Reality Check

With everything that has been going on in my world lately I have to say I've had trouble keeping all the balls in the air so to speak. Do you ever have those times when life has been busy and you feel like maybe you're neglecting your kids, pets, spouse, or friends? Thankfully these things usually pass for most of us. Everyone moves on, life returns to normal, and you feel like you aren't neglecting the ones you love. Or at least you aren't neglecting them quite as much as before. It's a start.

This weekend my kids were away visiting their dad. My ex-husband and I have been split up for over 7 years now so I've had lots of these weekends off. I tend to use them to catch up on sleep, do house work, grocery shopping, sleep, laundry, errands, and did I mention sleep? Well this weekend I was just finishing off some laundry and was putting it away in the kids rooms when I found some handwritten signs they had made. At first I didn't think too much about them. The kids both enjoy writing notes on small pieces of paper and I often find them in every room of the house...yes even the bathroom. Their bedrooms have had lots of papers floating around in them lately too. You see over the last few weeks both my children opened up libraries in their bedrooms. This basically consisted of looting all the books from the bookshelf outside their rooms and cramming them into empty drawers. Voila!! Insta-library. Of course with only two children in my home and both of them running personal libraries you can imagine how much foot traffic they might have gotten. The answer if you couldn't guess is very little.  They kept each other busy for an extra day or two by holding book exchanges but eventually they realized nobody was coming. I bet some of you are thinking "Gee Colleen, why didn't you go to their libraries". Well the answer is that I did. Several times. However most of the time these libraries ran at unusual hours like when I was in the middle of making dinner or at bed time. They also would just randomly shut down for the night and so it was hard to get there before the closed sign was up. Apparently these facilities also had difficulty maintaining staffing levels as you will see in the photo below. No wonder they had to close early.

I suggested that maybe some of the stuffed animals in our house might like to curl up with a good book but was told that animals can't read. Apparently the fact that they also are just toys and aren't actually real didn't factor in to the logic. It's pretend play children. Run with it. Sigh. Story time at the two libraries often ran at the same time making it hard to find enough stuffed animals that could attend. Sometimes the librarians got hurt feelings when their own stuffed animals would chose the other library's story time over theirs. Who knew what a cut throat business book lending could be. It was kind of a sad situation. All in all the libraries kind of lost momentum after a few days. Eventually one of the libraries converted to a restaurant. Considering that bookshelves were raided for the library I keep expecting to find food stashed somewhere in Camryn's room. By "find" I really mean "smell" the week old food. Oh. please don't be a milk or meat product. Cross your fingers for me.

So fast forward to this weekend when I'm putting away some laundry in the kids rooms. I walk into Camryn's with an arm load of clothing and start tucking it into drawers. While doing this I discovered a note that she had written. I'm not really one to snoop but it instructs the reader to "flip me open" in the bottom corner. How could I resist?

Outside of the note

So I flip it open to find what can best be described as a manifesto. Apparently Camryn was upset this week and I was just too busy to even realize that she had sat in her room for what must have been an hour concocting this plan and writing her farewell letter.

For those of you that don't read in this rare dialect called "Phonetics" I will translate:

Dear Mom and family, (I assume that would be Andrew and I)

I think you are wondering why my restaurant is closed forever. Are you? I love you and wish me happy trails.

Love,
Your daughter
xoxo

Write to you as soon as possible and thank you for all you did possible.  (I think this was meant to read "for all you made possible" but not sure)

P.S. Tell Andrew he was the best brother I could ever have. Love you Bro.

Then she drew a picture to go with it which was equally heart breaking. It appears to be a rendering of the moment Drew and I find the note only to realize that she is far along on her journey with her little stick and spotted bag full of necessities.

Now tell me that doesn't break your heart. In all the craziness of the last few weeks worrying about Andrew and all the medical stuff happening with him I hadn't even noticed that my Camryn was hurting and feeling this sad. In many ways our world has been crashing down around us but it hit me when I found this note that if the only thing I actually accomplish in a day is to let the kids know they were noticed then it'll all be okay. Don't think I missed the symbolism that I found this note when Camryn indeed was not at home with me. I did shed a tear as I stood and read it just like in the picture.

So we are making a few changes in our house. I'm going to try to dedicate a little bit of extra time to get to various libraries or restaurants that pop up in our neighborhood. I've also posted the note below. After all why should the kids be the only ones who can leave notes around the house?