Patience is a Virtue

I’m finding this elusive patience harder and harder to come by with everyone and everything around me. I really feel like I need a break. I just about went through the roof last night when I was telling John just that, and he offered, this gem: ‘Don’t worry May, in a couple of years, you’ll be able to relax a little more…” What!!! A couple of years?!? I about lost my mind. Incredulously I looked at him, and calmly asked, “Are you serious?” “Well, yeah.”

Allow me a minute to compose myself here. OK, so, I asked him exactly why it was that he could never get up in the morning to take care of Ocean. I don’t want a couple of days, I don’t even want a whole day, I just want one morning to be able to sleep in. Just one. He looked at me, and with a serious face said, “Well, you’re the mom.” Afraid that I was going to pull chunks of hair from my scalp, and then equally scared that I would hurl something across the room at him, I turned and walked out of the room.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really have a good life here. I get to stay home and play with my daughter—I get to spend more time with her than most parents’ dream of spending with their children. For that, I am thankful. I do very much so look forward to my gym time, and my alone time at night, because, let’s face it, caring for an infant is not the most relaxing, nor the easiest of jobs.
I have spent parts of my life working three separate jobs at once just to pay the bills, working six or seven days a week… I find this stay at home mom stuff to be exponentially more exhausting than and one two or three jobs I have maintained. I suppose part of this desire to physically bring harm to my husband when he mentions his lack of desire or will to tend to the little one in the morning stems from jealousy.

John has been making plans to take a couple of days off coming up pretty soon here. He just wants to “relax and mellow out, because, you know, my job is really stressful and stuff.” I asked him if during this week off, while we’re “vacationing together” as he puts it, if I will get a break as well. He looked at me inquisitively. “What do you mean?” “Well, I don’t know, do you think that I could sleep in for just one of the days?” I didn’t get a response. So now—I’m seething. I don’t know if it’s obvious, but I am a little peeved.
I also have speculated that this jealousy is not the only issue that my deeper violent instincts stem from—I think it may also stem from the audacity that my beloved husband demonstrated when he informed me that “in a few short years, I too, would be able to sleep in.” Uggghhh. OK, so I’m done venting, I feel a little better, although not much more virtuous.

I must find an outlet for this angst, because the five miles I find myself running on the treadmill is tearing my knees up pretty completely. I play the piano daily, which does help to calm my nerves, yet I can’t do such things when John is “vacationing” for he is sleeping for a good portion of the day… There’s that angst again, can you feel it? I’ve decided that I will paint something, and paint something soon, for alas, my scalp cannot take much more of this pulling, and my knees are begging with me to pick up a paintbrush.

I want to paint the walls of my home. They are white white and more white. It seems like a daunting task. I have settled firmly on something abstract, which is ironic, because I used to detest abstract art. My father, being the master creative mad scientist that he is brought Chelsea and I down to his shop in “the Hood,” aka Inglewood when I was about 14 or so and had us paint “resin paintings.” Here’s a photo of us doing this project. I don’t know why I cannot figure out how to make my scanner scan in COLOR, but you get the idea.

I’m fortunate enough to have a husband, ahem, John, who doesn’t mind abstract art created by teenagers to be one of the first things seen upon entry to our abode, for this very resin painting is hanging in my front entry way. I love it; it makes me happy every time I look at it. I would so love to make more of these “fine pieces of art” but alas, I am lacking the resin, pigment, and plywood box frame thing, so I may have to retire this idea as well for the time being.

Eventually, I will take a paintbrush to my wall or pigment to resin, I’m unsure which will come first, but I do know that either or may very well stop me from temporarily maiming my scalp or launching a random projectile through the air. Sigh, I feel much better now.