“What’s that smell?”

Walking around Aspen

Yesterday was not such a good day, at least when the boys were around. Brevitt went to sleep the night before with high anxiety over his inability to comprehend his math teacher and woke up feigning illness. I gave him a simple math problem, “Brevitt + no school = higher anxiety,” and lightly smacked his little bottom up the stairs to get dressed.

I have been making a concentrated effort to sleep more and woke up too late to think straight resulting in mass confusion. I herded the boys into the car ten minutes late and left the healthy part of the lunch behind to sit on the counter all day.

After school, Tucker’s preschool teacher said, “We supplemented Tucker’s lunchbox today with something healthy for him,” since all that was in his lunchbox was the processed snacks that I had bought for them when I had a weak moment in the grocery store because I felt badly that they always looked so longingly at their friends lunchboxes.

As for the big boys, they ended up having no lunch at all. For some reason the once a week hot lunch that is served at school, was not served yesterday.

So I came to school to greet hungry boys who did not want to ski, even though I just about killed myself loading the car with their equipment and warm clothes. They immediately began their whining about my “no more sugar” rule. “Never again?” they asked. “Even on special occasions?” “No, NEVER,” I returned. “The sugar fuels Axel’s migraines, Tucker’s temper tantrums and Brevitt’s anxiety so no more giving in to your constant pleas for the evil stuff.”

Life is a roller coaster and I am being tossed about with high emotions and sharp turns as I hurry up and wait to get my book marketed, work on my new business, Aspen Real Life, and love and nurture my three boys, husband, sisters, friends and parents (which includes my in-laws). I won’t even go into the time it takes to connect with my new friends on the internet who have become my support and my comfort. If only I enjoyed being hung upside down in a state of peril.

I should enjoy these crazy times and embrace them knowing that these unbearable moments will soon pass leaving me with the exhilaration that I just made it through another loop by sheer will, determination and positive thinking, “You are good, you will succeed, it is all worth it, even though Axel was in tears last night because he was looking at pictures of you smiling and said that you never smile or laugh anymore.”

And Axel is right. I have aged in this past year in my attempt to create the impossible. I am looking older and more haggard and even have had to get eyeglasses from too much writing on the computer. My muscles are softening and my bottom is flattening out from too much sitting and my energy comes in short spurts but, but, but I believe it is all going to turn around soon. It has to, and in the meantime I have decided to throw three sheets to the wind, which is probably another metaphor that I have messed up but don’t have time to research, and am going to do what I love to do more than anything else in the world, aside from being with my boys. I am going to bring my Taurean self up to the ski slopes and puff out all of my pent up aggression, as I plow through and in and above the powder only concentrating on my next turn and getting to the bottom of the run without stopping…ever!