Bedlam Ends, With a Whimper And Some Cake

On Friday we went to the big mall to renew SA’s driver’s license. He had the day off for his birthday so we all went together in the afternoon after we ate our first (1st) cake of the weekend.

(Mm, chocolate cake with lemon filling and chocolate frosting and a white icing rocketship and four thousand sprinkles for stars on it. Mm.)

It took about five seconds for him to renew his driver’s license and then we were still in the mall so we asked the children where they wanted to go. They like Toys R Us because of, duh, the toys, but they also like Chapters, the “book” store that has a kids’ toy section at the back.

The mall was giving me the most dreadful mall head and having the same effect on the children (which, combined with recently consumed chocolate cake = I need to go home and drink right now) so I made Trombone choose. Chapters or Toys R Us. We will go to one of those stores and make the appropriate noises about all the things you like and then we will go home.

He chose Toys R Us.
But we had parked near Chapters so we had to walk past it and mourn its so-near-yet-so-farness.

On our way back to the car, (and for a few blocks once we were in the car and heading home) he complained.
“I wanted to go to Chapters.”
“Yes,” I said, “I know.”
“And we didn’t GO to Chapters.”
“I know,” I said.

Teenage sigh.

I didn’t remind him that he had made the decision. I knew he remembered – he is four and a half, after all. Old enough to make a decision and understand the consequences. And still feel regret for having not made a different one. And still feel torn, because there are many things he really wants to do (often more than two) and he still has to choose one.

***

Yesterday was my birthday. I spent the day doing things that are fun, like sleeping in, pretending not to see Trombone making me a SuperMommy cape, watching people write on my facebook wall, eating my mother’s lasagna and drinking wine. A few times, it occurred to me that I had no blog post ready for yesterday. And no ideas for one. (No, I didn’t feel like writing myself a rhyming poem.) And I realized: there is a reason most challenges last a month. A month is long enough to be challenging but not so long that you run out of steam. I am not a daily blogger.

Prompts or no, I for serious do not have a single quality post left in my body right now, let alone three hundred twenty of them to get me to the end of 2011. Plus, when I made the decision to blog every day I was completely delusional and thought that I could also write fiction. Turns out not to be the case. There just are not enough hours in the day right now for that. I have to choose.

The bright side is that because of the daily blogging since December, I have carved out the space to write every day. The habit is entrenched. I just want to write different things, now.

So I’m quitting. Not the blog! Just the every day part. I have proved I can do it…for a while. If I want to achieve my other goal, to publish (other than here), I need to focus my creative energy in a different way.

I will probably regret it. I may already regret it. I regret it. Of course. Who likes a quitter? It sure isn’t the quitter herself!

But if I’m always at Toys R Us, I’ll never see what’s at Chapters.