Do you ever have this overwhelming need to do something crazy?

Every now and then I go through periods of time where I’m discontent, incredibly hyper, and I start to drive myself a little more insane. I love my life and family but let’s admit it — Suburbia can become a tad monotonous. For someone who thought she’d go prematurely gray from herculean efforts to  save the whole darn world, or who at least seriously thought of a career reporting on the human condition around the globe, being married with two dogs, a fenced-in backyard in a sea of McMansions and obsessing about my child’s education isn’t quite how I pictured grown-up life. My last hold out is a death-grip refusal to get a minivan, even if it would be more practical.

Lately I’ve been fantasizing about jumping out of planes over a jungle, backpacking through China with my 5-year-old or volunteering in a refuge camp for a year. Sure I could make one or all of these little fantasies a reality, but I won’t. I’ve come to appreciate the security and stability my husband and I have created; the ebb and flow of daily life and apparently I’m too much of a chicken anyway. Still though, the seed for discontent lives inside my mind and seems to bloom at least once a year.

Thankfully my husband is also a discontent soul…full of wanderlust and a knack for dreaming. He’s not threatened when I start to let my mind wander or talk about needing an adrenalin rush. He gets it. He feels it too and rather than question my commitment to the life we’ve built, he makes suggestions or plays along until my mind and heart settle again and my state of hyperactivity subsides.

Just the other night while I was bouncing off the kitchen walls and he was trying to focus on creating an amazing chicken curry I said, “Kim, I’m going nuts. I need to do something crazy.”

He looked up from the steam of coconut milk and garlic with a naughty grin lifting the corners of his lips. “Oh really,” he said. “I thought you were planning a skydiving adventure with friends but if that’s not going to work out, I have an idea.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Do tell!”

“I think you should take a lover.”

“That’s a fantastic idea. You won’t mind?”

“Not at all. Just make sure it’s a woman and you bring her home to share!”

Um, yea, he apparently has been dreaming a bit too.

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