in place of a witty title...

i'm feeling a bit out of steam. perhaps that's because it's been a long week again, already. i'm ready for the weekend and it's only midweek. well, past midweek, at this point, being wednesday night and all.

still struggling with a sinus infection, still trying to sleep for more than 6 hours a night. still tired during the day and still worshipping at the altar of Coffeemate Fat Free Hazelnut Creamer. it honestly is why i get up some mornings.

okay, not the whole reason. but part of it.

i'm just feeling...mired again. when i was a kid i remember my mom gave us some old containers to play with--peanut butter tubs, these metal Schwans ice cream tins, and the gallon size plastic ice cream containers. i remember trotting around the basement, one foot in an empty Blue Moon flavor and one in Fudge Ripple.

which is where i feel i'm at, right now. skidding about on the carpeting in the basement, 8 years old and unaware of the world at large.

my friend rene was down on monday; i met her and her daughter at the moa and we romped around until we were tired and kendall was still trucking. back to my house, where henry was horrified to realize that there was indeed someone on the planet with more energy than him. he spent most of the night slinking around, trying to avoid being scooped up by tiny arms and a roar of blonde energy.

i suppose that's what it's like, to be seven.

i often wish i could go back to being a kid; i think that's the trope i loop through, every once in a while. the mobius strip of memory and future, rolling around and around. i would only want to be a kid in the summer, at home, with my mom and siblings--i was quite bullied as a kid, and hated school for the most part.

that is when i liked being a kid--roaming around the park, building forts underneath giant pines, climbing up the crab apple trees, gathering acorns and trying to put robin eggs back in their nest.

those are the glossy pages of my memory. i'm sure if i went back and relived those days now it would seem tedious, and i'd refresh the memory of longing for adulthood.

i've been thinking alot about kids lately. perhaps it's the ol' biological ticker. but thinking about kids makes me remember being a kid. perhaps that's from where my lagging attitude springs--i'm in a holding pattern, reliving and letting go.

i'm not going to get to go back, not going to be that young again.

when we met in the mall, kendall threw herself--literally threw her little body--into my arms. i caught her and hugged her close, remembering that i met her while she was in utero. i remembered that childhood indestructibility--the knowledge that if you tossed yourself at someone, they would catch you.

when does that flee? that sensation of just living life to live, with no thought of tomorrow. is it when you get your first invoice for electric heat? is it when you realize that a lot of the time, no one is there to catch you? is there a day, or an hour, a second when i could pinpoint my innocence falling to earth?

or is it a slow loss, this gradual slope to middle age, when you realize that there is no going back, when that finally sinks in. i'm sure i've considered that before--my own mortality--but something about friends having babies and children growing like crabgrass has a few cells in the noggin fixated on where i'm at, and what i'm doing.

i am the hamster on the wheel, running. the wheel squeaks and i continue. the wheel groans and i dash onward. where am i going? when will i arrive? am i running for a reason, or just running to fill my time?

i'm not feeling particularly depressed right now. just out of sorts, not quite in place. i've come un-moored. i think the reality for me is in remembering that childhood--where it is fine and dandy to drift about from time to time, to lose yourself and toss your self to the winds, regardless of if there is someone there to catch you.