Weekend Things ~ Cabin Fever

We had another tough week, last week, with C traveling for work again, this time through the weekend in order to accommodate busy evenings earlier in the week. I had not expected full-on parenting to be so exhausting. It's not just doing all the cooking and cleaning up and getting on the bus and putting to bed and driving to lessons and picking up from practices that's so wearying. It's the coaxing and urging and answering questions and fielding complaints and breaking up fights and enforcing rules and confiscating iPads and enduring temper tantrums from kids who you'd think are far too old for temper tantrums. C and I have our share of disagreements about who shoulders more of the burden in these various departments, but it's clear that 100% is a lot more than usual. I salute anyone out there who is not co-parenting with another person.

And then there's this time of year. March. Not my best month. I try to be good and not complain about winter all winter long, because really, what good would that do? But by the end of March, I'm good and ready to see some green. And get out. I feel restless. I can't read more than a paragraph or two in a book or magazine or knit more than a few rows of stitches before I toss it aside. TV doesn't appeal. Unfinished projects hold no allure. And housework is definitely off the table. But the urge to go do something makes me feel like bursting through my own skin.

By Saturday I needed to get out. In the afternoon I announced that I was going out to run errands--one of the wonders of having a teenager in the house is that you can leave the house all by yourself--and left the only rule of not going on the river. My only goal was to pick up fancy Easter candy (I had lentil mints on my mind), but I found myself buying spring tops (that are far too cold for this weather--a sure sign of spring fever), browsing a book store, window shopping in a natural foods store.

After I got home and fixed a quick dinner we went out again to see the new Cinderella movie. The boys were skeptical at best, and the "Frozen" short feature before the film did nothing to endear the movie to them. "That was pretty lame," was M's assessment when it was over. "There were no brutal killings," was Z's main complaint. But I thought it was cute and funny, and at least we got out of the house, even if we did have to drive home in a mini snowstorm (of course).

Sunday the sun came out and C came home and we all went for a walk in the woods (the same old woods on the same old trail). But this week I'm feeling the cabin fever take over again. Yesterday evening after work I stopped in a Maine crafts store out by the Turnpike to see a friend's gallery show before it closed and I was just a little tiny bit tempted to hop on that highway and head south. To New Mexico perhaps. I understand it's warm in New Mexico this time of year. But I turned around and came home instead.