Alright, here’s the deal: God has had me laughing at myself a lot lately. It seems that as seasons change, so do I and so do my so called “needs”. All these things that I once thought were definite necessities in my life are now just bonuses. Things that I just knew I could not live without—I could give or take now.
Here are just a few examples of my once daily necessities turned bonuses:
1. 8 hours of consecutive sleep per night. (You can live off 4-5 hours of interrupted sleep if you have too!)
2. Sitting during a meal. (Totally overrated—and now I just think of how I'm burning all those calories just as soon as they come enter my mouth. )
3. Showering/Bathing/Using the bathroom alone. (The master bathroom has become our family room—we converse, eat, shower, plan for the day, play ball, you name it—if it is usually done in the family room by normal people, we do it in the master bathroom. Between helping everyone get ready and potty training—we seem to live in there. It’s great though—just fix the kids breakfast and put them in the empty bathtub to eat, and then any mess they make, you just wash down the drain. No need to get frustrated about spilled juice or crumbs everywhere. When they are done eating, just take their clothes off and wash the kids up. Really, it is an ingenious idea if you ask me. And besides, if you are lucky enough to have a garden tub, and you can convince the kids that it is their very own swimming pool. My kids think they have the coolest parents, because we let them eat in “their pool” and we let them “swim” in it as long as they like --This one I do when I am waiting in Chris to get home from work and I feel like the boys are going stir crazy—just throw them in the master “pool” for about an hour. They love it!)
4. Leisure reading. (Please, don’t embarrass me by asking me anything about pop culture, or telling me that my shawl has transferred from the what’s hot to what’s not list about 3 years ago.)
5. Hot coffee. (Coffee -and lots of it!- is still a necessity, but I am beginning to develop a liking for lukewarm/border line cold coffee. Here’s the cool thing: You can start with a hot cup, and then when it hits that borderline cold state, just throw ice in it and call it a frappuccino. It works, I promise.)
6. Shaving my legs. (OK, once a week is still a necessity, but daily—just a bonus :).
7. Sunglasses. (If I can ever find those things in my diaper bag while I am driving and they are in one piece when I finally unearth them--that is a huge bonus. It never happens though. Max gets so frustrated when he can’t find his (he owns at least 5 pairs), and I just laugh because I know the day is soon coming when he too will consider it just a bonus to have them on hand. Jack (the 2nd child—who does not own a single pair-- just puts a book over his head if the sun is in his eyes while we're driving. Oh, how things change from that first child to the 2nd!)
8. A hot meal at least once a day. (String cheese, yogurt, and fruit snacks really can go a long way :).
I could list many more, but I want you to know that I once believed it was "my right" to have these things (I know, I was and still can be incredibly selfish). Now that I have realized that these once I couldn’t live without things are just bonuses, I really have become a much more pleasant person. If I get them, great. If I don’t—oh well. The day will soon come when I can be well rested, alone in my bathroom, taking a bath while reading an In Style magazine, shaving my legs, sipping on hot coffee, and wearing my non- broken sunglasses if I want to. And you know what I will be sitting there thinking about? The days when we used to eat breakfast and play baseball in the bathroom with the kids :).
Somebody, please just remind me I wrote that the next time you see me picking the kids up from school with a purple scrunchy in my hair, digging through their lunchboxes for a leftover PB&J to eat on the way to the car!
What about you? What are some everyday things that you once thought you could not live without, that now you consider just a bonus?
