Misadventures in "Me Time"
Or, Why I Don't Even Try Anymore But It's Fine
Part I: Sleep
It’s almost 5AM. I have been “sleeping”, sitting up on the couch, with my 2 year old sprawled out over me, the only way he has slept at all the past few nights. My left arm is completely numb.
I hear my dog scratching and whining to be let out of my daughter’s room, where he has been sleeping. I need to let him out or he’ll whine louder and louder and wake everyone up, which requires me to get up.
I think, little guy is totally out, I can probably put him down in his bed and maybe have a chance to sleep alone, laying down, maybe even with a blanket over me (currently, only 2yo has a toddler blanket covering him, my feet are freezing). For like an entire hour before I need to get up for the day!
As carefully as I can, flexing every muscle in my body so that no jostling occurs, I stand up. So far, so good. Get down the hall, trip slightly over a toy, but recover. Still asleep. Put 2yo down. SUCCESS!
Let dog out of daughter’s room. Go back out to living room, grab a blanket, put a pillow down. Dog immediately tunnels into the blanket and goes to sleep. I lay down awkwardly, trying to avoid stepping on him.
As soon as my head hits the pillow, I hear 2yo: “Mooooooooooommmmmmmm.”
Bring him back out to the couch, in his favorite sprawl position, me of course sitting up again.
The dog owns the blanket now and I have no part of it. The dog is now sleeping on my pillow looking very comfortable.
For the next hour, 2yo is restless and starts to wake up if I breathe too hard, while the sun creeps up and lets me know I’m not getting any more sleep that night. Oh well.
Part II: The Gym
I asked my husband if I could leave an hour early for work a couple of days a week to work out at the gym on the way to work. He says sure.
There’s a yoga class on one of the mornings before work I thought I could try. The night before I put my (stained, half-destroyed due to my daughter using it as a floor mat under her crafts area for many years) yoga mat in the car and put my workout clothes out and my work clothes, towel and some toiletries in a bag so I can shower and get ready at the gym before work. Good.
Due to child-related reasons I can’t really remember, I get there right as the class is starting. In order to go into the class, I have to enter through a door in the front of the classroom, so everyone would see me come in. I can see through the glass wall separating the room that the class is packed and I don’t even see a free area where I could put my mat.
I run on the treadmill for 10 minutes and then take a shower to get ready for work.
For the next month, anytime I try to leave early for the gym, something happens (someone’s barfing, can’t find my wallet, forgot to set alarm, etc.) where I can’t. Because at the time the baby was a literal baby, it was really hard to shower at home, so I started just throwing my work clothes into a bag on my way out of the house and showering at the gym.
Other than a couple of 5-10 minute treadmill runs, I exclusively am using the gym as a place to shower and get ready with the luxury of not having 2 kids needing me every moment. (The showers, because it’s a gym, are pretty gross honestly so it’s not an actual luxurious experience).
We really can’t afford the gym though (especially if it’s just a shower), so I cancel the membership. I figure out ways to be work presentable without showering. Oh well.
Part III: Church
Don’t make me explain this, but recently, after abandoning any sort of religion for the last 3 decades or so, I’ve suddenly been wanting to go to church. Maybe some kind of anemoia1, or just that I remember church being quiet and mostly being left alone and that sounds nice.
So, I found a service that I could go to on Sunday evenings that seemed chill.
My husband doesn’t usually do any childcare outside of my work hours (he is a stay-at-home-dad, but only Monday-Friday from 8:30AM-5PM sharp) but I asked if I could go - I would be gone about 2 hours. He says sure.2
I go. It’s nice, though a bit awkward as I don’t know anyone, but I sit in the back and just listen. 10 minutes before the service is over, husband is texting me asking when I will be home and what is for dinner. Ah well, nice while it lasted.
I’d love to go every week, but the following week’s Sunday is the only free time we have to have a little birthday party for my 2yo. The Sunday after that, there’s another birthday party during my church hour. Then the Sunday after that, I end up hosting an impromptu pool party after my daughter, unbeknownst to me, invited our neighbors over. I have pizza delivered. Everyone has a great time, but I watch as the hour ticks away that could have been mine, with no sense of surprise whatsoever.
That single service I was able to go to was over 3 months ago. I haven’t had a free 2-hour block of time on a Sunday since then. The church puts it sermons out online so I listen to them when I’m cleaning the house after the kids are in bed. Oh well.
Part IV: The Bath Bomb
My daughter found a bath bomb in the back of the bathroom cabinet that she had apparently bought for me years ago when my mom had taken her to Target to buy me a birthday gift.
She was hurt that I hadn’t used it. “Did you not like it?” she asked, breaking my actual heart.
“I loved it, I just don’t have time to take a bath,” I told her.
“You could take one right now!”
It was 9PM. I needed to tuck her in, and rock her brother to sleep. By the time this was done, I would be too tired to take a bath (or, more likely, asleep in the rocking chair in the baby’s room).
“I’ll take one tonight after you go to sleep,” I lied, “but you have to get to bed right now.”
“I love you so much” I said insufficiently, hoping she never has to have this conversation with her own child; that she ends up in a life where she has the support and energy to take a dang bath with a bath bomb once in a while.
After I tucked her in, but before I put the baby down, I put the bath bomb in the locked medicine cabinet that no kid can reach.3
Oh well.
Oh well
In many schools of thought and religions (Stoicism, Buddhism, some aspects of Christianity4, etc.) the root of suffering is desire, particularly desire that ignores the true nature of reality - the part of us that keeps trying to change things that won’t change. We imagine we have control over our lives, and then when the outcomes don’t match our desires, we feel constantly disappointed.
Here’s how my life is right now: My children are my top priority. They are - and will always be - more of a priority than me. And I can find peace in that. I look back at what I’ve done instead of the ‘me time’ activities I wanted to do, and it’s….fine.
Sleeping, warm, sweet baby at 5AM.
Maximizing time with kids in the morning before work, even if I look mildly disheveled when I get there (I work in tech - on the development side - so I’m not the only one who rolls into work putting the casual in business casual).
Cleaning my house while listening to the sermon I had wanted to go to rather than coming home from said sermon to a house where every single toy has been launched over every available surface and will take hours to clean up.
That’s the true nature of my reality. Trying to cling to a reality in which I pretend to have more control over these things doesn’t serve me. In 10-16 years, my reality might be different. Or it might not.
Oh well.
Nostalgia for a time that never actually existed
I’m starting to think he agrees with this kind of thing because he knows it will probably only happen once and then he can go back to not doing any childcare outside of my work hours
I’m realizing, as I write this, I can use a bath bomb in the shower, right? There’s no law against that? At least it would dissolve away along with my guilt over not using it the way my daughter hoped I would.
The Serenity Prayer, for example