There are a few disclaimers before this post.

A: I’m on my laptop and the “d” key is really sticky. Driving me crazy. If some of my d’s are left off, you might have to throw one in. This paragraph alone took me about five minutes to write because I had to go back and press hard for all the “d’s.”

B: There are no pictures in this post. I’m too tire to pull them off my camera, and I haven’t taken very many the past couple of days. So if the pictures make you happy, more happy will come next post.

C: I almost din’t write tonight because I knew I’d wake up tomorrow and feel fine, and it would be a much better day to write a post. It woul make sense and it would have pictures and I wouldn’t be tired and it woul have unicorns. But I owe it to myself to write on nights like tonight. It already feels goo. Or good. Oh, and the unicorns? They’re there. They’re just sleepy tonight. In the barn, having a rest. But they’re there. Always.

*****

I think I shoul begin by saying I sent Lainey to school today with a hot dog in her lunch and my kids had McDonald’s for dinner at 7:30. Half of me has a problem with this because I don’t think hot dogs and McDonald’s are the healthiest things for kids (although that doesn’t stop us), and half of me has a problem with this because I care what people think and a torn-up hot dog in a Tupperware on the fourth day of school doesn’t exactly send the cool mom vibe I had envisioned (at least I cut an apple to go with it). Heidi picked Lainey up from school today and teased me later, “Dude. What was in her lunch box? If you’re going to send a hot dog, at least cut it with a sharp knife. It was, like, ripped.” This is true.

Because it was a day. Actually, it’s been a bit of a week, and I know what I’m about to say is so enjoying-the-small-things-painted-on-a-plaque, but it feels good. It feels good to be frazzled and falling apart a little bit because I feel like I’m learning a lot. I feel love from friends and family. I feel good to laugh and make fun of torn-up hot dogs. I feel good to surrender to the freedom of hot mess, and I almost want to take it to the moon. Like maybe drop off Lainey for school in the morning wearing my pajamas and dragging toilet paper from my shoe because at least it would be funny. I mean, if you’re having a frazzled week, you might as well go big or go home.

Oh look, the “d” is working now.

I asked Brett if I shouldn’t mention this on the blog because it’s his stuff and not mine and because–well, some things are private and not to be shared. But we have lots of private things (the word private makes me giggle) that we don’t share, and he says he doesn’t care about this one and that if writing about it feels good, then I should write about it.

Everything’s fine now. Just fine. But he had some scary chest pains today and we went to the ER and they kept him overnight to do that whole we-take-chest-pain-very-seriously thing (as they should). They already did a slew of tests, and everything looks great. I’m not worried anymore. In fact, by the time I left the hospital tonight, I was taking awkward hospital pictures and sending them to friends. And if the old man one curtain over in the ER yelled “I need to call Liberty Mutual” any louder, Liberty Mutual would have heard him and showed up.

But earlier today, I was not okay. I was scared and crying and made embarrassing emotional calls to people who don’t speak embarrassing emotional (it’s a very sloppy language that I need to perfect). I guess nothing makes me freak more than my family in jeopardy. My family. My love.

Because I know mature and pulled-together people stay calm and level-headed during moments like this, I realized today that I must not be mature or pulled-together. I’m going to work on that. What I do know is that you rise to the occassion, always. There’s an adrenaline rush that comes with those moments when life feels a little bit like it’s in danger of falling apart, and it makes you feel very responsible. To your family. To yourself. Fight or flight, baby, and I’m flying.

Between kindergarten emotions and it-could-have-been-a-heart-attack, I am learning more about myself and my family. What we are capable of. How we need each other. What we can do better. We seem to learn it when life gets sticky.

We may have had happy meals for dinner, but I felt so on top of my game later tonight. I put two girls to bed with clean jammies, made Lainey’s lunch, signed papers in her Wednesday folder, talked to the boys about today, had a great chat with their mom, made some calls, took my prenatal vitamins and ultimately decided to write a post.

Brett will most likely be home tomorrow, and his follow-up will go back in the private folder where it belongs. We’ll move forward and feel grateful and will be making crafts and packing better lunches soon. I will keep thinking about this for a while because I think that’s what these moments are for. I’ll tone it down beneath “embarrassing emotional” but dial it above “insignificant” because everything is significant. …it’s how we grow.

And I can’t wait to write more about Fred’s on Tuesday nights, kindergarten progression and a new friend I finally met that rocked my world.

But it’s late, and I am tired and it’s been a very, very long day.

I am undoubtedly a people person. I come alive in airports, on dance floors, crushed between bodies at concerts. I call people in the car on a four-minute drive so I can talk my way from my house to the nearest Publix, and I hug instead of shake hands. It’s not that I don’t like to be alone—I dream of island hammocks and quiet mountain hikes. It’s that I’ve forgotten how to really be alone. I’ve fallen victim to bad habits that have trained me to think I need to be stimulated—my kids, my friends, my phone, my iPod, my house, my work. I need to be doing something because there’s always something to be done. And when I’m alone, I twitch. My solitude muscles have atrophied.

It was Brett’s idea for me to go away alone. I had been complaining that I’m having trouble focusing, I can’t find a lengthy enough chunk of time to really unravel some things I’ve been thinking about, and I haven’t challenged myself recently in writing. I’m too comfortable. I’ve been writing simply what I know and what feels good and easy, and while that’s great, that’s not the kind of writer I want to be. Sometimes, yes. All the time, no.

I knew this little retreat wouldn’t just be for my writing though. I’d be quiet and still, and in that quiet and stillness maybe I’d find a little part of me that’s been forgotten—the part that whispers “Hello? I’m here. Listen to me.” I don’t really know what the perfect scenario for having a conversation with that little voice looks like because it’s been a while, but I imagine it will happen on the beach when I’m sitting alone in the moonlight wearing something flowy. So I pack my white skirt.

I’m staying twenty minutes away from my house, but in this palm-corralled piece of heaven, I feel like I’m far away. I arrive Monday afternoon, welcomed at the lobby desk with, “Ms. Hampton, we have a gulf-view suite upgrade for you at no additional charge” which, translated, means “Ms. Hampton, if you’ll just hop aboard this unicorn, we’ll fly you to your room.” Not one to argue, I oblige.

My suite is beautiful. Wide-plank wood floors, endless light, a massive bed with soft white linens and pillows perfectly stacked in three pairs. It feels more like a Tahitian villa than a free staycation upgrade twenty minutes from home, and as soon as I’m in the door, I drop my bags and collapse into the bed like one of those trust exercises where you close your eyes, stretch out your arms and fall backwards into arms that hopefully catch you. I stare at the ceiling, the clock, the cuticle I ripped off my middle finger earlier this week, the chipped polish I meant to fix on my toes before I left. Who cares, there’s no one but me to notice.

I am twitchy, so excited yet overwhelmed with the possibility of three days alone that I feel like five minutes on the bed is wasted time. And it bothers me that I think this because it defeats the purpose of this entire experience. I know that rest and recharging and just being still are as important to creative productivity as the act of creating itself. I open my laptop and stare for a bit, waiting for the flood gates to open because that’s what’s magically going to happen on a writing retreat, right? But instead I notice my bangs are crooked in the computer screen reflection.

I brought a stack of my favorite books, and I pull one out and head to the outside deck to read for a bit. Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod, definitely a randomly-flip-open-to-any-page-and-get-something-out-of-it kind of book. So I do just that and find the following:

“You have to find a way of working that makes it dead easy to take full advantage of your inspired moments. They never hit at a convenient time, nor do they last long…Conversely, neither should you fret too much about “writer’s block, “artist’s block,” or whatever. If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. …If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.”

I’m enjoying the silence while it lasts. I grab my room key and walk down to the beach bar where I order a virgin Pina Colada and suck it down like Lindsey Lohan, ripping the cherry off the stem at the end. And then I order another one because I feel like the world is my oyster and I am its pearl—its clueless pearl who doesn’t realize virgin Pina Coladas are only a buck cheaper than the real thing.

It takes me a little while to really settle in and wean myself of overstimulation (alright, I failed to give up Instagram—that motherfreakingInstagram), but two hours after my arrival, I’m already drunk on solitude. “Look at me! I’m alone at a hotel with nothing to do. Free Bird! Free Bird!” I want to sing all Fraulein Maria as I twirl in the hotel courtyard. And when I pull my computer out because the noise returns soon enough, I choose not to pay the extra $10 for Internet service because I know I’ll toggle between Word and Google, Word and Facebook, Word and E-mail, Word and awkwardfamilyphotos.com.

I’m tempted to call friends. They would love this—this suite, this couch, these pillows on the floor, these adirondacks lined up in the sand. And my girls—there’s room for them here. They would love this pool.

This is my time though.

So I write. I write in the bar, I write by the beach, I write in plush chairs in hidden corners of the lobby. I write in my room, I write wedged between jagged rocks on the shore because it seems a very Thoreau thing to do (it’s a stupid idea, I scratch the hell out of my thighs).

By write, I don’t necessarily mean fingers madly skipping across the keyboard. Some of that is thinking or staring or closing the screen and watching the tide. I read a little bit, I walk, and I take breaks to swim and wander the property and yes, answer phone calls even though I swear I won’t. Brett calls the first night, after my first five hours alone, and excitedly asks, “So? Do you have, what–like, fifty pages written now?” because he thinks my retreat is going to magically transform me into the Bionic Writing Woman. “Brett, that’s not how writing works,” I explain, “I can’t just rattle off things. A lot of writing is thinking and learning and talking things out in my head. I have a page and a half, okay?”

This time away has been incredibly productive, at least in my subjective definition of “productive.” I’ve seen three sunsets in a row now. I’ve watched from the bar, a curtain of sea oats between me and the ocean stage where the spectacular show takes place every night. And when all I want to do is grab someone to share the beauty with me–to point out to the sky and say “Isn’t it incredible?”–I say it silently to myself.

While I thought that three days alone with nothing to do but think would have me reevaluating all life’s rituals, I am surprised by how clear my mind has been. Actually, I take that back. Last night I called Brett to catch up. He told me how Nella emptied the silverware in the dish washer again, how she passed each fork and spoon and how she smiled when he said “thank you” after every one.

“I miss her,” I followed. And then, out of nowhere, “Babe? Am I a good wife?”

He laughed. “Yes, why?”

“I don’t know, I’m alone, I’m thinking. Am I the kind of wife that, after twenty years, you’d say—,” and I couldn’t even finish my sentence because I started laughing, realizing I’ve gone all Oprah after only one day in solitude.

Brett yawned. “Babe, I’m watching Shark Week here. Can I like, let you go and you can write?”

Of course.

So, what did these few days accomplish?

Well, for starters, I faced my shark fear (during Shark Week, coincidentally) and briefly swam in the gulf after the sun set because Brett swears I’m wrong in thinking all dusk swimmers get eaten by sharks. (P.S., I lived.)

I did write–some personal writing I’ve been wanting to do, a little bit of project writing, a little bit of blog stuff. I evaluated the process of writing too–how it’s easy to fall in the “careful” trap. Don’t offend. That could be misinterpreted. Who might be reading? I don’t necessarily have anything specific in mind that’s controversial, and I’m not suddenly going to start writing political rants or polarizing posts. It’s just my writing needed a little defibrillation, and maybe my soul did too. Anything we seek to give–our words, our art, our talents, our voice, our ideas–must have time to grow first. If we value our gifts and our passions, we will take care of them. I understand more deeply right now the importance of solitude and how it feeds the creative soul.

I will make more efforts to be alone and to rest. And the Solitude Retreat of 2012 is the first of many that will follow.

And look–a few guests join me on my last night.

From the Tahitian villa twenty minutes from our home…goodnight.

*****

Matilda Jane Independent Trunk Keeper, Kelly Ewbank, joins in sponsorship this month, appropriately timed with the Character Counts clothing line released by Matilda Jane today. Matilda Jane has long been a favorite of mine–since Lainey was a baby–and my girls often wear their fun patchwork patterns, ruffled pants, striped tights and girlish designs.

Lainey’s outfit from the Serendipity and You & Me collections

Shop any of Matilda Jane’s collections, use Trunk Keeper #302 with your order, or contact Kelly through her site and she’ll guide you through your order.

Nella’s already wearing Lainey’s old Matilda Jane pieces this fall (in perfect condition still), and a few new pieces have been added to Lainey’s closet.

*****

Some nice sand boobies to end the post.

Today, I’m doing something I’ve always wanted to do but never made a priority–I’m going away. Alone. A three day writing retreat away from home. There are things to do here and a number of reasons that make spending three days alone in a hotel not the best idea right now but far more reasons that suggest this is an important investment, not only for my writing but for myself. I am looking forward to some clarity and focus, morning beach meditation and transferring a lot of recent thinking into words. My goal is to write uninhibitedly and inspired. The bonus, of course, is being able to take a bath without Barbies and foam alphabet letters floating in my way.

Our weekend, in review:

Rainy Mornings with Coffee and Fall Inspiration

I smell fall coming. Considering I live in South Florida, that means I have hound dog scent capabilities. I cannot wait to return to crafting and nesting, baking and entertaining. And if I have to hike on foot eight months pregnant up to the Midwest this year, I will. Mama’s going to make it happen. In the meantime, I’ll dream of what harvest display I’ll create at our front entrance this year, how I’ll rearrange the living room to say “Whassup? We’re high on fall,” and just how many gourds I’ll need to create that kitchen table centerpiece.

In the Absence of Lightning

It rained a good part of the weekend which always extends the length of time we spend in pajamas. I’m a pretty good judge of what weather conditions allow for outdoor puddle play but even so, I ask Brett “Is it safe to take the kids outside?” because it strokes his weatherman ego to suggest I need his expert radar-reading advice to give the okay.

We might not be able to find a clean cup in our house, but I’ll be darned if there isn’t a pair of rain boots in every corner. What can I say? It’s my thing. I’m obsessed with wellies.

Fort Making

I had just refolded every single quilt we own and stacked them nicely where they belong. Five minutes later, I walked into this…and could do nothing but smile.

Potty Time

We’re taking it very slowly, but the beginning stages are sweet.

We’re following our method with Lainey (who potty-trained remarkably) which includes following her lead, leaving a potty chair out in the main areas of the house, keeping a potty chair in the back of the car, making a huge deal out of cute underwear, putting her on the potty a trillion times during the day and praising the heck out of successes. We’re in the introduction stage right now, and Lainey is the best little potty cheerleader ever.

Pool Heat Escape

Funny Tea Party

Note to Self: Don’t use real glass with a two-year old. We managed to exit the party, tea set unscathed, but there was a lot of clinking sounds and cement bouncing and “NELLA!!!!!” shouts from the older sister.

We swapped her cup for a banana, and Sister took off all “I’m outta here.”

If she couldn’t have a real tea cup, she figured she’d just run like heck down the sidewalk until we caught her.

Saved by the containment of the push car.

Her spirited energy is contrasted perfectly by her generous affection.

And our weekend has provided a running start to a big week sprint.

P.S. The first trimester flag has been staked. Maybe I struck a victorious Bolt pose to celebrate.

*****

Tea Collection is returning in sponsorship this month, and their new Nordic designs and back-to-school staples might be my favorite Tea collection yet. From now until 8/19, you can shop their “3+1” items and use Code “3PLUS1” to receive a fourth item free with the purchase of three regular priced items. I picked out some of my current favorites this weekend. As always, Tea flawlessly combines comfort, versatility and colorful design to offer unique yet wearable children’s clothing.

From left: Mikko Floral Romper, Naturino Boots, Finn Flora Dress, Polka Dot Knee Socks, Umi Moraine Shoes, Lunefeld Flutter Romper, Mod Stripe Tee, Levi Slim Straight Jeans, PF Flyers, Patagonia Beanie.

*****

Lots of kids and teachers back to school today. I’ll be talking about back-to-school later this week. Cheers to a new school year, and to all the teachers who are returning back…thank you for what you do.

Happy Monday.