There are days when I get so wound up in the effort of not saying anything that I start to vibrate invisibly. Those are the days when I respond to every inquiry in monosyllables and do not appear to take offence when inwardly I boil with indignation. Those are the days when I wait for the tread of my husband on the basement steps with ill-concealed elation because his arrival signals the beginning of Real Irritated Rocketbride, not Fake Appeasing Rocketbride. (I'm the Chamberlain of family discussions.) Those are the days that drag on, every minute an impossibly long string of elastic seconds. Those are the days I wonder how many times I'd have to fill up the car before I get to Edmonton.

And there are other days, good days, days when my heart sings because I live with four other adults who really get it, who totally understand that Blake is the centre of the universe and the rest of us just orbit around his glow. There are days when I need a break for something as mundane as a shower and I can get one because there's always someone home (although there's not always someone at home who wants to be awake during the day). There are days when my mother is my best friend and co-conspirator, days when my father is the sweet man who always has time to read a picture book to a beloved child, days when my brother takes time out of the taxing business of being Nic to seek out my baby.

There are a great many neutral days too.

How is it living with your family Rocketbride? say my child-free friends, visibly grateful it isn't them. It must be great having two extra pairs of hands to help with the baby, my child-enhanced friends say wistfully, thinking of the long dark teatime of the soul. (Douglas Adams never realized that he was actually describing every day in the life of the stay at home mom.)

It's fine, I respond, unable to fit the complexity of my emotions into anything shorter than a painstakingly detailed treatise. The way I feel about my parents, my home, my brother, my basement, my husband, my life at home, and parenting in a fishbowl isn't really small talk. But when you're as self-important as myself, you don't really think that anything about yourself is small talk. I suppose that we have to stop discussing the weather once in awhile.

Opera Sarah & Leo's wedding was magnificent. More on this when I'm not achey, sneezey & much in need of a long sit with steady supply of salty snacks and a big fantasy novel.

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 10/18/2004 07:15:00 p.m.