Where my thoughts have been, besides my kids

Nearly every minute I'm awake in a day doesn't belong to me anymore. The demands on my time by other people, little people, are often more than I know how to handle.

I don't read the news.

I don't watch tv.

I don't read any more gossip websites. Sorry Perez.

I don't talk to "friends" or do play dates.

I try to clean my house, and raise my kids. And fix dinner.

We go on adventures, if heading to Target can count.

By the end of the day, it often seems that I haven't done anything. And yet, I have. I've done a lot.

More than I ever imagined could be done in a day.

I sing and dance and read.

I have a helper with the laundry and the dishes.

I talk and talk and talk.

To a very bright two year old.

Often though, there is a gaping hole in my head where my brain used to be. The part of my mind that thought about current events, politics, social issues. That part that used to be a teacher and know everything.

I still know everything.

It's just a different kind of everything.

An everything that involves discussions about weeds and chalk and why we don't like grasshoppers instead of war torn nations or the implications of the national debt.

and guess what.

I'm okay with that.

When I have time by myself, I miss my kids terribly. When I see no end in sight to a long day, all i want to do is ship them away.

I think that just means I'm a mom, right?

I would love to spend a Saturday with my husband, doing nothing, like we did many years ago. But we're too busy for such a wasted day.

Even though my life no longer feels like my own, I still have one solace - one element that is mine.

I still read.

I've almost finished "possible side effects" by Augusten Burrows. It's a book of essays about his very chaotic and nutty life. I love it. It's got me thinking more in the last few weeks I've been reading, about life, than anything has in a long time.

It got me to thinking the other day - about how the books I've read have always seemed to mirror and reflect my own life in some strange way, however loosely.

As a kid, I read about the Kennedy's and "where the red fern grows". I never did series books, still don't and even though i probably invented the story, I've convinced myself that I read "to kill a mockingbird" when I was 10 or so, because my grandma wanted me to.

When I was in Junior High and High School I was drawn to tragic figures like Marilyn Monroe. Read lots of autobiographies about her. Even did my senior English project about her. When in some dumb elective in high school, while my group was doing our project on Bruce Lee, my teacher let me sit in the comfy chair in his room and read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" because he saw i just wasn't' into the project.

In high school, I discovered Hemingway and Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac. I read "The Old Man and the Sea" as a 7th grader and one of the nicest gifts Ross ever gave me, before we were married, was a large collection of Hemingway short stories. Corny as it may be, there were many occasions where I would bring that book and make him read me stories. Maybe it was the draw to Europe, and bull fights and war that hooked me, but Hemingway has always been a comfortable read for me.

Then to Kerouac - oh how I love to get lost (literally and figuratively) in a good Kerouac novel. Another tragic hero, but who can beat reading about Dean Moriarty in "on the road" or "the subbterraneans" on a hot summer day.

I had a phase where I read about art. Always art. I owned amazingly beautiful art books, mostly about impressionism. It was such a draw for me at the time.

Early in college, I read crap. I read those "dime store" novels about love and relationships that I found on the sale racks at Barnes and noble. Always about a 20 something girl looking for love and in the end finding the great guy.

Talk about projecting.

I wanted to be that dumb girl in all those books.

As a teacher, I read history all the time. Great war books - the entire Ambrose collection and more. I knew so much then about history and the characters that created our country.

Since, I've read books about raising children and toilet training. Books about royalty and simple people. Books that made me laugh and made me cry.

Lately though, I'm drawn to neuroses. And short stories. Short stories about the neurotic. A perfect combination, don't you think?

David Sedaris and his wacky family. Augusten Burrows and his disastrous childhood with a manic parent.

Not sure what it says about me and the place I'm in, in my life right now.

Maybe reading about other people's disasters helps me to appreciate my own life.

And how good I've got it.

That's probably it.

Whatever the reason.

I know that at the end of the day - I've got a book waiting for me on my nightstand. The final few minutes of each day, I get to myself.

And I wouldn't trade that for anything.