The night after we pulled his tooth out I heard him crying in his bed. When I asked him what was wrong his tears turned into a full on sob.

“I just want my tooth back in my mouth. I just want everything to go back to normal.”

It took all the strength in the world not to say “me too” and curl up with him and cry.

Things move too fast.

I have been thinking about going back to school. Actually, I have never stopped thinking about going back to school but I think I found a program I might actually want to do. A program that would work with my current life schedule. I am not ready to tell you what the program is but I can tell that if you thought I was crazy for getting a Philosophy degree? You are going to totally lose your mind on this one.

Last weekend I started working on my entrance essay and found myself pouring on to the page words that I didn’t know I had in me. What came out of it was a twenty-page memoir type essay about a story that I have spent the past five years trying to figure out how to tell.

I want to tell more stories.

Wednesday I wore a dress and tights and was probably over-dressed but I really didn’t care. I took the day off and instead of sitting in my office, building beautiful things and talking to myself, I went to see people! People! I decided that  people seeing required tights and a dress. Because sometimes that is just the way it is.

I really want to re-invent this blog, or maybe delete and start a new blog from scratch. Sometimes I imagine that I could be a food blogger, or a craft blogger or maybe a humor blogger. But then I realize that I would have to learn to cook, or sew, or craft. These feelings aren’t just applicable to this blog, its how I think about my life sometimes too. Maybe I can erase and start anew as a baker, or a musician that travels the country, or maybe even a celebrity. Perhaps, I could be more Paris Hilton like?

It’s not that I don’t enjoy my life, I really do. I just wish there was more consistency in being me. I wish I had a specific talent or hobby or personality trait that perfectly described me. I try to imagine if I were a character in a book who I would be, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t fit into a book because my character would be too messy and all over the place. A good friend of mine describes me as “un-categorically strange,” because I can’t even fit into the traditional definitions of strange. I am my own kind of weird, my own kind character and sometimes that is completely annoying.

Today I am linking up with Just Write.

On a completely unrelated note you can find me over here this week talking about what trends we are going to see in the next year. I am also over here talking about How-To get press for your blog. 

Side note: why can’t I wrap texts around my pictures?….

This weekend Aiden and I are going to pick pumpkins and ride in a monster truck.

That is what you do in the country.

He is going to be Edward Cullen for Halloween which I am OMGICAN’TEVEN excited about it. What five year old boy doesn’t want to be Edward Cullen?

Remember that list I made last year? I am totally failing at it. I am completely comfortable with that because many of the items on that list seem trivial now. Still, I would like to read more.

Speaking of reading? I found four new blogs today.

I am in love with these earring I got this week. I plan to wear them everyday.

I mailed these bumper stickers to one of my best friends this week. I hope she isnt’ reading this..

If you are looking for a gift or a new piece of art? This couple is selling art to cover their medical bills. Its beautiful.

That is all I have for you. What do you have for me?

When I was a teenager I imagined how great it would be to be thirty. I sold Avon and collected anti-wrinkle creams like most teenagers collected issues of Seventeen magazine. I imagined growing old and being fancy.

So I finished highschool and had a baby and finished college and got a job and bought a house and now I am everything I wanted to be in high-school.

Except not fancy. Or old.

Ok, so maybe I am nothing I wanted to be in high-school but the point is I have built a life.

I wake up in the morning and make coffee and wake my child. I serve him breakfast and scream at him fifteen times because WHY AREN’T YOU DRESSED YET.I ship him off to school and I do work that I love and I pick him up and we eat dinner and play games and bath and bed and IS THIS SENTENCE ENDING YET.

We have routine and stability and comfort and it is driving me crazy.

I expected adulthood to be exciting. Like there would be a moment of WHOA I am an adult. But mostly it is just me trying to figure out when the last time I showered was and watching more episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians than I’d like to admit.

So I have spent the past two weeks trying to figure out if stability was supposed to feel so itchy. If it was supposed to make you want to pack up all of your belongings and move somewhere new, or hop in your car and road trip for a week, or buy a new wardrobe, or…or…

Twenty-Four is weird.

I am walking into the same school that I went to many years ago. My son walks in front of me and we search out his classroom, his desk and his first ever locker.

After kisses and hugs and a billion “I love yous;” I head home to start my work day. I sit at my desk for a while and try to figure out where the time went but for once it made so much sense.

He waved for the first time when I was headed to class at a junior college.  He was learning to crawl and listening to Dora in the background as I cooked dinner and did homework. He was taking first steps as I ran out the door to work nights at the bar.  There were trips to the zoo and moves to new houses and first words and vacations and changes.

I feel like it was just yesterday when I was bringing him home from the hospital.

But at the very same time I feel like that was another lifetime.

The truth is, we grew up together, my child and me.

As he learned to walk and talk and go potty on the big boy potty I learned about school and growing up and friends and first jobs and careers.

Last December I graduated from college and this summer, the summer after college was un-eventful and fast and quiet and we both waded in the pool that life changes are.

And now he is off to kindergarten.

It doesn’t feel like a major life change, but maybe that is because we have had so many major life changes in the past five years that they come and go with little notice.

It simply feels like a next step. It is time for him to learn reading and writing and math and it time for me to learn…to learn…to learn things that adults do?

I imagine that my relationship with my child is different than most mother/son relationships. In the same way that I am protective of him he seems to protect me. In the same way I am learning new steps and new moves he is too.

We grow together and learn from each other and I feel like one day we are going to look back on this journey and see how big it really was.

I would throw myself on the floor full force and pound my fists into the ground. My screeching could be heard throughout Walmart and my poor mother looked down helplessly as I banged my head against the cement floor. Repeatedly.

I was an only child.

I asked for a lot of things and sometimes I got them–many times I didn’t. I remember the feeling that would well up inside of me when my mother told me no. It wasn’t a logical thought about maybe we can get this next time. Or possibly I should save up and buy this myself. It was the realization that I was helpless. That unless my mother bought this item I would never get it. That my fate relied upon my mothers decision to do or not to do.

This may seem like a dramatic response to not getting a new Barbie or a bag of M&M’s in the checkout line. But the feelings that came with being told no were hard. The idea that I didn’t control what happened to me is something that I still to this day deal with. I felt powerless.

And then I became a mother. I became a mother to an only child. I became a mother to an only child that is exactly like me. (minus the spastic fits, thank GOD)

It has become incredibly hard to tell him no. To hold back from giving him everything that he wants. It is not that I think he needs these things. It is not that I don’t have enough crap cluttering my house. It is the idea that my actions would make him feel powerless. I never want him to feel powerless. So I buy the quarter machine toy that I will throw away in a month when I discover it on the floor of my car. I save up and buy him the new gaming system and then regret it and then save up and buy him the next one.

And the entire time I know that my fear that he will feel powerless is going to ruin him.

Aiden: I don’t think heaven is really in the sky.

Me: Well, where do you think heaven is? It might not be in the sky.

Aiden: I think it’s on the ground. I think…I think heaven is right there. {{pointing to his right}}

Me: The dollar store…?

And this is where he bursts into giggles and I sit and wonder how his mind will work in ten years. *sigh*

Typical day:

6:30 -Alarm Goes Off

6:45 -I remember that my coffee pot is broken. Tear up a little and roll out of bed.

6:50 -8:30 -Check my email, google reader, and facebook. Make breakfast and find Aiden clothes. Yell at least one thousand ten times because Aiden isn’t getting dressed. Get dressed and every once in a while I sneak a shower in.

8:30 -9:00-Drive Aiden to school and arrive to my school.

9:00 -12:00 – Guzzle coffee and work.

12:00 -3:00 -Class. Then another class. Then a third class.

3:00-3:45-Pick up Aiden. Say hello to my mother in her office and drive back home.

4:30-5:30-Arrive home, cook dinner, pick up the house

5:30-Dinner

6:00-7:00-Aiden time. Games, projects, go outside, watch tv, tickle time

7:00-8:00-Bath time, pick up the house, talk about the next day, bed time routine

8:00-10:00-Work on work related projects, attempt to complete any homework I have lingering over me.

10:00-11:00-Brain mush time. Indulge in bad television, bad music, and often times WINE.

11:00-Fall into bed. Discover I STILL have sticky pudding residue on my blanket from some little guy. Remember that I don’t care and fall asleep.

I am exhausted.

I have been a little absent this week. It is our last week of summer classes. :)

Enjoy!

That post was the result of three other posts still sitting in my drafts folder.

It took me three posts to finally say I’m tired.

The first two posts questioned.

They questioned my worth as a mother. They questioned by ability as a student. They questioned my confidence in my successes.

The first two posts brought everything about me into question. The first two posts tore everything about me apart.

Nothing spectacular happened yesterday. I didn’t do something crazy and rash. I didn’t forget about a test or mess something up at work. I wasn’t gone from my son all day. It was a day like any other.

It was a day with a to-do list. Places to be, things to turn in, people to hug, words to say.

It was a day of taking it step. by. step.

Yesterday, there were just too many steps.

And when I got to the end there was nothing left but self hatred, guilt, and pity.

I hated myself for not looking the right way. I hated myself for not being happy. I hated myself for not having any more energy in me.

I felt guilty for not cooking dinner, for counting down the minuets until bed time, for not wanting to play catch, for turning on the tv.

I felt pity for myself because I was tired. I was worn down.

I am so happy that I didn’t publish those posts.

Because today?

Today I feel like a rockstar.

In September we had to move.

I have always resisted change. Actually, I have always been petrified of change..if we are being honest here.

We moved into an apartment with white walls. An apartment with only one bedroom. An apartment with carpet that would make any designer cringe.

I was scared and heartbroken. I was sure that I was a bad mother. I was sure there wasn’t enough room. Where would our stuff go? Where would the pictures and knick knacks I had collected go? How could this be a home?

It couldn’t. It was and is just a house.

I feel no attachment to it. And if you walked in here today it looks much like a college dorm. The furniture doesn’t match. There are posters hanging slanted on the walls.

But that is ok.

Because we are here. And this small space has reminded me to cuddle more. This little apartment reminded me that life isn’t a smooth ride. That not every house is a home. That things change and sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. Because, we won’t be here (in this house)  forever.

But we will be a family forever.

And that is what matters.

Not the knick knacks and the photos. Not the extra space and the big yard.

Family.

Aiden and I.

That matters.