Not[with]standing

The afternoon had started so full of promise. I had already wrapped things up at work, gone for a [reluctant] run, and picked up my favorite two offspring from school. Homemade pizza was on the agenda as was writing an insightful blog post about mothering… but first, story time. The backyard was decked out in a golden-green sunswath, newly-clustered cherries gleaming like crown jewels, so we scooped up an armful of books and the picnic blanket to go revel in the finery. I laid the blanket out on a mattress of daisies, we plumped ourselves stomach-down to read, and BAM—my old arch-nemesis the allergy swooped in for the kill.

Within twenty seconds, I was ready to take a pick axe to my inner ears, a power sander to my eyeballs, and a double-edged Microplane zester to my nose. Shortly thereafter, my brain’s functionality began shutting down as it tends to do in these situations, and by the time we finished meeting the infamous Nellie Oleson,  I was only two sneezes removed from a zombie.

The blog entry was clearly not going to happen. I moped a bit about the turn of events while sifting through the brain fog  for any usable scrap of intelligence, but I finally had to give up. How can a gal compete against airborne forces of darkness that simultaneously wipe out her energy and her motivation to make coffee? She simply can’t. So after a mere hour of brooding through prickly eyes at a blank page, I shut off my computer.

Instead of writing, I played Wii with Natalie and enlisted her help in the most giggle-intensive freezer defrosting ever. I snuggled Sophie and let her use her magic touch on the pizza dough. (Hint: Sophie’s magic touch involves a lot of pummeling.) We tried on hats and thoroughly ignored the house’s pleas to clean it, and the afternoon of not-so-very-productive fun with my girls ended up far better than the one I had neatly mapped out in my head, allergies notwithstanding… even if I didn’t manage to get an insightful post about motherhood out of it.