15 Minutes

Hub has taken Elsie outside to play for 15 minutes before he has to leave for pilates.  Lucia is still asleep.  The guest room (and location of the only computer in the house) is vacant.  I have 15 minutes and the computer to myself for the first time in months.  Speed blog!

Summer is my annual time to be a full-time stay-at-home-mom.  That means summer is fun and irritation and exhilaration and boredom and exhaustion and chaos.  I have TONS to do, and I am not keeping up.  My house is a mess.  My legs are hairy.  My kids wear the same outfit as many days as they can.  I only change it when the outfit is objectively disgusting, and even with such an economical dressing scheme, I inevitably run out of clean laundry.

Despite all my unmet demands, I find that I must give myself tasks for the summer, or I will go crazy.  One can not exist upon laundry and nursing alone.

Last year, I decided that Elsie and I would make a doll.  I bought a book and supplies (enough to make a dozen dolls!)  The project didn't save us any money over buying a doll, but it was fun and interesting, and it was something I could do with Elsie that we both enjoyed.  Our doll is adorable.  Her name is Bo.

This year, I chose drawing.  When I was a girl, I loved to draw and paint.  I attended art camp.  I took classes.  I dropped art when the rigors of my academics squeezed out all my free time.  Without practice, I never got very good.  I miss it terribly.  I have been eyeing local adult education classes for years, ever intending to dive back in, but discouraged by the scarcity of time and freedom in these young mother years.

At her parent-teacher conference, Elsie's teachers suggested that I work to foster her love of drawing as a way to give her quiet recuperation time between more social periods of her day.

So drawing it is.

I bought a book.  I sat down with Elsie during Lucia's nap for three days.  I think it's going pretty well!

My time is up, but just want to share what I'm up to and encourage anyone who is simultaneously overrun with obligations and also bored out of her scull to carve out a little time for something engaging and fun.  It is so totally worth the hairy legs.



***  The book is "Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain" and it is AMAZING.  I bought the workbook only, in paper form, because I felt it was more realistic to sit down and open up to an exercise than to sit down and read a chapter.