Solo

Washing dishes tonight, I looked out my window and quickly realised that the beach was actually where I wanted to be. So I grabbed a beer and ran out the door, hoping I could make it to the beach in time to watch the sun set.

I did.

My house is empty tonight. Really empty. Just me, empty. My level of happiness with the solitude lasted long enough for me to enjoy my steak and potatoes dinner over the first half of an "okay" movie. Then I realised that I was alone and the house was quiet and there was no one to talk to.... and that's all just a bit boring for a girl who has lived with 4-8 people at every moment for the past six years. 

Toff is in the States right now on a 2 1/2 week boys trip. He's gone snowboarding and beer tasting and he has caught up with some of our very fantastic friends in America. I'm glad he got to go - I'm glad that he is the type of person who jumps at every opportunity he has to make his life a happy one, because his drive for happiness (not success, and not money) makes the fact that all I want from life is to be happy way easier to achieve. And sometimes happiness means that one of us needs to go away. We both agree it would be better to go together, but with three kids, right now this is just how we make it work.

So tonight, with Toff away and our Au Pair up in the city for his night off, and all three kids at Jen's house for the night - along with our "fourth kid" Alyssa who goes along too as Super Nanny to help because three kids under the age of 5 is a big task for one person to handle by themselves - I am alone. So I walk down to the beach with a rug and a beer and I catch just the last glimpses of a pink and gold sunset. There is one dolphin gliding through the smooth surface of the ocean every couple of minutes, and a family of tourists standing next to me taking photos and speaking not english. And I take my rug and walk down the beach, and as everyone else is packing up and leaving for the night because the best of the light show is over, I lie down and wiggle my fingers and toes and enjoy the specific softness of the cool end-of-day sand. 

I  enjoy my beer and the air around me and think of all the craziness of the past five years of baby plus baby plus baby plus bakery plus bakery plus bakery plus bakery plus bakery. It's been such a wild ride. And I think of everything I have to be grateful for in my life. Oh my gawsh is there a lot. I think of all the good people in my life and how beautiful a place it is I live in. And I start to think of some ideas for how to make this next year easier than the last - because for almost a year now I feel that Toff and I have been in "survival mode" where yeah, we're coping okay, but we need more from this life than to just cope with it. So I create a few ideas of how to change that in my head, and I breathe in the deep, salty sea air and watch how the water stays this liquid gold after the sun is already out of sight and I walk to the water's edge and enjoy the feeling of the cold water as it washes slowly to my toes and away again.

And then, casually scratching at a tiny itch on my tummy, a raisin falls out of my shirt.