A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Because I am getting over some kind of yucky gut-wrenching sickness, today is dedicated to relaxing.

Luckily, the illness is in those last stages.  The day where you still feel kind of like shit, but at least the dry heaving and shaking are under control.

But deciding that I need to take a much-needed free-of-commitments-other-than-lounging-in-my-pajamas kind of day made me wonder how on earth I am supposed to do that?

Like many people, especially moms, I excel at never taking a moment to actually sit down and relax for more than half a minute at a time.  I am always doing something.

The true lack of quiet moments in my life actually dawned on me last night while a friend of mine (thank you so much, M!) watched my girls so that I could lay around and be sick without my monsters climbing all over me.  For a few hours, I did nothing but veg out on the couch watching a movie with James.  No interruptions, no jumping up to get another glass of water or take a potty break.  In fact, the only time I budged from the couch was when James let out a fart that rivaled Hiroshima.  Butthead.

During that time, I decided that today was going to be entirely dedicated to laying around, too.

It’s harder than it seems, though.  Over the years, our weekends have become routine that is difficult to break.  On Saturdays, there is always a rush to get ready in the morning so that we can meet my family for lunch.  I’m going to add here that we’ve been visiting the same two Mexican restaurants my entire life, just so you can *really* understand how routine this is.  Rain or shine, it’s just a wonderful tradition that we’ve taken part in since I can remember.

Then after lunch, my mom and sister and I always go shopping, usually to the mall.  Not necessarily to buy something, but rather, just a trip to feed my mom and sister’s shopping addiction.  While I’m not much of a shopper, I always enjoy their company and usually have a great time, too.  Except for when one of us is in a bitchy mood, of course.

And then, as if lunch and hours of shopping were not enough, we go to Mass on Saturday evenings to avoid the morning church rush on Sunday.

Sundays aren’t quite as set in stone, but they usually involve grocery and household-item shopping, more family stuff, cleaning, dance lessons, and a multitude of other commitments that require us to run around like chickens with our heads cut off.

Yes, those are my weekends.  They are the best kind of days, don’t get me wrong, but recently, we realized how un-relaxing they really are.

It’s no wonder that Fridays don’t necessarily feel like a relief when they finally show up at the end of the week.  We don’t normally say, “Thank God it’s the weekend”.  Sunday evenings are rarely accompanied by a cut of hot tea after a lazy day with a sense of okay, we got our break, here’s to the new week.

So when I decided to take today off from the norm and postpone lunch until tomorrow, I realized that I wasn’t sure exactly how to, er, relax.  Like, what do people do when they lounge around and do nothing?  What the hell does “do nothing” actually mean?

My days are filled with so much hyper activity that even if my body slows down, my mind runs at its usual 3,000 mph.

But it’s still nice, this day of relaxing.  At least I’m trying.

Does it count that I’m laying in my bed with my computer propped up on my lap?  I mean, these thoughts have to go somewhere.

Current Mood: Sickly

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.