PUMPED! BACK TO SCHOOL

- Shari Sonta, Contributing Writer

I just ate my third SunButter and Apple Butter sandwich within a week’s time period.  These yummy sandwiches are kind to the youth but tough on a mid-thirties’ waistline.  My somewhat bloated belly may look like a sign that I’ve been having fun partying, downing martinis and noshing on beautifully buttery appetizers, but it’s really a case that I have been too busy existing as a full time working parent to prepare myself a proper meal.  This is a sandwich that I can easily share with my 15-month old daughter, Audrey, and she shows her appreciation by opening the two sides of the bread and coloring the floor with the inside contents (when I turn my head for like, a second, of course).  Given our daughter has two parents in the natural foods business who are always talking about food at the dinner table, we justify her design as her artistic interpretation of life as she sees it.

New Year’s Day needs to be moved to September first.  The reason is that we make resolutions in September that we actually  keep as opposed to the little lies we tell ourselves in January.  When school starts and traffic kicks up, we re-develop a schedule or routine we adhere to.  Aside from the word “vacation” with the horizontal line drawn across the page, day planner is wide open in August and it’s up to us to fill it from September to June.  Some of us fill it up a little too well, scheduled with executing homework assignments and back to back afterschool activities.  Relaxed from summers’ lighter schedules, we are full of spit and fire to execute our agendas.  This velocity will last until the day after Halloween, when we are worn from peeling sugar-high kids off the walls and from trying to accommodate our children’s impossible character requests (or in my case, trying to make my 15 month old into the cutest fairy that ever, ever existed).  By the time January rolls around, we are way too tired to make any little affirmations or promises that we will actually keep.  During the cold early-winter we are looking at the calendars and starting to count the days when school lets out, afterschool activies relax, traffic chokes down, daylight extends, and we can stop micromanaging time.

I am one of those mind-body-spirit types although I pretend I’m not.  However, if I fall out of my tripod, I am a mess.  Usually my messy state is some combination of constant exhaustion, back pain, guilt from being away from my family so often, and a general suspicion that I am turning into my mother.  Luckily, creative types invented some sort of a product or service that claims to dissipate my symptoms, but nothing works.  Whoever came up with the saying “There are only two things in life that we have to do: Pay taxes and die” obviously never had children to feed, clothe, house, pay for their care while you are out making the money to pay the taxes, and love.  Usually there isn’t much in my overactive mind that some regularly scheduled exercise, yoga, or a few minutes of meditation can’t help.  The problem is that although I have no problem getting Audrey to her playdates or activies, or I don’t think twice about staying late at work to finish a project, I will cut out a morning run if I’m tired, or procrastinate a few minutes of quiet meditation indefinitely because, well, I have no real excuse.

Luckily, Audrey has learned to do the Downward Dog yoga pose.  Every night after dinner, we do a series together in the living room. While Audrey’s agenda is to have her blood rush to her head and get dizzy, I have a few moments to take some deep “cleansing” breaths.  This is multi-tasking at its best.