This week has joined the last 13 years of my life.

What do you mean it's Friday?  I know it can't be Friday because this was the week I was going to get caught up on everything.  Since I'm not caught up, surely it is yet to be the end of the week.  Besides next week my oldest becomes an official teenager, and I know that must still be light years away.  Right.  Right?  RIGHT?!?

Please don't tell me I don't look old enough to have a teenager because what I desperately need is to feel old enough to have one.  I don't need reminders right now that I'm on the young end of the mothering spectrum.  For this week only I will accept "you seem very old for your age" as an acceptable compliment.

But that is a tangent.  I didn't mean to ramble about becoming the mother of a teenager, I meant to ramble about where my week went.  It started out well enough, but things kept getting in the way.  For instance, when Elise finally decided on a birthday cake she choose a topsy turvey design, which has been quite labor intensive and knocked a couple hours of planned productivity out of the last two days (and the next two, probably).  But then again, she seemed to think I was capable and I'm trying hard to not disappoint.

And somehow it is back to that darn birthday staring me in the face.  I am not freaking out, I promise.  I'm not.  It's not that some magic switch is getting turned next week.  (There is a magic teenage girl switch, but that was flipped over a year ago, so no suspense left on that.)  I mean to make this post about my last week.

It's just that the week somehow disappeared on me.  I keep thinking of things I did, but they were actually from two weeks ago.  I'm beginning to wonder if I actaully participated in this week at all. Maybe I hibernated.  But I know that's not possible because my house is relatively clean ("relatively" being the KEY word) and my kids are dressed, fed, and still alive.  I know I did all my regular weekly activities.  But somehow the week has just spun past me and I'm left at the end wondering where it went.

Then again the last 13 years have spun past me and I'm beginning to wonder where they all went, too.  Long past are the days of cuddling and reading Mr Brown Can Moo.  I can shut my eyes and see that little girl, my first, learning to walk and talk, going to kindergarten and learning to read, looking up to me to see if I'm watching.  I'm watching, I'm taking it in.  I know because I have it here to ponder in my heart.

As near as I can tell, these last years with her will go even faster than the first.  There is no way to slow down now. I know I didn't believe anyone who told me the days wouldn't last, that I would miss them someday, because the days seemed plenty long then.  But guess what?  They were right.  That eternity was momentary.

But that is NOT what I want to talk about tonight.  I want to talk about what I've done this last week.  But as I sit down to write, I can't seem to think what I've done.  It's almost as though something else is on my mind.  And I'm finding it hard to see what I'm typing through the tear filled eyes anyway, so I'm going to go see what Elise is doing.  Because I want to enjoy this time.  I now know I'll miss it when it's gone.