isn't it ironic...

The last post was about lack of time and look how much time has passed from this entry from the last.  Blah!!!  She is a rocket, my little Cassidy.  Who says mothering is not a full time job?  Not a mother.

She's talking.  And I don't mean just talking, but she quantifies everything.  Not even two years old, and everything is wet, dry, awake, asleep, hot, cold, in, out... where does she get this stuff?  Amazes me just about constantly.

I had no thought and still have none as my fingers fly except to get some words down before she wakes up from her nap.  I am enamored by her.  I can't get enough of her.  I watch her break into spontaneous dance, or listen to her spontaneous song from the back seat of the car, and I burst.  Where did she come from?

And, I.  I've been waitressing for about 6 months now, and baking a couple times a week for my friend's cafe.  The other day when I told a friend "I'm so busy for a stay at home mother!" she said "Colleen.  You are not a stay at home mother.  You are a working mother."  Oh, right.  Duh.  My schedule is such that I work at night or on the weekends when my husband is home so I don't feel like I'm away from her too much.  

Money is tight.  It's stressful.  I wonder if I should be doing more, or how I could be doing more.  We live in a rural community and jobs aren't exactly stacking up in the classified section.  Not a job I would want, anyway.  I don't mind being a broke but happy momma, though sometimes the seeming monotony of it catches up with me, takes hold, and squeezes.

I am a mother, a wife, a waitress, a baker.  But wait a minute.  What about the adventurer, the writer?  Where did the spontaneous lover go, the rollerblader, the cartwheeler?  Where did the hiker go?  Where did the thinker, the discusser, the philosopher go?  I ask myself this, and sometimes with intensity.  The woman who barely squeezes in a shower at times.

And I tell myself this is temporary.  Cassidy won't require as much attention one day, and then I'll miss this.  I know that.  But there are days, one of them just recent, that I grieve my former self, my former life.  I look back on it wistfully; sleeping late on the weekends, planning day long hikes, discussing new strategies with fellow teachers... Seeing live music, staying up late, driving around for hours just to see where we might end up...

She is squawking now, my daughter, crying out my primary name:  "Mommy!!! Mommy!!! Mommy!!!"
I know I will miss this.  And that I will be back.  Some days it can't come fast enough, and other days I never want this to end.