Three months ago, when I started potty-training L., I filled a giant bowl with “prizes” — to be doled out liberally as rewards for any and every form of potty success. There were small rubber bouncy balls, little blocks, and…well, one other thing.

This “other thing” seemed like a good idea at the time — small items, appealing to boys, and in a variety of designs and colors.

But I was wrong. Because this “other thing” is not particularly appealing to, well, me. And now, months after the potty training has come to an end, I keep encountering these “things.” And I don’t like it one bit.

For example, I might be cleaning up the living room at night, after the boys are in bed and Chad’s out of town, and I come across this:

Or I might be sitting on the couch, reading quietly, when out of the corner of my eye I spot one of these:

Now, I know that they look fake. And I know that if there were real bugs of this size and color in my house, I would have to: a) call the exterminator and b) move (preferably to another state).

But in that very first moment, before my mind has a chance to process the fact that they’re not real… they scare me. I jump. I might even have to stifle a scream. And I most likely have to go get a piece of chocolate to aid in my emotional recovery.

And so, slowly, very slowly, the bugs are getting “lost” (aka, they’re getting dropped in the garbage by yours truly). L. will one day forget about them. And I will never again knowingly bring fake bugs into my house.

Lesson learned.

Yesterday was really just a normal Monday. We’re recovering from a short vacation, so there was laundry to deal with. The usual mess of toys and noise. Piano lessons. A bunch of phone calls to make that I’d been putting off.

I put in a significant amount of screen-time, too — playing around on Facebook, catching up on some blog-reading, answering emails. The TV was on too much. I made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, listened to my iPod, updated my calendar with upcoming obligations. Like I said, a normal Monday.

By 6:00 p.m., though, something was very wrong. I felt uneasy. Majorly uneasy. But I couldn’t have told you why. I felt worried, or as if I were dreading some impending disaster, but if you’d asked me to name it, I would have drawn a blank. I hate that feeling, that something’s wrong but I don’t know what feeling.

Somewhere around 7:50, I remembered a post over at Seedlings in Stone that has refused to fade into my memory; instead it nags at me, popping into my conscious thoughts when least expected. In it, L.L. talks about the restorative effect nature can have when we’re experiencing “directed-attention fatigue.” You really should click over to read her post for yourself, but the bottom line for me last night was that I decided to unplug, not just from technology, but from anything that required brain focus.

So I headed to our patio and claimed a chair. And just listened.

Here’s what I heard:

• The occasional hum of a car passing by on the main road.
• A dog barking in the next neighborhood.
• The buzz of cicadas in the trees that line our backyard.
• The neighbor’s air conditioning unit.
• A game of horseshoes being played just over the hill. I couldn’t see the participants, but I heard the sporadic clang of metal on metal, punctuated here and there with a manly “Yeah!”
• My cat mewing at me from the other side of the screen door.
• Birds twittering, bickering, tweeting their evening song.

Here’s what I didn’t hear:

Me breathing.

As I sat on the patio, requiring very little of my brain, I realized that I was practically holding my breath. In order to stay alive, my body was making sure that air was passing in and out of my lungs, but my breaths were incredibly shallow, almost unnoticeable. I took a deep breath. Then exhaled it completely. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Repeat again. I could almost feel myself unwind as I made a point of breathing deeply.

I don’t really think of myself as having a Type A personality. I don’t go from one project to the next, always looking for another accomplishment. I don’t consider myself driven (in fact, most of the time, I need a good kick in the pants to get moving). But still, I rarely let myself disengage. When I have some spare time, I find I’m on the computer: emailing, reading, writing. Or I’m reading a magazine, knowing I need to deplete the magazine stack before it falls over. Or I’m listening to a podcast, learning something new. Or even reading a good book, enjoyable but still asking my mind to pay attention.

There’s nothing wrong with those activities, but since life already demands plenty of brain-engagement (listening to kids, dealing with household tasks, teaching kids, paying bills, etc.), I need to be purposeful about occasionally shutting down, unplugging, disengaging. Taking time to just listen and breathe.

If I don’t, I apparently end up in the condition in which I found myself last night: uneasy, on edge, almost irritable. Barely breathing without even realizing it.

By the time I headed to bed last night, that uneasy feeling was gone. Forty-five minutes on the patio, doing nothing but listening and breathing, had indeed been therapeutic.

How often do you completely unplug and disengage? Have you found nature (even nature infused with some neighbors, cars, or air conditioning units) to be restorative?

In the Veggie Tales video, Minnesota Cuke, there’s a “Silly Song with Larry” entitled Pizza Angel. In Pizza Angel, Larry laments the fact that he ordered a pizza and sadly, it never arrived. (In case you’re curious, we learn as the song progresses that the delivery-gourd ate the pizza.)

French Pea angels accompany Larry as he belts out the refrain,

Pizza Angel, please come to me,
Tomato sauce and cheese so goo-oo-ey.
Pizza Angel, I’m on my knees,
You’re my number one pie from Sicily.

Yesterday, I could completely relate to Larry. Even though no delivery-gourd ate my pizza.

Sundays are often my day to go out and have some “Mommy Time.” Without children. My wonderful husband sends me out for a couple hours while he handles the whirlwinds kids. I can run errands, browse in a bookstore, even find a quiet corner of a parking lot where I can catch a quick car-nap. (And yes, I’ve done all those things.)

Yesterday, was a mix: I ran an errand, browsed a bit, and then decided to top off my afternoon with a slice of pizza from a local pizza joint. I’d never been in this particular pizza joint, but I’d heard they had good pizza and decided to investigate. Purely for the sake of my family, of course, since if the pizza wasn’t good, I could save us all the hassle of going there in the future. I’m self-sacrificing like that.

I parked my car, noticed the neon Open sign on the pizza place, and headed for the door.

Right in front of the restaurant sat what some might call a “muscle car,” complete with deeply tinted windows, parked in the fire lane. I grumbled a little to myself, as I had to walk around the car to get to the sidewalk. Hmph. Parking in the fire lane. Can’t these people be bothered to park in a regular spot like the rest of us?

Oh well, no dwelling on that; on to the pizza!

As I approached the counter, a friendly-looking girl asked what I would like. “One slice of pizza to go, please.” I said.

“Okay, that’ll be right up.”

Excellent.

But…

Before she could even reach for a plate, a person who looked all manager-like interrupted:

“Um, we don’t sell slices after 2:00.”

“Oh,” I stammered. “Okay…”

“In fact,” he went on, “We don’t sell slices on Sundays either. Just whole pizzas.”

The girl, who’d led me to believe I’d soon be eating a scrumptious piece of cheese-laden goodness, looked sheepish. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot about that.”

“That’s okay… I’ll just…come back another time.”

Head low, bummed out, and feeling much like Larry the Cucumber must have felt, I left the building.

I walked around the fire-lane-parked car (again) and plodded to my own. Suddenly, a Pizza Angel young guy called to me:

“Hey! You want a slice? I’ll sell you a slice.”

It was the muscle car guy. Offering me some of his pizza.

I asked him if he was sure, but I was already crossing back to the sidewalk.

“Yeah. My girlfriend and I got a large pizza, and there’s only two of us. It’s lame that they don’t sell slices on Sunday, so… have one of ours.”

I ducked back inside the pizza place, where the friendly girl graciously provided a paper plate. (And the manager had the nerve to joke with a big grin, “We don’t give those out on Sundays either!” Ha. Ha-ha. Funny guy.)

Muscle Car Guy offered my me choice of slices, which I gratefully accepted.

“Thank you! How much?” I asked, pulling a few bills from my jeans pocket.

“Nothin’.”

“No, really, let me give you something.”

“Nah. Enjoy the pizza.” He climbed into the car with the deeply-tinted windows, waved, and drove away.

What nice kids. Even if they did park in the fire lane.

Oh, and the pizza was very good. I’m sure we’ll be back. Maybe not on a Sunday, though.

Lessons learned (though it seems I must learn some lessons over and over again):

1. I shouldn’t be so quick to grumble about people.

2. You can make someone’s day with a little generosity. Those Pizza Angels sure made mine.

I have been known to have clever ideas that turn out to be…um…not so clever.

Take my butter-softening method, for example. I like to bake a lot, but it’s often spontaneous, meaning that I don’t have time to let my butter or margarine soften at room temperature for 30 minutes. No problem! There’s always the microwave. And if the microwave is occupied, well, I have another trick up my sleeve. I put the whole, wrapped, stick of margarine on an oven rack while the oven is preheating.

Be sure to get it out of there after a minute or so, I tell myself. Give it just enough time to soften, but whatever you do: don’t let it melt.

Most of the time, it works out just fine. I successfully extract the softened butter and get on with my baking. But occasionally, I get distracted. The phone rings, the toddler pulls all the books off the library shelf, the cat pukes in the middle of the hall. And the butter lingers in the oven a bit too long.

Let’s just say that the alarm company has called me more than once to see if there is a fire in my house. At which point I sheepishly explain that it was just an oven “issue.” I pretend not to hear the amusement in the voice on the other end of the line.

Yesterday, I had another clever idea.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we are currently on vacation. Unfortunately, I left my watch at home. And I cannot function without a watch. It’s a problem I have. But Wal-Marts abound, so we ducked into one yesterday morning on our way to the caverns and picked up a replacement. As luck would have it, the watch had some industrial-strength plastic cord fastening it together.

No problem. I’m like the female version of MacGyver. Surely there would be something in my purse that I could use to free the watch, enabling me to put it on my wrist. Ah-ha! I removed the little metal spring from a pen that I found at the bottom of my purse. I was sure that I could straighten out the spring and insert it into the plastic cord’s fastener, spring the mini plastic latch in there and release the watch. I set to work straightening the spring while Chad drove us to our destination.

Let me just tell you now: Do not attempt to straighten a pen’s spring with your bare hands.

I thought I was doing well. I pulled it, stretched it. Yes, it was expanding. But I needed to get the end un-coiled so it would stick straight out. I gripped it firmly, pulled, and….

Suddenly, the spring attacked me. The end of the spring went into my finger, and then came back out a different part of my finger.

I looked like I’d just invented some fashionable new body-piercing trend: The Pierced Finger Pad™.

If I’d had my wits about me, I would have insisted that Chad pull over and take a picture, so you could see this event in all its gruesomeness. But instead, all I could think was, I need to pull this out. I need to pull this out carefully. I need to pull this out now. I need antibiotic cream and a band-aid.

The spring came back out. I stopped the bleeding. C. handed me the First Aid kit from the back seat and I was bandaged in mere minutes.

Ouch. It hurt. A lot.

The band-aid is off today. There are two little purplish marks on my finger. It’s still quite sore.

And I’ve learned my lesson: I’m not as clever as I sometimes think I am. Of course, I’m sure I’ll forget that lesson next time a creative solution is needed. But that’s okay; I’ll just learn it again.