The Way They Should Go

I do something that totally befuddles my husband.  I know I do it, I know he doesn’t understand, but I can’t help myself.

I can see it at the end of the evening as we put dishes in the kitchen, start turning off lights in the family room.  He’s ready to go to bed now.  We’ve put the girls to bed, had dinner, put those dishes… well… in the kitchen at least, maybe watched a DVD of a favorite Scifi show… it is now time to go to bed.  It says so right here beside his freakishly impeccable internal chronometer. 

However, I know that I have some of the neighborhood women & kids coming over tomorrow, so I should really clean up those dishes in the kitchen.  Maybe find the coffee table… I could swear it was in here somewhere earlier today.

So I start doing those things and hubby will keep himself busy for a few minutes with something.  Then he’ll usually stalk me for a few minutes, judging how long I’ll be.  At some point he’ll go upstairs and get ready for bed.  Then, often about 10 minutes later, he’ll appear at the bottom of the steps to see if I’m coming yet.  And he does this even on nights he’s not looking for… well, we’re all grown-ups here.  You know what I mean. 

But of course, I’m still puttering around.

He just doesn’t understand why I do this to myself.  After all, I HATE morning.  Mornings are evil and should be avoided at all costs.  I can barely breathe and brush my teeth at the same time when I first get up in the morning.  Interestingly God gave me daughters that wake up mid-sentence with smiles and hopping and narrating complete run-on epics of dreams that must be recounted in minute detail with much exuberance and little breathing.  I’ve told God this was an error and He really should check His records.  I’m sure the replacement part is in the mail.

And yet, baffling as it is, I sit here at 11:10pm writing to all of you.  The necessary spaces half cleaned up from my meandering straightening.  I LOVE this time.  In college, this is when I did my best work.  I once wrote an entire final paper analyzing a Supreme Court Employment Law case starting at 11pm the night before.  I had done all the research, but wrote the whole paper starting at 11pm and finishing around 4:30am.  I got an A.

FINALLY my brain is quiet.  My house is quiet.  No one has any expectations of me for the next 8 hours - and I’m supposed to miss the whole thing??  Are you kidding!

I have framed 6 pictures that have been sitting around in various corners of my house.  I cleaned off most of the dining room table.  I did find half the coffee table and I have strong suspicions as to where the other half went.  And that stack of stuff that’s been accumulating beside my desk?  I know what’s in it now.  Did you really think I was going to say I went through it and put it away - the poor thing is only in it’s infancy!  It has a good 18 inches growth yet before it reaches it’s full potential - and we’re strong supporters of exploring and reaching for maximum potential in this house.  We’re homeschoolers.

I still have within my sight a random large piece of cardboard, Grandma’s Attic book, KTRose’s writing paper, a brush, husband’s sneakers, 4 picture frames, empty paper bag, screwdriver, plastic dinosaur, rubber light-up squishy dinosaur, “magic” marker, teddy bear shaped blank paper book and mini-karioke machine to put away.  And that’s not even counting the steps - which I can also unfortunately see.  BUT I get to pick all that up with no mention of pee-pee, anyone kicking anyone else, no joyful “watch the birdie’s wings move!” (it was real and it was dead - AcK!) or really any noise except the faint highway noises coming in from the open windows.

I may stay up all night.