Help! I’m still battling this stupid cold. I thought I was better, but I’m not. I’m still weak and congested and gross. Feeling like a walking germ ball doesn’t leave a lot of room for goodness, but it’s there. It’s there because being sick allows me to rest and alter our crazy schedule just a little bit. Regardless, I’ve still got a case of the “Mean Reds” as Holly Golightly (from Breakfast at Tiffany’s) would say.
My condition is the result of a combination of factors. One, the weather. It’s either raining all the time (and I mean all the time) or it’s so cold that my skin resembles a reptile’s. Two, my cold. For almost a month, I’ve been feeling “fiddly.” This is a word my friend made up years ago to describe the feeling when your body is just not right. When I put it like that, it might be more than a month. Three, the recent invasion of Murphy’s Law in our household — being double charged for a newspaper I never received, being overcharged for a flu test that revealed that I did not have the flu but was instead “fiddly” and a mysterious leak in my precious Honda Odyssey (say what you want about minivans, but I love mine) that floods the floor with water. Who gets a water leak on the floorboard of their car? It’s not beach property. Enough.
To combat the “feeling sorry for yourself” blues that are just as big a part of my colds as a hoarse voice, I decided to practice a little “self care” last night. Before you roll your eyes, I get it. Self care is a super overused, self-indulgent, extremely millennial term that people who already live better than most of the people on this planet use. However, there was a reason this term was invented, and it’s the same reason it’s been so well received. We’re killing ourselves, people.
Between work, advanced parenting, fitness and everyday life stuff (think errands, groceries, coffee runs, Sign Up Genius), we’re doing ourselves in. Not a week goes by that I don’t think about what my mom and her fellow moms were like in the ‘70s. My mom was more hands on than most, and she still managed to sneak away for hours to read Danielle Steele novels while sipping on a tall glass of Crystal Light (lemonade was by far the best flavor).
This is not a parenting blog because we all know that there are plenty of those. It’s a blog about goodness, and as a parent, a lot of the goodness in my life comes from my children and what they bring out in me. Taking care of my kids is my favorite thing to do, and it’s also the hardest thing I do, which is why I’ve spent the last nine years being exhausted.
Back to self care. I take a hot bath most nights just to spool down from the day. A few months ago I started using this awesome bubble bath that has a eucalyptus scent. It reminds me of when John and I ventured to Muir Woods in California on vacation pre-Tater Tots. Eucalyptus trees made a tunnel over the curvy road, as their scent trickled down into the car . This is not a bad memory to have after a hectic day.
Anyway, I took my bath up a notch by lighting three candles that had been sitting by our bathtub for months wondering what their purpose was. I didn’t turn the lights off because that seemed like too much, and I didn’t want to freak the cats out. (The last thing needed in this scenario was a cat catching on fire.) Instead, I relaxed. It’s a simple word, but it is incredibly hard to achieve, but I came close, and that’s good enough for me.
Drawing a bath and lighting candles are tiny things, but they did wonders for me, and you can bet, I’m going to do it again.