15 Minutes

I swore to myself that as soon as the knitting I was finishing was off the needles I would commence cleaning my kitchen. This is the one gift the tired-end-of-the-day-me gives to the exhausted-awoken-from-deep-sleep-by-a-three-year-old-at-five-in-the-morning-me. I hate the cleaning, but a tidy kitchen is the only way I have the patience to pour the milk and start the coffee without resenting the ones I love the most. So, at night I do the dishes, wipe the counters, sweep the kitchen floor, and start a load of wash. Tonight's load will be a weeks worth of diapers. (With each kid down for one at nap and one at night I can really stretch my stash!) I love falling asleep to the sound of the cleaning machines doing the work for me.

Anyway, maybe it's the thrill of finishing a knitting project that I have been working on since September... but I am all jazzed up and ready to put a few words up on the screen. (I'll show you pictures of said knitting after Christmas!) ;-)

So here's the thing. Despite the fact I never seem to find the time to do the things I love here lately because I am always napping away my free time, I am in LOVE LOVE LOVE with my life. Sometimes I have to pinch myself just to make sure it's all not a dream. I was on such a different road for such a long long time, that sometimes it amazes me that it all worked out this way in the end. What happened to the glitter covered dancing girl that spun light and passed out beads until six in the morning in seedy after after hours clubs in JAX? What happened to the bartender who slung drinks and called shot-thirty every fifteen minutes? How did I get to be this better more grounded version of me? A mini-van driving, stay at home mom, who knits, and cooks, and likes very much that I'm someones Mrs.?

Well, it all started when that whiskey slinging barmaid fell for her drunken sailor and they pulled each other off the self-destructive collision course they were on.

The other night we had a camp out. We set up our guest mattress in front of our fireplace and slept cuddled in the glow of the flame and our twinkling Christmas tree all night long. Yes, slept. Gone are the days of sitting up till dawn chain smoking and trying to talk through all the world's mysteries. These days we sleep. But, it is the deep contented sleep of two people who have found the spot where they truly fit.

I love my husband. He doesn't fit neatly in any box. Macho, emotional, annal-retentive, logical, gregarious, show-off, loaner, strait shooter, conservative, anti-establishment, patriot, authority-bucking, leader, loyal, know-it-all, grounded, big dreamer, slight pyromaniac, always putting out my fires. He is a freaking character.

Sometimes I really wonder how we have lasted. Well, I take that back. After two weeks of knowing the man I knew I was hooked for good. But, what I am still not sure I understand is how we work. If he is the earth I am the sky. He is the rock that things are build on and I am the willow that bends and bends and bends. OK, Maybe that's the answer. I have had it in my mind for years now that I wanted a tattoo of a rock man like Atlas, but instead of the world on his shoulders a oak/women growing out of his back. I would love to meet an artist who could make it materialize... but don't I know what skin I'd use. The garden-variety goldfish on my lower back take up where I'd want my rock man to start...

I should go clean the kitchen. Those dishes aren't loading themselves... That is my fifteen minutes of chatter.

For those who truly know him: Here's Smoochy instructing the children on the precise way to hang an ornament!