A Weekend

Last weekend I got a mommy timeout. I spent two nights alone at a hotel. A nice hotel, very hip, very modern, very quiet. Or at least quiet inside the room, downtown Chicago is never all that quiet. But there was no "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" for 48 hours. I read (a lot), slept (a lot) went to the Art Institute, did some walking, and had an aromatherapy wrap. Generally I didn't do much. I came home and felt more relaxed with my kids than I had in a while. I think timeouts should be prescribed for moms as liberally as they are for kids who are overstimulated, overworked and overtired. Ours just need to be a little longer, and maybe a little further away.

Why do we need more than a 1 hour massage to chill out? Well because we know that after that 1 hour away, we are headed right back to whatever it was that crazed us in the first place. You can't really relax all the way through in an hour. It wasn't until Sunday morning that I really lost track of time, and stopped thinking about what I should be doing or what came next. It's like putting meat in the oven, it gets cooked on the outside long before it's cooked all the way through. It takes a while. And every once in a while, we deserve it. So plan yourself a mommy timeout.