Alone Time

I'm at the kitchen table, a mere two feet away from Thatcher who's dangling his feet off the edge of the kitchen island munching on a piece of toast he just venomously refused. He's having some requested alone time. I'm not to look at him or talk to him unless I'm spoken to first. This is of course all well and good. I figure I'll make the best of it and tip tap type away.
I think I've actually recieved my own quota of alone time lately. Tessa's in school five full days a week now and Thatcher is gone just two mornings to his picture perfect one room school house. Everyone is asking what I'm going to do with all this free time! And really 6 hours is pretty incredible for me. Grocery shopping is a leisurely hour and a half stroll. I've read the New York Times front to back on more than one occassion and am consuming more caffiene at the nice bright bagel shop in the middle of Brattleboro than anyone should dare. I've shopped, splurged, started my Christmas hoarding... and now? I'm done. It's been what three weeks? 6 entire mornings to myself and I've hit existensial crisis mode. Who am I? Is this really what my life is about outside of kids?
To top it all off I've just bought my first smart phone. I'm connected to this evil internet everywhere I go now. It's horrible. I'm like a herion addict who decided rather than kick smack she's gonna carry around a kilo in her pocket.  I should not be allowed to consume this much nonsense, no one should. It makes me feel dirty and bloated and honestly like a zombie all the time. On the brighter side my internet addiction is making my alcohol consumption look better.
So besides the shopping and the internet dripping into my veins my life looks like a postcard. It's all coffee cups and newspaper fingerprints. That is when I don't have the kids with me. When I have them with me it's more like wine glasses and excrement. Kidding! Maybe it's not entirely pathetic that they give my life all it's meaning right now but it does give me a good kick in the ass to get a move on with the other parts. I mean like the whole "me" thing. Like I'm a real live grown woman who's not contributing a friggin lick to society. Like perhaps learning a real life skill? Maybe I'll go be a carpenter, hardy har har. Something though really not just to fill the overrated alone time with  but to fill myself with something I can be proud of. Something other than these perfect children who are going to be grown up in a day. Or maybe two.

What?

And so life gets complicated... we complicate life or it complicates us... I haven't yet figured it out. What I do know is that I sit in a beautiful house, next to my sleeping dog, with my husband upstairs feeling vanquished or resentful or lonely getting our two children to sleep, one who is clingier than she's ever been before and teenage whiney at the age of 6 and the other, 3 1/2 and still struggling to speak and frustrated with the world for not getting it. I am sitting here... typing. Because I haven't in a really long time. I haven't written anything down anywhere of any signifigance, have barely said as much either.
I don't know which way is up or if life is linear at this point. I'm not sure why our house is for sale that nearly pays for itself or why we're living here in the first place. I'm not sure where in the hell we really want to go, what we really want to do, who we really want to be.
I heard this thing on the radio a few weeks ago. This guy was talking about "healthy families" and how "healthy families" should have a mission statement. Hmmm. I thought. That's intriguing. And I'm still thinking what that could possibly mean for us. I want our kids to grow up strong and brave and proud of themselves. I want them to be ready for life. And then I think and I nearly say "in a way that I'm completely not". And what the hell does that mean. I want to be less vague. I want to teach them actual possibility without someone else's idea of possibility intruding.
And then I heard something else.... A teacher asked a student to try to prove that they were alive without using another person to prove it. So I'm left wondering how... and why?