Restraint

This business of blogging is strange to me. As the audience grows, the community widens, the bonds are made and some are broken. This is my 794th post, actually, and I love the whole thing, but I'm feeling constrained and, to be honest, restrained. There's the flinch of embarrassment of revelation, the intimacy that might be illusory balanced by the perception that all of us are connected in a way that is near to revolutionary. The restraint, I think, is due on the one hand to my particular personality -- a desire to meet expectation, to live up to ideals -- those placed upon me and those that I place upon myself.

This vacation I'm on, for instance, absolutely sucks.

There, I've said it. I've held it back for almost two weeks. I've held it back because I don't want to sound complaining. I don't want anyone to tell me that I need a tranquilizer (someone actually said that to me). I don't want to watch Sophie seize over and over again, not because she has somehow gotten worse the last two weeks but because I erroneously brought her here and she is having the worst -- and I mean the worst -- time adjusting to everything from the time change to the godawful heat and humidity and east coast thunderstorm/heat lighting barometric pressure thing. She has not been able to walk freely around like she can do at home because it isn't safe here. She has slept horribly for the most part, and I've had to sleep with her every single night, and I hate sleeping with her. I desperately need a break, a real vacation and I'm not getting one any time soon.

I feel like I'm losing, if not completely lost, my spiritual center.

So there.

But I'm a good girl, really. So here's what I'm grateful for:

My husband's week here and his attentiveness to her and her needs.
My sons' joy in being here.
My parents' concern and support. They love me, I know.
My parents' beautiful house that they open up each year to the extended family's crazy shenanigans.
The gorgeous view behind my parents' house, the water snaking up into the distance, live oaks with moss hanging down, white birds in flight.
My dear friends, Cara and Audrey, who have arrived with their children and are hanging out with me, and I mean hanging out because Sophie can't go anywhere or do anything and neither can I.
The fact that I only have one week left to endure and then I get to go home to beautiful, mild, sunny Los Angeles, my politically liberal people, Sophie's comfortable adaptive room and my own bed.
All of you.

Someone tell me something funny.