A Cup of Coffee and Words

In order to blog and write and keep VillageQ running with Deborah, I know that I have to make good use of my time. Making good use of my time is not something I always do well. I need time to ponder and consider and mull and every other word you can think of that means the same thing and implies being alone with your thoughts. I have never been someone who writes thousands of words a day, even when I've had the time to do it. I'm the kind of person who may write 850 words a day with every one put on the page with intention. It's not that writing is hard for me. It's that I'm careful and I don't waste a word.

Knowing myself like I do, I know that in order to do both NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo, I have to be less cautious. I need to string sentences together that I might not keep. There will not be time to fall in love with anything, only time enough to complete thoughts and move on.

I also know that I will need more than the six hours I have each day while the kids are at school because I cannot fit all the writing, editing and planning into that window of time which always seems to close so quickly. I used to do some of my best writing at night but that is no longer true. My eyes get tired and my brain gets tired and having to write anything of substance (or anything at all) makes me want to run, the refrain going through my mind, "I can't."

So, I decided that I would get up at 5:30 each morning and write before doing anything else. My usual routine involves waking, putting on my glasses, grabbing my phone and a cup of coffee and looking at email and Twitter and Facebook. I spend my coffee time on my phone and then wake the kids and begin the day. It's a very mindless way to spend the morning and I know that I need to be mindful.

In order to make 5:30 work, I also know that I need to set up the coffee to brew by timer. My plan is to wake up, go downstairs, get a cup of coffee and return to bed where I will work on the novel or write a blog post.

Of course, there are so many variables in this plan. Will I really set the coffee up the night before? Will I really leave my phone untouched? Will I have gone to bed early so that I get enough sleep to be coherent at 5:30?

This is only Day 4 and I have managed to set the coffee, avoid my phone and write. But that sleep factor? That one is clearly going to be the challenge.

My plan is to go to bed at 10 p.m. and I've done that every night but last night, I goofed around on Facebook and read a few blogs and then it was 10:30 p.m. which was fine. Still plenty of time for sleep.

But kids are unpredictable. You can control every aspect of your life with some degree of effort but kids are the wild cards in any equation.

Miguel has trouble sleeping and sometimes wakes up multiple times a night and when he wakes up, he thinks, "I may as well go to the bathroom while I'm up." He is kind and adorable and I love him like crazy but he is the loudest person I know. He talks loudly and he gets up to go to the bathroom loudly. I don't know how someone can open a door loudly but he does and when he closes his door, he slams it. Not because he is mad or anything, it's just that our house is old and the door sticks a little and he wants to make sure it really shuts.

So, last night, I got into bed at 10:30 and at 11:00, when I was just drifting off to sleep, Miguel yelled "Goodnight mom! I love you!"

Goodnight kid.

Then, at midnight, the alarm on the clock in his room went off. "MOM!" he screamed, "Help me!" I bolted from bed at the voice and the words and it took me a moment to even register the sound of the alarm. I ran into his room and turned off the alarm which took longer than it should have but it was dark (I couldn't turn a light on for fear he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep) and I didn't have my glasses on. Finally, I silenced the alarm and he and I bumped into each other in the dark as we made our way to our beds. I heard him again at 3 a.m. and at 4:15 a.m. and then my alarm went off at 5:30.

This is an essential truth of parenting: when your kid has a bad night, you have a bad night.

The challenges are beginning to show themselves. But here I am. I have a cup of coffee and these words.

For the Love of Fall

Each Fall, when my kids and my friends' kids were young, we we picked apples and went to the pumpkin patch and threw elaborate Halloween parties. I loved marking the season in these concrete ways, watching small hands plucking fresh apples from trees, laughing as they struggled to carry pumpkins too big for them, dressing up and turning our house into a haunted house just for them. But the kids got older and seemed less interested and harder to impress so we stopped. At first, I was relieved because memory-making can be exhausting. But lately, I've missed it. Maybe it's precisely because they kids are getting older than I want to hold on to some of these things. I am not quite ready for all of this to be part of the past.

The oldest of these kids is 14 and the baby is now 9 and I talked to each of them at various times this summer about apples and pumpkins and Halloween. "Remember when...," I'd ask and each of them lit up, "Yeah! I remember that!" and then they would add their own memories. I told them that I wanted to bring back our old traditions and said, "We're gonna do this. Are you ready?" and every one of them said, "YES!"

So, recently, we met at my house on an unseasonably warm Sunday to go apple picking. Luisa was the only person missing but a couple of her plaid shirts made an appearance.

We all drove to Afton and, before heading to the apples, we all went through the corn maze . This time, the kids took their own path and the adults took another - a perfect metaphor.

We went on a hayride and picked overpriced apples and the kids ran through the orchard with energy that matched that of their younger selves. Zeca had a nose bleed at one point. One group of kids got separated and it took forever to find them. It was hot and crowded and I got crabby towards the end which was consistent with all those other trips to the orchard.

But the kids had a blast and I realized that things change and they don't, that some things are worth revisiting, that you're never too old to marvel at the world around you.

I hope the kids are ready for Christmas cookies and The Grinch. Maybe I'll text them to make sure they put it on their calendars.