course I can't. And, I can't do today all over again. Why did I eat cookies? I don't know. I stayed away from the candy. I ate one piece of pizza for dinner. No lunch. One egg, and a tiny bit of oats with blueberries for breakfast. Then the cookies. I made really good chocolate chip cookies, I use twice the amount of brown sugar as white, and half butter half shortening. These had tons of Autumn M&Ms in them, too. Oh dang. I shouldn't make them anymore. Plus, I had three of Susan's pumpkin cookies, which are pretty much to die for. Moist and chewy, full of spices and chocolate chips too.

So you see, I had a BAD DAY, as far as eating goes.

And. Tomorrow IS another day. I need to get back on track, bigtime.

Tomorrow four of the kids have dentist appointments, but one of them doesn't want to miss any classes, so Paul will take her place. That means he will be taking them all to the dentist, and I get to stay home:)

Our evening was noisy and fun. We had four boys over to watch football, but there were also like five conversations going on at once, laughing and joking and just general loudness. Now, I do not mind it at all. But. Now that they have all left and the kids have gone to bed, aaaah. I like the quiet!

See, I am popular. So popular that sometimes like three or four kids talk to me at once! They all expect my full attention, too. And, if I am sitting here writing or checking out facebook or something else really important, I get questions. Comments. Someone who wants to tell me the entire plot of the book she's reading, or someone who had a really interesting dream and just has to tell me the whole thing. Then there are the questions about where things are. Like I always know where the scissors are! Or a safety pin, or a permanent marker. It goes like this...."Mom, are you doing anything tomorrow?" Um...why? "Because I NEED mousse. (or contact lens solution or earbuds or nail-polish remover).

Anyway. Yeah, I do love my kids. But is it so wrong to love this quiet? Just for the record, I do still hear laughing from Suzanne and Kathryn's room.

Paul is leaving for Germany again next Saturday, for two weeks. Camille turns six on Thursday, we have invited lots of people over for a birthday party. We have a dome event on Tuesday, a basketball game, then another one on Friday. My son Benjamin turns 25 on the 11th. I wanted to go see him for his birthday, out in Washington state, where he is stationed. Abigail and I were all set to purchase plane tickets, but then decided not to go. He and his wife have a new baby, and I guess his wife is not ready for any company or visitors yet. :( I don't really understand it, but I love her anyway. Ben wants us to come, but he is a good husband.

So we aren't going, and I don't get to meet my granddaughter. I have lots of feelings and opinions about that, but none that I want to hold on to, so I will not get into them here. God knows just what I need.

Yesterday I got one of THOSE phone calls. Mirielle was kind enough to word it so I didn't go from zero to heart attack on the Panic Scale, she said, "Mom, I'm all right, but....I got into a little accident..." My heart started to pick up the pace just a wee bit, but hey, Mirielle was calling me, so she was obviously alive. Anyway, she rear-ended someone as she exited the highway, the traffic stopped and it was pouring rain. She hit the brakes but the car slid, right into the back of a lady who was none too happy. Mirielle apologized to her profusely, and the lady ended up apologizing for her reaction, and they waited together for the police to come.....

Never a dull moment, that's what I told Paul as I explained Mirielle's phone call. When I was talking to her, and asked her if she was sure she was all right, and asked Exactly What Happened, I could see Paul looking at me questioningly, like, "What Now?!", so I waved at him dismissively, and mouthed that everything was fine.

This reminds me of that night when I got the horrible phone call that my brother Billy had shot himself. I was driving home from a date with Paul, we had gone to pick out flooring and out to dinner for our anniversary. My sister called me and told me...now, there is NO nice gentle way for one sibling to tell another that their brother had just taken his life,so she just came out and said..."Billy shot himself". I asked, "Is he dead?" Paul was driving, and when I asked that, he just about drove off the road, so I reassured him by saying, "It was just my brother." Now, seriously, it wasn't "just", it was that I didn't want him to think that it was one of our kids. It was perhaps just as awful, I suppose, but that was just how I reacted. Anyway. Off on a tangent.

I don't like those phone calls. Because even though Mirielle is fine, the car is fine, the other car is almost fine, it just brings to light how fragile life is. And we have all these kids growing up and driving and it is scary! I don't spend much time worrying and fretting about them, but when one of those phone calls comes, it sort of overtakes me, the way that life could change so suddenly.

Well, tomorrow I will slap myself silly for staying up so late if I don't get to bed soon. I am seriously tired, so tired I don't want to get up and take a shower and get into bed, I could nod off right here.....