The annoying, self-defeating habit of the turtle-shell retreat.

I love parties. I love to cook good food for friends. I love it when they cook for me. I love circles of cross-legged, relaxed grown ups sitting with half-empty wine glasses and laughing while they share stories. All of that is happening this very minute at a beach on the Atlantic coast. Some of my nearest and dearest and laughingest friends are down in the sand dancing and eating and celebrating the rite of passage it is to have your kid graduate.

I’m at home. Apparently writing run-on sentences while Sponge Bob entertains my children. They are sunburned and tired from swimming in the pool: the place that I took them to get over their disappointment that we skipped today’s beach party.

This is mostly because I’m a pale skinned Swedish girl and the heat index is over 100 today. The sun actually hurts my skin. I can’t breathe. I think constantly of moving back to the shady mountains where lush trees protect me as if I were their dryad nymph hiding from the sun.

It is also partly because The Love got sick and begged out. He got a nasty case of Vertigo yesterday and has spent most of the weekend in bed. I got tired of being our smiling representative still attending everything about half way through church. I took communion, chatted with a few friends while my boys inhaled jelly donut holes, and beat fast track home to the AC and my darkened bedroom.

This is not really like me.

Or maybe it is. When I’m with The Love, we are friendly and happy and Get Invited. We do a lot of Inviting as well. When I am alone (and yes, even with children that is “alone” because un-alone in my book is Coupled), I am quiet and creative and watch melancholy films. It’s the inside of the darkened turtle shell retreat. There’s always plenty to read, lots of iced coffee, and my pictures on the walls.  I’ve spent more of my years like this than like that. I like that better.

I am kind of mad at myself. I could have gone. They like me (contrary to my belief for mos of my life, I’m not unlikable or some kind of freckled pariah). I would have had fun. I am also kind of relieved. I worked my ass off writing this week. Saturday was a day for full mental attendance because my kids returned from the grandparents and needed some Momma-love. Sunday I sort of crashed. Maybe I needed to.

Sara from Poached Kumquats sent me a thankyou email for a blog comment. I read it from the inside of my turtle shell. I was impressed (very impressed). Most blog writers know that comments can be rare. It might be hit or miss. A good day is getting a comment and a great day is getting in to a “conversation” of exchanged comments on one anothers’ sites. Reading her site, she has EVERY reason to be inside a shell of her own. Weepy. Depressed and crumbling into a bag of Lay’s. And yet.

It’s humbling, this writing + yoga project. I’ve been challenged on every single level. It’s kind of like how the Lenten season brings the gunk in my life bubbling up to the top to be dealt with: nothing is immune. My prayer of wanting to interact with others’ mindsets and pov’s and stories is vibrantly coming true. I get to listen and read and think.

I don’t really have a game plan for the rest of the day. Shrimp Taco Salad for dinner. Probably a little yoga. The Love may come by so we can finish the other half The Tiger and The Snow, the sweetly charming subtitled Italian film we started the other night. I will feel like a heel for missing the party until at least midnight, when there really is no chance of hopping in the car to go.

Does anyone else do this?