Completely Totally Awesomely Random

I'm back home after our summer of travel (amazing and enriching, although four weeks away from my vegetable garden and my own bed and a routine felt a tad too long. Not to mention that for Sweetpea the summer has been one continuous party with a daily dose of ice cream.)

have rescued the house from a week of English hubby bachelorhood prior to him joining us in Canada (paper towel and toilet paper rolls on backwards, serving spoons and other kitchen items in strange places),

have done at least a bazillion loads of laundry (okay, maybe four),

retrieved the guinea pig from her summer hotel (thanks, ceebits!),

am trying to get Sweetpea on some sort of schedule in preparation for kindergarten starting next week (she is waking up to her own alarm clock tomorrow before we do some "school work")

still haven't downloaded the Canada photos from my camera (to my sister: they're coming! they're coming!)

am trying to get motivated to PURGE this house room by room (the clutter must GO)

and finally,

am feeling slightly overwhelmed at the lifestyle change that is upon me. Although being a SAHM wasn't my first choice (which is why I started my own part-time business so I wouldn't go completely and totally bonkers), I eventually embraced it (kicking and screaming) and now am feeling complete separation anxiety at the thought of Sweetpea being in school every day. This is a completely foreign feeling. I've always waiting with bated breath for what she would say or do next, encouraged her independence, and thoroughly enjoyed my time away from her when she was in preschool.

It also brings up slightly anxious feelings of what's next for me? Petunia Face wrote recently about the Langston Hughes poem A Dream Deferred, and although I don't feel I've missed out on anything by choosing to defer my career for stay-at-home motherhood, Sweetpea's impending school years have made me realize that I'll have to start thinking about not only her development, but my own. I'm never comfortable when the focus is on me.

In the meantime, I still have a week of being alternately captivated and psychotically impatient at being with Sweetpea twenty-four seven and enjoying conversations like this one in the car today.

Mumma, I LOVE bay leaves (picked while climbing the bay tree when I was wanting her to get her shoes on and get in the friggin' car already). They smell SO good (eyes flutter in ecstasy) and do you know they help melt the boogies in my nose.

Note: On re-reading I feel I need to apologize for the complete over-use of the word complete in this post. My only excuse is that I'm tired and slightly jetlagged and don't have the brainpower to think up alternatives.