I was reading a guest column in the New York Times blog Motherlode today about the ways in which we spend our time as mothers. It included a claim that "the average mom who is not in the workforce and whose youngest kid is under age six, spends less than six hours per week playing or doing hobbies with her kids, and just over two hours reading or doing educational activities," which led one reader to wonder what stay-at-home moms are doing with the rest of their hours each day. A thousand other stay-at-home moms jumped all over the answer (housework!) before I could, but it did get me thinking about what I do with my day. My friend Mama at The Elmo Wallpaper has had some fun by the numbers posts about her beach vacation, so I am stealing her idea for my own day...

Time at which I crawled into bed last night: 11 p.m.

Number of times my son woke me up in the middle of the night to ask an urgent Mario Brothers related question: 3

Number of times daughter woke me to tell me her throat hurt and it was too cold in her room and she needed to sleep in my bed: 1

Maximum number of consecutive hours of sleep I got: 2, maybe.

Time at which Austen woke me, informing me it was daytime and time to play: 6:34 a.m.

Number of hours of sleep Austen got: seemingly zero.

Number of minutes Austen spent in meltdown, wailing in the hall over the trials of having such a mean mama, because I wouldn't carry all 65 pounds of him from my bedroom to the living room: 21.

Number of times this woke Janie up: 0.

Number of seconds spent getting my fine self together and presentable for the world: 30 (and it looks like it).

Number of minutes spent getting Austen dressed and fed and on the bus to summer school: 40.

Number of minutes spent doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen before Janie got up: 20.

Number of hours spent making Janie breakfast, making me breakfast, cleaning up, helping Janie with her clothes, running errands with her, making lunch, eating lunch, cleaning up: 5.

Number of minutes spent playing with Janie so far today during which we were not eating or cleaning or running errands: 0.

Number of hours spent getting Austen from the bus, cooking his lunch, helping him eat and use the bathroom: 1.

Number of minutes spent playing with Austen today during which we were not simultaneously eating: 0.

Number of hours spent doing dishes, cleaning up after our pets, putting away laundry, sweeping and vacuuming the floors while Austen and Janie played together: 1.

Number of times that (between kids and pets) I picked the same blanket up off the floor, folded it and put it away or supervised while the offending party did: 5

Number of minutes I spent considering where else to move the blanket so it wouldn't end up on the floor so often: 2.

Number of seconds before I decided that wouldn't work because the blanket would be next to my father-in-law's ashes and that would be too creepy: 1.

Number of minutes it would probably take me to clear out another space for the blanket that's not near my late father-in-law: 20.

Number of minutes that space would remain clear when blanket was in use before being filled by my husband with something other than the blanket: less than one.

Number of years I have resigned myself to picking up or supervising the pickup of said blanket: 10.

Number of minutes you would guess I spent cleaning based on the state of my house: approximately 10.

Number of Bakugan currently missing: 1.

Numbers of requests that I search the house top to bottom looking for it: 3.

Number of places I suggested the kids clean up to find it: 3.

Number of places actually cleaned by the kids: 0.

Number of friends who arrived to distract them from the Bakugan search operation: 2.

Number of Bakugan still missing: 1.

Number of kids who now care: 0.

Number of minutes I spent writing this blog post in my head while vacuuming: 2.

Time spent writing this blog post while the kids continue to play together: priceless.

I was one of only five people on the planet who didn't own a copy of Thriller, largely because I like to be contrary; it allows me to feel superior and rebel against alcoholic absolutism by being absolute in a different direction. But because I grew up in the 80's, I couldn't escape knowing every song on the album whether I owned it or not. (And then secretly singing them to myself when there was no one around to see me being anything less than contemptuous of their choices.)

When Michael Jackson's skin whitened and his nose became skeletal, when he was accused of child molestation and and sued for debt, when there were reports that he bought the Elephant Man's bones, when he nicknamed his son Blanket and built an amusement park in his back yard, when the tabloids dubbed him Wacko Jacko, I liked to tell people "I told you so. I always thought there was something wrong with him." As if that were really the reason I pretended to disdain him when he was at the height of his popularity and continued to mock him as his untreated mental illness* played out on a global stage.

But my relationship with Michael Jackson (as with so many people in and out of my life) has changed as my relationship to myself in recovery has changed. Instead of seeing him as someone to mock in order to feel clever and healthy, I started to see a someone who was aching enough inside to have visibly mutilated (or paid his plastic surgeons to mutilate) his body. I saw a talented man who lived imprisoned in his own deep pain, a man who self medicated through fantasy in many of the same ways I had myself. As I came to better understand my own love of Peter Pan and the fantasy of Disney and my own desire to escape into some fantasy childhood, I suspected I better understood his too. And I used to, in my own way, pray for him. I thought about how hard it must be for someone so insulated from the world by money and fame to finally reach a point low enough to break through denial and bring desperation for change, and I would hope that he would finally lose enough to get help.

When I learned of Michael Jackson's death, I felt the same sadness I felt at the death of my father-in-law: the grief that he died without ever finding relief, redemption or recovery (in its broadest sense) in this life. But I am grateful, as I see my own progress mirrored in my changing perceptions of him, that I can finally crank up "Thriller" and spin a bit in his honor.

At the end of last year, I decided I was done with New Year's resolutions. Instead, I picked an intention word for the year: someplace for me to set my focus. My word for 2008 was Happy. And I have to say, that worked out fabulously for me.

2008 was indeed happy. Although I have to admit that when I picked the word "happy," I was trying to boss the universe a little. What I really wanted was not to have anything major or catastrophic happen in my life, since in the previous six or seven I'd been hit with one body blow after another: from learning of my husband's sex addiction to having my son face a number of health issues to losing my father-in-law to cancer. I wanted one quiet, peaceful, happy year in which nothing went seriously wrong.

This was actually not that year. Several major health and financial challenges did arise (although I haven't blogged about them for anonymity reasons), but the difference was that I kept my happy wits about me this time and rode it all out. They stayed little blips on the overall happy radar.

So, it's time to pick a new intention word, and this year the word is (drum roll, please)...

GOD

Yep. This year I would like to focus on my spirituality, dedicate more time to meditation, recognize the sacred around me and within me and in those around me. And I figure that with my sights set on my God, I have a good chance of keeping the Happy going this year as well.

If you pick a word for the year, or stick with the old school resolution format, I'd love to hear what your focus will be 2009. And I wish you all a safe, peaceful and happy New Year!

• My friend, Ellen, whom I thought of on her birthday but neglected to call or e-mail. Um, happy belated birthday on my blog, if you are reading. (How lame is that?) I thought of her tonight because I was eating cookie dough ice cream straight from the carton. Back in college, Ellen taught me it worked better if you ate it with a fork, so you could rake out and enjoy all the cookie dough, maximizing your eating pleasure.

• How much I wanted to massage the knots out of my husband's neck and shoulders tonight. He fell asleep putting the kids to bed and is out for the night, meaning we didn't get our post-kids-in-bed time together. There is a bottle of lavender massage oil on my bedside table, taunting me.
• My nice clean bathroom. It helps to have a visitor in town who will play with the kids while I get work done around the house.
• The condolence card and (separately) the home video DVD we thoughtfully received from a friend and how much I appreciate that friendship.
• How I need to come up with some new tags and topics to make my ads more interesting.
• How much I want to find time and privacy to sit down and write a real blog post!

I'm trying to avoid thinking about...

• The thousand and one things on my to do list: thank you notes, returning a phone call from a friend, putting away the laundry, getting an oil change for my car, etc.

• The complaints I have been getting from my son's school about his behavior. I'm frustrated with the school and a bit at a loss as to how to handle both the school and what to do with my son.
• My husband's addiction. My mind is not quite where it ought to be. I've slipped into seeing things from inside the Matrix occasionally, instead of staying outside where I have been for the past few years. I feel like I'm looking at my finger in a glass of water and thinking it looks broken. I can see the warp, I know where it's coming from, but I can't make my mind see the finger as whole yet.

The day after my husband arrived, my niece was born, arriving two weeks late and after more than 24 hours of labor: a very long anticipated arrival. Her real name is not Ziggimags after all, but it is so beautiful that I'm sorry I can't share it here.

The kids and I drove to the hospital to meet her today. My daughter was a little scared of her and wouldn't speak; she was struck dumb by the tininess and the crying, and she was disappointed (I suspect) in spite of my many reminders, that the baby was not an instant playmate. My son was a little chatterbox, telling everyone in the room (including my sister-in-law's mother, an entirely new person) all about how many floors the hospital had (he asked an employee when we got into the elevator, because the number of floors and going to the top floor of any building we enter, is a current obsession), how many floors the parking garage had (we parked at the top to avoid a trip up there later anyway), what the special attributes of his favorite cartoon character are, and what an old hand he is at this whole baby thing, having a little sister himself and all.

And I held my little niece for the first time. I washed my hands a thousand times, because I could not make it from sink to baby without touching or being touched by some germ-ridden part of one of my own two children. And I know that new parents, who don't have a germ-ridden older sibling waiting to infect their newborn, care about such things. My hands were cold and damp, and she woke and cried when I touched her. So, much for my expert mama thing. She calmed down when her daddy, my baby brother (how strange), put her next to her mama and fixed her diaper.

Babies grow so quickly, and I always forget so quickly how tiny they are when they are born: how their heads fit in the palm of one's hand, how their tiny legs are bowed from being cramped inside the womb, how every part of them is there in perfect detailed miniature. As I held her, it seemed hard to believe that something so tiny, so light, could be a whole person.

But I do believe in a kind of reincarnation, a version of karma: not a literal version, but a metaphoric one. I believe that we live on, in our beauty and our baseness, through our children. And we lead good lives not in the hope that we will reap the rewards, but that they will start off a little ahead, a little healthier, a little more spiritual, or in some cases just a little less neglected and abused than we were.

My father-in-law's sins may have been visited on his son; the son is, like the father was, an addict. But my husband reaped the rewards of his father's triumphs; my father-in-law's struggles, however misguided at times, to better himself have borne fruit in his son's wise mind, caring heart and dedication to recovery. My husband is a good man, who is becoming a better, more beautiful man every day, and that's the most meaningful tribute I think his father could ever have.

My brother has stopped calling because he is tired of my overeager hellos and the way I pause, breathless and waiting after each one. He hears the unspoken questions in the silence: "Is Leigh in labor yet? Is the baby here yet?" And the answer has been the same, as the due date came and went, "No, not yet." But I know my little niece or nephew is coming soon, any day now, and some part of my brain remains tense with anticipated excitement.

And I am waiting for another call I know must come, telling us my father-in-law is struggling no more to draw breath into lungs made weak and ineffective by cancer. When my husband calls from work, I listen to his voice, trying to determine if it sounds more tired and sad than it usually does these days, trying to gauge from his hello whether or not someone has called him at work with the news, and whether or not he is now calling to tell me. The answer has been the same each time, "No news yet." But I know that death is approaching, any day now, and some part of my brain remains tense with anticipated dread.

Each day I am breathing, yet I'm holding my breath...