getting sucked in

Last year we bought a Dyson.  It rocks.  Like, perhaps the best gift I’ve ever given myself that I can write about on here.  Today I was running it, as I tend to do every single day…we have a giant hairy black lab beast who sheds and brings in mud clumps and just generally tears up the house.  Anyway, while I was sucking up dog hair and tiny Barbie shoes, I put my hand on the hose attachment to check the suction.  Why?  Because I’m like a moth to the flame, I guess. I don’t know why, I just did.  And when I did that, I had the sudden thought that I might get sucked into the vacuum.  That thing means business!  And then, I started to wonder, would being sucked into the vacuum while three girls are screaming (yes, three – I watch 5 and 5/8 year old Stella after school along with the regular suspects) be such a bad thing? 

Like, really.  As I was cleaning I started thinking about literally getting sucked into the vacuum and out of the madness of every day life.  Sad? Probably.  But mostly I started thinking about my happy place.   Could I be transported there? The dock that was recently built over the rocks on the shore of Jekyll Island where I sat and read for hours on end this summer. That happy place.   My literal happy place – the place where the children don’t wake up in the morning screaming, or walk out the door to go to school screaming, or come home from school screaming, demanding snacks and shows and puzzles and a swimsuit to wear (yes, it’s November) because she is playing beach.  Don’t I know??!!!

Some days are just like that for me.  The hope that something swoops down from the sky and hoists me up and out of here sometimes is completely overwhelming.  I’m not going to lie, there are days I sit in the car in Lucy’s school parking lot and I think, “I have to go in there and pick up not one, but two 5 year old girls.  I have a 3 year old in the backseat who is already unhappy about just being 3.  Life is full of wonderful stuff, but HOW did I get here?”  And not, “how did I get here” like I don’t enjoy my life – please don’t get me wrong.  It’s just that some days I honestly have to remind myself that I’m someone’s mom. Certainly I’m way too young and hip for that, right?!  RIGHT?

Huh. As it turns out, the answer is nope.  Not young or hip…just cranky and busy and recently noticing dark circles under my eyes.  Some days I’m just the dust waiting to get sucked into a different, alternate reality.  And that’s ok, really.  I mean, really. Life is wasted on the young and the hip.