2019: Chill the Hell Out
This past week has been a great reminder of why none of us would survive my being a stay at home mom. It’s been filled with whining, various illnesses and ailments, and more whining. Yesterday Jesse had to work, and I caved and sent Boogs to school because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I spent the morning feeling like the world’s worst mother for that move, but as the day went on, I started feeling little to no guilt. A lot of that has to do with all the crap I managed to get done, but part of it was realizing I shouldn’t feel guilty about sending him to school even if it was a “major holiday” – he was happy to see his friends after a week off, and I was ecstatic to have my house un-Christmased and clean(ish).
All of this led me to think maybe I should make my theme for 2019 “guilt free”. Can you imagine how freeing that would be? To not feel mom guilt for sending your kid to school so you can spend the day running errands, cleaning your house, or just generally doing whatever the hell you want? To not feel wife guilt for going to dinner or drinks with a friend while your husband stays home with the juvenile delinquent you share? To just eat the damn brownie and not worry about how many jumping jacks it’s going to take to burn it off (even though you fully realize that’s not at all how it works)? Then I realized that level of guilt free living is never going to happen and that, honestly, there’s something else I need to tackle even more than the guilt – learning how to chill the hell out.
Yesterday was the 3rd day in a month that I’ve had entirely to myself and once again, I “wasted” it doing way too much. Part of my problem is I have a 3 year old and a full time job which means there’s never enough time to do everything that needs to be done so I wind up with marathon chore/errand days, but a lot of the problem is I don’t know how to sit still. Jesse is forever yelling at me to just sit down and not worry about all the things that “need” to be done, but this is physically impossible for me to do. Even if I do manage to sit down and read a book or watch a show, my to do list is running through my head the entire time. I’m incredibly gifted at running myself into the ground, and it’s not a trait I’m necessarily proud of. I mean, I’m 35 years old, and my mom told me twice in the last week to go take a nap. Clearly I have a problem.
So I think for 2019 I’m going to focus on slowing down. Instead of trying to fill every spare second with some sort of work or chore, I’m going to listen to Jesse’s sage advice and chill the hell out. Before you get too excited for me, though, please note I’m using Boogser’s nap time to write this right now when I should probably be taking a nap, too, so I wouldn’t say this is the most promising of endeavors. But it’s also only January 1st which means I have 364 more days to let us all down.
Soybeans, Too 
Sometimes shit doesn’t get done. Cut yourself some slack …mine are teen and tween now and some days when they’re not here I think omg I’m going to get all this stuff accomplished and then? Nothing. I sit, a watch crappy tv, I blog or social media….we need those days too, right?
Happy New Year! 😉
Okay well you’re now my role model. 🙂
Happy New Year to you, too!