The F Word...

You may be wondering where I am going with this. Depending on how well you know me what comes out of my mouth may or may not surprise you. Today I will be keeping things PG and focusing on a foreign to me "F" word...FUN.

I have been known to have some fun in my days. Each stage of my life has come with various levels of fun; high school hijinxs, college clowning, tomfoolery 20s, .... 30's and adulting?? My alliterations need some work. Point is, I have had my share of fun. Some of which will never be shared and I thank my lucky stars I am slightly too old for long lasting social media memories and smart phones. I still miss my hot pink razr or perhaps I miss not getting email on my phone. That's a post for another day...

This weekend I had some FUN. Enough fun that I decided last minute to takes two days off work this week. Completely off. No emails, no phone calls, OFF. These words will likely come back to bite me however as my initial blog post shared, I am a work in progress. There was no hijinxs, clowning, or tomfoolery. I got a haircut, our AC went out, I burned the hell out of dinner Saturday night, got a pedicure care of the sweetest five year old, and likely said my children's name 7,983 times give or take ( they ignored me 7,982 times). There is nothing wowing about my weekend - in fact slightly boring. Except for when I set off the smoke detectors. My husband was not impressed. However, I did bake a pie from scratch today and I didn't burn it. So I at least ended strong.

What made this weekend fun was that it was a normal weekend. A normal sounding list of most families pre COVID. Yes, all of my outings were mask wearing, social distancing, precaution taking adventures. However, I was able to do all the things. I have never really been a fan of crowds so I am completely in favor of 6ft of space in public.

Normal has not been the norm in my house for a while, 18 months to be exact. We have all gone through some things. Lots of things. This weekend though, while there were some things, we rolled with it. Which is something normal, we haven't been able to do.

Normal is something we take for granted. Like breathing. We wake up and assume our day will flow as the day prior, so on and so forth. Whether you are using normal as an adjective or a noun - usual, average, typical - is what you are going for. Usual, average, typical; three words which alone are quite prosaic. Put them together and all us anxiety/depression ridden folks are suddenly Don Lockwood. Am I naive enough to think that everything will now be sunshine and unicorns, no. However, I am trying to take these few days of normal and embrace them. Try and refill my cup. Renew my spirit so that the lows are not so low. Perhaps this is all conjecture. Only time will tell.

Tomorrow I am taking the kids "creeking..." definitely not an activity us city folk grew up doing. The Jones Falls was not made for bare feet.... However, this adventure will likely become part of my littles normal. And that will add to my cup.