Three.

Dr. Seuss has it down.


I watched The Grinch tonight (not the vintage version, the new one with Jim Carrey and a frenetic Molly Shannon), and I realized the idea of "keeping up with the Joneses" is a universal theme. Poor Mrs. Lou Who lived next door to a fabulous (lonely, secretly-in-love-with-the-Grinch) woman who had a shiny machine that shot out Christmas lights onto her home in perfect order. In an effort to keep up, Mrs. Lou Who tried to string up everything from chandeliers to stolen street lights on her roof.


I'm always in admiration of my friends' beautiful homes. The perfectly chosen furniture, color schemes, choices of art, scent of candles, lack of dog hair on everything...you get the picture. There's nothing out of place, not a backpack or stray shoe in sight, and everything in their world seems just right. Sometimes I end up going back home to our little 1930s cottage thinking, huh. Yep, there's the friendship bracelet maker with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book balanced on it, which lies under the unpainted wooden wreath, next to the frosted gingerbread house, close to the heating vent, which valiantly tries to push warm air out, only to be trumped by the cold air sneaking in due to the lack of sealant on the doors and windows.


Granted, if I had friends coming over, that whole pile (save for the gingerbread house, because how charming is that this time of year?!) would be shoved into whichever closet would hold it behind a closed door. And those friends might leave my house thinking, man, that girl has it all. Clean house, nice kids, beautiful husband.


So I get that sometimes it's about what we put out there. Sometimes our story is frumptastic because that's all we can muster, and sometimes, to quote another Dr. Seuss movie, it's a perfectly painted picture: "In my world, everyone's a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!" (Horton Hears A Who - seriously, one of the funniest scenes ever.)


But other times, comparisons can be restorative. Not as a matter of jockeying for position, more a matter of jonesing for some kind of peace and perspective.


Yesterday, I visited a nursing home in my town. From the moment I walked in - from a side door, where nobody questioned who I was or what I was doing there - I felt sad. (Disclaimer: I cry over movies, babies, old people, commercials, and almost anytime I see someone else crying, whether they're faking it or not.) The bedrooms were small, and shared, and the common room was packed with the sweet old folks who lived there. Not in a festive, comfortable way, more in the realm of, here, let me move this sleeping fellow in his chair over so the ornery lady who doesn't understand what's happening can scoot by with her walker.


All at once yesterday, in that nursing home, I felt thankful for my parent's situation. Until then, I hated the idea of my Mom rehabbing her hip in a nursing home, with my Dad alone at home. Now, I'm so much more grateful for the quality of care she is receiving, and the fact that they both have friends who visit to keep them company and bring them what they might need. I am happy she has her own room, with a big window, and kind staff to help her do the things she isn't able to do by herself right now. It's hard for me to see her relinquish her pride and privacy. It's difficult to swallow the fact that she and my Dad will eat Christmas dinner there, and then have to tuck into bed separately.


For most people, including my folks, it's the small rituals we rely on that fill our days and nights with normalcy. In the case of my parents, it's the coffee tin they've had since I was a kid that my Dad pulls out every night so he can set the coffee maker to brew automatically before they wake. The little water dish he puts out on my Mom's bedside table, so their cat can hydrate at will (I'm not saying she isn't spoiled...and I realize this may be an admission of how spoiled I myself was as a kid). The fact that I saw when I visited them last week that my Dad - even though my Mom isn't staying at home - habitually made their bed with my Mom's side turned down, the way he does when she's home, so it's easier for her to climb in for a nap or a good night's sleep.


You may guess where I'm going with this. Yes, yesterday I saw another silver lining. It made my eyes water then, and now. And it made me realize that nobody eats rainbows or poops butterflies. Everyone has a junk drawer that gift cards and screwdrivers and brownie vest patches get lost in. And we all know that as bad as we think we have it, on some level, it's okay for now.


Seven days until Christmas. Not a lick of shopping done on my end.


You're welcome. :)

Two.

Today I was talking with a friend - and before you imagine us sitting near a fire in a tidy home with a hot tea Chardonnay in hand and awesome leather boots on our pedicured feet, take note that I was on the street, getting tangled up and manhandled by the 95-pound puppy when said friend happened to drive by.


My delayed point is that we were chatting about how busy our week seemed to be and I said, with full conviction, "I mean, it's already WEDNESDAY!". She gave me a blank look with a half smile and said, uh, it's Thursday. I looked down for several seconds as if the real answer to why I'm crazy was written on the side of her car.


This happens to me a lot. Not just the day of the week thing, but other things too. I consistently feel like I'm on a raft, swirling around inside my own head, with all my jobs and tasks and things I'm forgetting to do rushing at me trying to capsize my day.


Even when I try to compartmentalize things, which I'm pretty good at, the compartments tend to open up and spill over and everything slips into each other's way.


For example, I have a day job, and I work from home a lot. But I'm still a Mom, with a husband who travels so much in the month of December that I pretend he's not coming home even when he's supposed to. Which means that when I get home from dropping the girls at school, I have a puppy who wants to play (read: eat poop outside, and don't act shocked, I've probably heard your kids talk in my back seat about how your dog does it too). Laundry that isn't going to wash itself. Errands to run. Dear friends I'd love to catch up with. Breakfast dishes to do, lunch to consider and a dinner plan to make. 


So as the minutes turn into hours, I try to slip other things into quiet work moments. Take a break in the action to check personal email, or look up that recipe I was meaning to try. Text a friend or my husband. Add to my "to-do" list. Some people might call this multi-tasking, and on some level I agree. But when it happens more often than it should, you end up being the equivalent of a quarter of the way through 7 books at once, and mixing all the characters and story lines up.


I'm working from home today, in full view of The Jesus House. This is a little barn with a loft that my parents used to pull out every Christmas for my brother and I to fight over play with. Granted, in my childhood home, Christmas=gifts and Easter=chocolate, so The Jesus House was a treasure, but we didn't fully understand the meaning behind it. Now my daughters love to play with it too. In fact, a couple of years ago, as they set it up, I learned that Ariel, The Little Mermaid, was present at the birth of Christ. I told you they are smarter than I am.


Moving on.


Each character was always wrapped in tissue and my brother and I would take turns choosing; whichever ones we got, we got to set up. We tried to feel around for the baby, or his bed, because it was cooler to set up baby Jesus than it was yet another sheep. And we always tried to get "Gloria" - the angel holding the banner that says "Gloria" on it, who hangs on the tiny nail at the roof's peak. What? It says her name RIGHT THERE.


My second delayed point is this: look at sweet Mary. If any of us find stress in our day, let's ponder hers for a minute. The woman gave birth in someone else's barn, after walking around for hours on end begging for help. I called for the epidural guy for a while from the comfort of a clean hospital bed and thought I had it rough until he showed up and turned dark into light.


Back to Mary. There she kneels, by the baby's little bed of hay, hands gracefully crossed at her chest, head tilted to the side, peace written across her face. I'm pretty sure she had more to deal with back then than I do today, and yet, I can't remember what day of the week it actually is.


I don't know the trick you use to keep it together, even when it's all obviously slipping through your fingers. The best I can do some days is stop. Take a deep breath. And while I feel the rise and fall of my ribcage, and my shoulders releasing my ears and settling down my back again where they belong, I remember that this breath is a gift. And my chaos is a gift, as is this day, and these thoughts, and my able body, and the friends I don't have time to talk to, and the husband who is gone, and the daughters who fight with me every morning about the same things. 


And there it is. A tiny sliver of silver lining. I told you it was in there. And it was hiding under an Ugg boot. Not anymore, however, because the puppy has now eaten it in it's entirety. 


It's going to be a great night.