Sunday, April 22, 2007

Needing to Hide My Uterus For a While

I may have to start blogging from a deserted island. Or the Bahamas. I just need to find out if there's wifi in the tropics.Bob has been gone on a business trip, and his last words to me before he flew back home were:I just saw the most amazing motivational speaker. I'll explain more when I come home. But watch out, because I'm getting you pregnant.Now, it's one thing to be the one who's gone. The one who's missing the family. The one, who, when hearing all about the amazing motivational speaker with nineteen children, thinks it would be so great(!) to have another child right away. But. But when you're the one holding down the fort, getting up early after four nights of no sleep (does anyone sleep when their spouse is gone? I stay up listening for intruders that will never come, because all smart intruders know to avoid the houses with pit bulls or kids like mine), my God getting your own coffee in the morning, the last thing you want after being a single parent is another kid. All I wanted when he got home was three consecutive hours to myself. Just three.Apparently, there is some manic crazy man who happens to be the General Manager of the Orlando Magic basketball team who has, in his sixty-some years, managed at least two NBA teams, had one long marriage, parented nineteen children (many adopted from countries all over the world), written forty books, and helped see his wife go back to school late in life to get her PhD. Oh, and in the last few years, he's also taken up running marathons.I was happy to get the laundry under control today.But this is the magic of the motivational speaker. They're like figure skaters. They make it look sooo simple, the way they tell it. You, too, can do what I do! First, become independently wealthy. Then, do more than thirteen Harvard graduates put together. Ta dah! See? And now for my triple axel.Not to say we don't have plans for more, but it's not exactly the hot topic du jour when you're still nursing a nine-month old.Our lives are so busy, so full, and generally so happy with these kids, that I don't really blame my husband for wanting another one so soon. I don't blame him at all, especially after hearing someone so fired up about living talk about, among other things, his amazing nineteen children. I think that the reason people like him make their personal success look so easy is because they're excited. They're excited about life, and that, I believe, is how people can have nineteen kids and manage to do so much more. My husband's favorite quote (one of mine, too) is The masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation. How did Thoreau know this without the internet to help him? Because he was right then, and he's right now. I'm beginning to think that one of the major ingredients in success is excitement.So. Where does this leave me, for the last week in April? Excited about my life. Taking joy in the little things. And looking for a convenient place to stash my reproductive organs until Jack is walking.