just write

Truth is (as my Facebook teen friends would say) there really is no excuse.  There is no excuse not to spend 10 minutes of each day writing, recording, sharing, jotting down thoughts before they escape, never to return.  There is also no excuse not to spend 10 minutes of each day stretching or doing some sort of passive exercise like kegels at your desk or allotting, religiously, several hours of one day every month (say the 3rd Friday or some other arbitrary day) doing your bookkeeping for the business instead of spending several days (after several weeks of dreading said several days) doing the entire year's worth of recreating figures in the winter deep freeze that is January and February in Maine.  There is no excuse, but I don't do any of those things.  I am pretty certain I'm not alone.  I read an interesting piece recently regarding the concept of "I can't do xyz because I don't have time."  Said interesting piece recommended re-thinking that overused statement and replacing it with, I can't do xyz because I do not choose to spend time doing it.  This after taking careful stock of a day and a week and the number of minutes and hours therein spent doing things that you are not actively choosing to do, per se, but that add up in little inconsequential increments to massive chunks of time which could be devoted to more positive endeavors.  For example, the Facebook check.  I can't even count the number of times a day I read my Facebook newsfeed.  How many minutes and hours and days do I end up wasting reading about the gymnastics meets of the daughter of a girl I wasn't even really friends with in high school?  This is not a Facebook lament, however.  Really, it is only a preamble about not writing when I should write and could so easily do it, particularly during this deep freeze that is January in Maine, but I don't.  Not even after purchasing a spankin' new journal for a little old-fashioned pen to paper.  Not even after reading The Paris Wife and being swept up in the romance of Paris, Hemingway, literature, love, and my life as a Princeton undergraduate all over again.  Or even after discovering scarymommy.com a very funny blog about the universally human comedy of parenting which has been turned into a NYTimes best selling book and syndicated.  But wait, I AM writing tonight and it is likely in large part because of those things.  Just haven't exactly channeled the direction or the audience or that BIG idea that will make it big.  But I am getting the rust out of the pipes.  While my husband spent his evening get the ice out of ours.

What did I intend to write today?  That it is exceptionally exhausting to spend the morning before a trial packing up a fussy 12 month old toddler with anything and everything he might need to survive his first 7 hour day at the "kid farm" daycare full of love and competence and loud bigger kiddos.  The worst is that he is never fussy in the morning, but chose today of all days to let me have it and nearly had ME in tears with his teary moment in the carseat as I raced about the house trying to add last minute make up to my "I'm a lawyer today not just a mommy and a farm girl" look and be sure we had our swim gear packed as well for 5pm swim lessons.  Luckily, I fully prepared the trial the night before as I had not more than 5 minutes for review upon arrival given the entire emotional and mental suck toward my little E man...oh and logistical, too.  The trial was a hoot despite the passage of a full year since my last one.  A bit of de ja vu with my wonderful client at my side suing yet another of his utterly unbelievable tenants.  The second of two who not only did not pay rent but instead sued back saying that my client (whom they each stiffed) should pay them for imaginary damages!  We won the first case a year ago to the tune of $115,000.00 but don't get too excited for us since we are receiving payments in $25 increments bi-weekly for life.  Brilliant.  Here's hoping that today's is a win as well, however modest in comparison (from $14k to $29k possibility) but that the judgment is worth more than the paper it is written on.  Pro se defendant resembled our buffoon of a governor in demeanor and performance, so I'll be eating crow if it isn't a win in some respect.  Post trial celebration of a roast beef and cheese sub and a small blizzard from DQ (on the COLDEST day of the year, no less) reminded me of my current state.  The one I frequently forget somehow in the hubbub of the day to day although the one that I consistently blame for my perpetual drag-assedness so far in 2013.  The result of which has been multiple hours in which I CHOOSE to lie on the couch and vegetate for the entire evening after little man goes to sleep.  At the end of the day, E and I both survived our first mommy-is-a-real-life-trial-attorney day and we are both glad (I'm projecting) that it was a simple and single day event.  We even managed to muster the energy for swimming at 5pm although he was asleep before we pulled into the driveway and didn't even open an eyelid throughout a diaper change pre-crib.  I wish I could do that.  And now here it is at the whopping hour of NINE pm and I am going to shut down this machine and lie down in my bed, relax, vegetate, and grow a baby.  I'm glad I chose to write.  I may even read a little of a Christmas gift book.  But most likely I'll just read some status updates and call it a night.

Lots of love out there in interwebs world.
Lawyer-mommy-farm-girl

ps
Farm-husband did 100% of all horse feeding, caring for, looking at, engaging with in the sub-zero temperatures today.  Same for the cheep cheeps.  God love him, he's amazing.