In the not so recent past, I randomly gave our staff the day off (including the driver). In fact, I gave most of them two days off. I needed a bit of a break. I needed to spend an ENTIRE day in pajamas.
I needed for the doorbell to not ring for ONE day and I needed to be in 100% control of everything that happened at our house for ONE day.
(OK, so obviously no ONE person can be 100% in control of EVERYTHING, but I wanted to FEEL like I was in control)
We woke up at 7:45 to the dog barking furiously at the front door. (We were sound asleep - who knows how long we would have slept if he hadn't felt the need to be a ruthless guard dog) We rubbed the sleep out of our eyes, and stumbled toward the front part of the house to see what the ruckus was about.
SA was standing there with a very fierce "I got this" look on his face ... and when I looked out of the hole in the door (what is that called? Peek hole?) there was no one there ... just our morning paper.
Since we didn't need to take any affirmative action, we all plodded into the living room, plopped on the couch and flipped on the morning cartoons.
It's now nearly 6:00 pm when I type this and we are all still in our pajamas.
We've done more crafting, purging, organizing, recipe creating and movie watching than anyone could possibly stuff into a 12 hour time period ...
We made ::
watermelon juice
Apple Juice Slushies (everything tastes better with itty bitty spoons)
A scrumptious dinner of mashed potatoes and beef in the crockpot.
Two more boxes filled for donation at the Thrift Shop.
Poked our heads out the door every couple of hours to hand the guard on duty a cold bottle of water.
Spent some time on some handwritten cards to mail to friends and family
I slowly nursed a pot of coffee over the course of the day with my favorite creamer, and put a "coffee" scented wickless candle on.
I struggled to respond to Mia when she said "Mama, is Shanti coming today?" after she found a recipe for applesauce muffins because "Mama, you don't know how to cook" (hence the mashed potatoes and pulled beef for dinner vs. McDonalds delivery).
(Guess what we did then? Made homemade applesauce!)
(Guess what we did then? Made homemade applesauce!)
We spent over an hour deciding where to hang our prized artwork in the newly created craft room in the basement.
I took some time out and read a couple more chapters in the completely engaging book, Unbroken (a MUST read).
We finished setting up the new pingpong table (it's ready for a match this weekend!)
I watched a knock down, drag out fight between the littles. Like a crazed free-for-all where Mia threatened to scratch out Tony's eyes and Tony was screaming at the top of his voice "YOU ARE NOT NICE, MIA SARICE!!!!" -- I was so amused by their ridiculousness, that I just sat there and watched them. I got my camera out and started taking pictures, which remarkably made them stop immediately!
We all took some time out and worked on our journal books ... (more on that in a later post).
We recently had a little visitor in the house ... well not so little. He had a long tail, was black and nasty and ... ran OVER MY FOOT in the middle of the afternoon. Blech. Gave me the heebie jeebies. He seems to have disappeared, thanks to some green colored "poison cakes" ...
I decided today was also the day to ON MY OWN clean out the area where he came from. I could easily have waited and asked our housekeeper to do it when she came back to work, but for a reason that maybe no one else will understand, I needed to do it myself.
I mustered up my cojones and walked in. Shut my eyes and grabbed blindly at the closet door ... flinging it open with one very NOT graceful movement as I - at the same time - jumped as far away from the door as I could. Really silly, I know, but ...
I bleached everything that had a surface and felt automatically like I had actually accomplished something! (yea ... that's what happens when you barely do anything for yourself anymore ... even the little things feel like huge success stories)
Now that the sun is slowly beginning to set, and little tummies are starting to rumble, we may think about laying down some sleeping bags in the living room, lighting some wicks and having a 'candlelight' movie night.
(Just now, I whispered that idea to Tony and his little eyes just sparkled ... yep, I think that's exactly what we'll do!)
