Being Alone, the Salve for All Thoras

Avram has left for school. Lydia and Elisheva are both asleep. I sit here, having read scriptures, eaten, dressed, in my (messy) living room. And I am alone.

I love people. I was a social butterfly in college. I love having people over, I loved flirting when I was single, I love to have conversations, I love feeling social.

But I also deeply, deeply love being alone. When I'm alone I listen to music. I never turn on music even when I'm only with Avram (although I can listen to it around my girls). When I'm alone I can hear myself think. When I'm alone I can actually write a blog post and keep track of the main point in it. And when I'm alone I'm ten times a better homemaker than otherwise.

I find that being a homemaker (my preferred word over stay at home mom, because that phrase conjures up images for me of sitting at home all day on my couch while wearing sweats and staring at the wall/TV. I may be wearing workout type clothes [I thought they would inspire me to feel cleany today], sitting at home staring at the computer, but it is a very different sort of thing. I promise.), I need to be alone to function.

When Avram is at home, like he has been since moving here until he started school this last Wednesday, I get nothing done. We've been here for three and a half weeks, and the two bedrooms have yet to be completely in place. Part of this may be an inherent difficulty of inventing places for items to belong (the hardest part of being clean, I find), but a lot of this is whenever Avram is home I lose my bearings as a homemaker. Part of me thinks that with two of us we'll be able to accomplish twice as much, but more often than not we're both absorbed in taking care of the girls, and nothing gets accomplished beyond feeling beat up by a two and half year old and a five month old.

We were both thoroughly ready for school to start, and I was never so happy to see Avram walk out the door the first morning. When he's gone, I don't waste time on the computer or reading (usually, unless it's a really, really good book. But I haven't read in a long time. That recommended reading list on my sidebar? It's not outdated, I just have only read one novel since finishing the Wheel of Time series, because I'm not good at multitasking while reading, so I tend to not read for long stretches of time, although it's my most favorite activity in the world). Suddenly my malaise turns to desire for productivity, and I bustle around (wow, I love my vocab this morning) doing dishes and assigning random places to put things that I'll never remember later. Hey, no one's perfect.

Avram too loves being out of the house, since he's never desired to be a stay at home dad, and his recent stretch being a scratching post for his girls has only strengthened his determination to always work outside of the home. I can't even stand him studying at home during the day, because even if he's upstairs, I know that he's home, and so my productivity dies, and I mentally think that it's time for a holiday.

So here's to being alone, and being a homemaker, and being able to write posts!