Motivation. Or the lack thereof.

Sunday-cloudy, Cullen's last soccer game was yesterday

I have a confession to make. I have done the bare minimum all week. The least amount of dishes/laundry/cooking possible, had the kids reading and working in workbooks instead of hands-on activities, and my house looks like hell.

Don't get me wrong, we still went to park day, library storytime, etc. But I know good and well that every free moment I had was spent re-reading a 12 book series and certainly was not used to wash dishes, some of which have been sitting in there all week. Gross and true. I spend my early mornings reading, my mid-mornings doing school with the kidlets, afternoons feeling queasy and reading, and evenings scraping together something for dinner, feeling like I'm going to chuck, and reading, and then staying up rather late reading because I know I won't be able to sleep anyway.

After a few days I began to wonder "Why?" Why would I suddenly be completely unmotivated, uncaring, and lethargic? Why this obsession with reading for days on end?

Last night it hit me. I'm literally escaping, carving time out of this pregnancy. 1st trimester feels so unfair. No one gets to know I'm pregnant, I feel sick all the time, I'm tired and unmotivated, so let me just cuddle here with the book, try to forget how I feel, try to forget how much time I still have until I'll be showing, until I can feel the kicks, until I get to *enjoy* what little bit of pregnancy is enjoyable.

Funny thing is: it worked. I've missed an entire week of my life, barely scraping enough highlights together to fill perhaps 10 hours. I've essentially jumped from week 7.3 to week 8.3 without even realizing it. It didn't feel like a week had passed; it felt like I read some books, took time for my kids, and read some more. I didn't notice the nausea as much because when it got really, really bad, I would distract myself with reading and a chocolate popsicle.

So it worked and I'm now at 8.3. Everything we ever learn tells us to enjoy every minute, be productive, work hard. Yet, other than feeling a bit embarrassed about the state of my kitchen, what's wrong with escaping for a time, whether it be reading, watching a complete series, fishing, playing tennis, etc. Now that I'm feeling a bit more motivated (thank you NKOTB webstream), I'm going to clean my kitchen. Once my house is back together, no one will be the wiser. In fact, this week might be more memorable than others 10 years from now, simply because I existed and the world did not fall apart. "They" say you have to work hard all the time...I'm beginning to wonder if that's really true.

Then again, I might just be lazy and irresponsible and a slob. For an entire week out of 31 years? I'm okay with that.