Last week, Dan and I sent in the last of our 3 manuscripts. The last 45,000 word-batch of our thoughts. We don't pull out all the stops for birthdays or anniversaries or Christmases, but this was an accomplishment that we wanted to celebrate. To be clear, we are not celebrating writing books; we are celebrating surviving this year.
8,760 hours have passed; Henry slept for 6 of them.
There was the catastrophic week Henry came home from the hospital, when everyone in the house had a stomach virus for 2 weeks. When I was breastfeeding a two-day-old infant, jealous Sam was screaming at my feet, and Madeline was throwing up in the corner. And then Sam busted his face open on a chair and we had to put him in his STILL COVERED IN VOMIT car seat and drive him to the emergency room. We survived that.
There was the two-week period the last book was due, when the kids got chicken pox. And our babysitter broke her foot. And Madeline had fall break and was home with all her effervescence and her words. And Dan had a fall retreat with the college students and was gone for a million billion years, which is what four days feels like to a mom of three tiny humans. We survived that.
We survived other stuff too, so we celebrated.
My handsome, hero-husband of mine and I left the tiny humans in the care of their grandmother and we peaced out to the beach. Dan's grandparents sent a package for the kids, which we stole on our way out the door, elbowing each other and giggling maniacally, like drunk hamburglars. His saintly, saintly grandparents took an empty mini-muffin package and stuffed each muffin-hole with good Halloween candy; they then layered M&Ms on top of them, then layered three nutter butter packets on top of the M&Ms and snapped it shut. YOU KNOW WE TOOK THAT BIZ TO THE BEACH.
We were drunk with freedom and delirious by the time we hit the highway. When we went through a drive-thru for dinner, Dan was all, "I'll have the six-pound triple-bacon burger," and I was all, "ME TOO."
We slept in, we ate out, we walked, we shopped, I got my nose pierced. It was the best.
Also, this:
