EPISODE 6

It is 7pm on a Wednesday night and the house is so quiet you can hear the clock ticking. Wednesday is my night off. My hero takes the all the kids to church except for the baby who is in bed and asleep by 6. I have the house to myself for about 3 hrs and it is heaven.

I would like to make a statement right now and say that I love what I do. Sometimes it sounds like I feel like taking care of my family is a drudging job that I can’t wait to clock out of, but it is not. It is my work but it is not my job. It isn’t even my career. Caring for my family is my art form. It is my Opus. My life’s work into which I invest my everything with all my heart and I love it. I think most parents can relate to this sentiment

That doesn’t make it any less challenging. It is a labor of love but labor nonetheless, and anything you do with so great an investment of self, of energy,emotion and passion is something you need to take a break from on occasion in order to do it your best. I would recommend a regular break if you can get it and frequent interaction with other adults while not on break. Artists tend to go crazy you know and these are great preventative measures to keep you out of the loony bin. You may even keep enough of your senses to come off as only a little strange but there is no harm there; we all have a little weirdness. Good things can come from losing your marbles though (you know, in case you can’t get that much of a break, which would not be shocking). Crazy people make great entertainment at parties.

But I digress. Back to my story...

I have the house to myself for 3+ hours. Usually I get a shower and then I can clean, sit, read, exercise, eat, watch a squishy movie, write or do whatever I want to do, but mainly I rest.

This time around, after my shower, I decide to make my bed and crawl in. The remainder of anything I do tonight will be done from a cozy, clean bedroom, under clean sheets and wrapped in a cocoon of fleece blankets.

It’s funny how even in a clean room the right kind of person can find something to trip over. And if nothing can be found, a simple improvisation is all you need. Just throw something on the floor (like the bed covers that need to come off in order to change the sheets) and you have yourself the happy opportunity to break your face (which I promptly did)

So I’m pulling off my blankets to make my bed and I find a decapitated lego man. I can’t help but think of that scene in “The Godfather" with the horse head in the sheets and I wonder if I will wake the next morning screaming because there is a lego head. But instead of it being in the sheets it must be surgically removed from my spine because I slept on it all night and now it is firmly in place as a new part of my body.  As far as I can see, this whole body peircing thing is a rip off. All you have to do is sleep on a lego all night and Voila! A new accessory in a fashionable shade of yellow!

I’m not sure there is a profound lesson to be learned from this story but if I discover one I will let you know and henceforth it will be know as “the lego-head lesson”.