by Aurora Bordeaux

Greetings, Off Boarders! My my, I have missed you. I’ve been down and out the last few weeks with some kind of nasty monster cold. Blech. I even missed going to krav maga, if that tells you anything. Missing krav isn’t cool; you tend to get a little dry on adrenaline, as if being sick isn’t bad enough. There are claw marks on the walls at home. What can I say, we ladies of the mixed martial arts mindset don’t like being caged.

The thing is, while no one likes being sick, the time off gave me extra minutes to reflect on how much I like my life the way it is. For instance, being a sick childfree person is way, way, way better than being a sick parent. Sick parents don’t really get days off. Junior still needs his hot oatmeal, and Sherrie still needs to be picked up from school at 3:15. There is no off switch, no clocking out. You’re on call 24-7, and chances are that if you’re sick, your kid is sick too. Parents have to put themselves on the backburner, and I think that’s part of why they seem to be sick so much. That and they have children who lick the floor at Wal-Mart (true story).

While I was feeling poorly, I could mostly zonk out and take care of myself, although taking care of myself isn’t something I’m all that great at. It’s one of my goals for the year, actually, learning to be kinder to myself. Luckily, no one really relied on me when I was ill except a pesky rat bastard cousin who crashed here (another blog for another day), and the hubs was glad to pick up burritos for dinner or eat up whatever meals I managed.

Which brings me to a funny tidbit about ole Aurora Bordeaux: Most cold medicines, particularly in the Nyquil family, pretty much make me black out. I’ll be there, talking to you, working, whatever, but I lose huge patches of time and can’t seem to recall much of what happened while I was on the over the counter meds. I have zero desire to ever take meth–less than zero thanks to my other cousin with three kids, who is a living illustration of what it can do to your teeth–but I can only imagine what it would do to me if plain old Dayquil turns me into a blackout zombie.

Writing Baby Off Board has been an amazing experience, but it has also altered my day to day perspective about life. I used to think about not having kids and how much I liked it, but lately I do so without any guilt whatsoever because I’m so much more confident in who I am. Even though I’ve missed blogging the last three weeks because I wasn’t quite myself, I have to say in the same breath that one of the biggest perks of the childfree lifestyle is the lower rate of responsibility. I love what I do, but it’s also nice to know that those activities can be put on pause if I need to take a breather. Not so with parenting unless you have great friends or family, or the slush fund for a nice nanny.

Time off luckily gave me some solid yarns to tell, ranging from funerals to rat bastard cousin encounters to yet another baby shower and everything in between. I can’t wait to get back in the game.

Signing back on,

Aurora Bordeaux