When my children were little I would wake up any time of the night if I heard even a sniffle. Amazing how nature takes care of stuff like that. Now that my boys are in college, I wouldn’t wake up if a train zipped through my bedroom (knock on wood). We have a few moms here at Stuckey and Company who have wee ones at home. When Rachel, Teresa, Maggie or Holly come in to work with dark circles under the eyes, we know it’s been a rough night with the little ones. This morning most of us sported dark circles because of the massive storm in the middle of the night. The thunder and lightening were really impressive, not just your typical rumble and spark show. I imagined a circus of sorts going on in the heavens where some angelic being illuminates the sky by flipping a switch off and on super fast. Then the massive lion roars like thunder and the lion tamer cracks the whip. Then there’s the cannonball that fires an obnoxious “BOOM” but spits out confetti rain all over the audience of frightened children (and some adults) lying in their warm beds. I remember when my kids would wake up afraid of a storm and I’d tell them to pretend like the angels are bowling or imagine the clouds crashing into each other like bumper cars. This worked great for the occasional innocuous storm. But according to some moms around here, last night’s “circus” caused a few crowded beds full of children and parents…strange though, the youngest babies slept through it. Oh, I remember the kicks in the ribs and back as my boys would somehow turn like the hands of clock while snoozing through the tail end of a rainy night. Many a stormy night I’d wake up to the cutest little toes in my face. Ah, the good old days of sore backs, dark circles and smelly feet. I tell the new moms to hang in there. One day, they’ll sleep again so soundly that a circus won’t even wake them up. Unfortunately, if the cannonball hits close to home and there’s a power outage, neither will the alarm clock, which was why I was late to work today.

I vacationed outside the country for the first time last week. Cancun was gorgeous and relaxing and the people were so nice…although they confiscated my favorite pair of tweezers at the airport. I guess personal grooming is not allowed on planes in Mexico - not that I was going to partake in such rudimentary preening practices in public, but I would have liked to have had the option. Seriously, what do they think I’m going to do, pick apart the plane one thread at a time? Though it was a long enough flight to do just that. During my week long furlough in Utopia, my only objective was to slip in and out of a sedentary coma and contemplate the oneness of the universe…without getting sunburned. I learned something about myself that I never knew before. I love the ocean (I already knew that part) but the feeling isn’t mutual (I didn’t know that part). Vibrant shades of turquoise waves crashed rhythmically onto the shore creating a white foam that pulled the powdery sand back to its origin while the darker royal blue shades, a bit farther out, seemed to draw a distinct line between where Mother Nature says it’s permissible to venture and where she just might scold intruders. This clear “fence” seemed to invite the more adventurous souls, unlike myself. But I had no trouble marching out into the inviting waters of the “okay to enter zone”. But let me just say, once the bottom is gone, it’s gone, baby, gone! Although I knew that if I just floated, I would ride on top of the waves, yet I panicked and allowed every single one to slam over the top of my head. The more I tried to swim back to shore, the more she pulled me in towards the dark side and fed me more salt than I’d had all week on the rim of my margarita glass. My life didn’t flash before my eyes or anything, but I did wonder for a moment if I let my life insurance policy lapse and made a mental note to look into travel insurance. When I finally got back to shore (with assistance) I looked out and saw that I hadn’t really gone out that far at all, certainly well within the “fence”; and so later in the day, lost in deep thought whilst sipping a salt-free cocktail in an attempt to drown out my humiliation, it dawned on me that sometimes we tend to kick and fight the waves of our lives (sounds like a soap opera) when it’s best just to relax, float and think things through, which is exactly what I did the rest of the week (in the wading pool).