ack!

Wow! It has been… a week. Nothing bad! Just – so much driving, so many commitments. I have once again been A Terrible Blogger Slash Blog Friend, and all I have to offer you today are some bullets.

Cookie Swap Extension: THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in photos and links for the cookie swap! I am so excited! I wish we could all be traveling to a central location to share the scrumptious cookies in person! If you want to participate in the cookie swap but missed the original deadline, well, you are in good company as I also missed the deadline. I am hoping that I will get to make SOME COOKIES today or tomorrow, but it’s not looking great. I am looking down the barrel of at least two hours in the car both today and tomorrow and while that doesn’t seem like a whole lot when a day is twenty-four hours long, I find it Very Difficult to get anything meaningful done in and around so much driving. If I get an extension, so do you. I will aim to have the cookie swap post up on Monday evening or Christmas Eve at the latest. And, in part because I feel guilty about how flaky I have become, I have a little cookie-related giveaway planned for those who are interested.

Christmas Cactus: Ever since I read Nicole’s post about Noelle, her Christmas cactus, I have been enchanted by the idea of owning one myself. When lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear in the floral section of my grocery store, but a Christmas cactus in full bloom! I bought it, brought it home, put it in the one spot in my house that gets semi-direct sunlight, and gazed adoringly at it every time I passed through the kitchen. It seems to be actively rejecting my love and hospitality, though. The blooms have begun to crumple and this morning I found that one of the teeny pink buds had fallen onto the table. What am I doing wrong?! Perhaps it is simply horrified by the state of the kitchen table.

Housekeeping Standards, or Lack Thereof: My Christmas cactus is not the only one who is appalled. Not only is my kitchen table full of Random Crap, it is also covered in crumbs. But that’s not the half of it. My normally mediocre housekeeping activities have apparently taken as big a hit as my blogging this week. When all you do in your home is eat and sleep and follow the child around urging her to hurry! we are late!, the crumbs tend to pile up. I have an enormous kitchen island in my kitchen, and normally it is PRISTINE. That is my preferred state. I do not like to pile things on the island; we have other counters for piles. I like the island to be a clean and welcoming expanse of granite awaiting the preparation of delicious and nutritious meals and/or cookies. NOT THIS WEEK. Mail has piled up on the counter, I have a row of holiday cards waiting for me to hang them on the wall, there’s some leftover cedar fronds from the cedar garland I bought to go above the mantle, crumbs everywhere. Let’s not even contemplate the state of the floor. How we are not overrun by mice and/or ants is a miracle. I cannot wait for my family to be done eating in the kitchen so I can restore order by way of cleaning fluid, Swedish dishcloths, and my zooper.

Favorite Flower: I may have gone a little overboard in terms of holiday flora this year. I bought a poinsettia. But then. I went to my mother’s house, where she had the most enormous, beautiful poinsettia I have ever seen. She got it at Costco, she said. So I braved Costco the week before Christmas to get my own giant poinsettia. For $15.99. It’s hard to see in the photo, but this thing is at least three feet tall. I am sure it will die any moment now.

Last Minute Stocking Stuffers: As per usual, I have been panic-buying last minute stocking stuffers like it’s my job. You may remember I said I was going to buy a cooling towel for my husband? Well, then I didn’t get one because I was hemming and hawing about whether he would really use it, and then I couldn’t find him any other interesting stocking stuffers, so I returned to get the cooling towel and it was sold out so I ended up getting him this three-pack. So if he doesn’t end up using it, now it will be three times as wasteful! This is the power of procrastination, folks. It is supposed to arrive Monday, which is cutting it quite close. I also panic-ordered my dad this magnetic pickup light tool, which looks useful but may be something I already bought him for a previous gift occasion? Not sure. And while I was ordering things, I added this book to the cart because I felt guilty Carla only has one book under the tree. And then, because my husband mentioned that he may not have any stocking stuffers for me, I ordered myself a nice little stocking stuffer. Why yes, I do have a problem.

How Are We Doing This?! I am mainly howling into the parenting void, but honestly: how is anyone doing anything? It has taken me SEVEN HOURS to complete this blog post. (I did take a pause to clean the kitchen and floors and take a shower.) This is my life lately. Yes, yes, there is Extra Holiday Stuff, but also this is just… how things seem to be? Everything takes seven times as long as it should. Interruptions abound. (Today’s interruption was having to take a 45-minute detour to the shoe store to buy snow boots for my child whose perfectly good snow boots are suddenly too small.) Minor but essential activities (cleaning the counters, doing my thrice-daily zoop, cutting my toenails, showering) are being shelved in favor of… something??? (Being in the car, probably.) Of course I am not getting enough sleep – my sleep is plagued with weird-ass nightmares that linger days after – and I’m tired all the time which I recognize is not helping. (But what is this stage of life if not Tired All the Time?) I am clenching my teeth. Somehow I am ten minutes late to everything. I am in the car all the time. Listen, I get that moving to this new house with the new, much longer commute was a big change to my routine. But it has been more than a year now, and I should be getting used to it, and GETTING IT TOGETHER. But I am not! Nothing is together! I only have the one child and the one husband! All the things are good! I have no real stress to speak of! AND YET. I continue flailing around, spluttering and splashing and dog paddling my way from tiny sinking island to tiny sinking island and NOTHING IS BEING ACCOMPLISHED. How are YOU doing this???? What am I doing wrong???? And how do I fix it?!?!?!?!

Okay. I am going to finally post this and go dry my hair and then pack my child for a night at her grandparents and try to get into a Staycation With My Hubby frame of mind instead of my current state of AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

My mind is such a jumble right now. Picture a tiny spare room into which you keep shoving old rocking chairs and boxes of books and a pile of ancient coats alongside a bigger pile of plastic and wire hangers and a music stand and a dusty couch and something covered in a tarp that looks vaguely threatening and some scarves and a stack of binders that keep sliding all over, spilling paper this way and that, and some dumbbells and a bunch of puzzle pieces and board game accessories that have come loose from their homes and a few pairs of stinky sneakers and hell, throw in a tuba and a bunch of bananas and maybe a volleyball net. You know. That’s what’s happening in my brain right now.

It feels full. Not just metaphorically so, but physically. I can feel all those brain furnishings jabbing against the corners of my mind. It may thus come as no surprise that I cannot focus on anything lately. Nothing. I start to do one thing and then another thought intrudes – maybe, “oh! you must write this email before you forget!” – but before I can get through that entire thought, something else has jumped in, waving its arms to be seen, and I can’t remember what I was supposed to be doing in the first, second, or third place.

I am in full frazz. FULL. FRAZZ.

“What can I do to help?” asked my sweet husband, fresh off call week and just wanting to Not Do Things for awhile. And he CAN help with some things, but only a few right now and a few more but not until the weekend.

“Make a list!” he suggested, which is always smart. Except once I made the list, I kept thinking of more things to ADD to the list. I’ll be (supposedly) doing something, and think of something to add to the list, and then by the time I get TO the list, I’ve forgotten it and ruined my concentration on the thing I was already doing. Plus, the list is a nice handy way to keep everything together, but the items are not at all equivalent, and there are some items that have a bunch of sub-steps to be completed and I didn’t list those out. Should I list those out? The other problem is that, now I’m in List Mode, I’ll think of something beyond the immediate needs bulleted on the list – you know, like Christmas shopping or dealing with the annual grief bomb of the anniversary of my friend’s death or summer camp (which I am ALREADY getting emails about WHY). And I’ll get very stressed out thinking about those not-at-all-priorities-right-now because I know they are lurking in the near distance, waiting for me. I have stopped short of putting them on the list, but they are still there. The list is out of control. Everything is out of control.

The only thing that is getting me to complete ANYTHING is adrenaline and a mortal fear of missing deadlines. This is not a healthy way to operate.

*I have added so many more items to this list since I photographed it. Deeply depressing.*

(And again! It is mainly good stuff! I should not be complaining! My list does not include things like “find potable water” or “seek shelter” because my home has been ravaged by a hurricane! Life is good! I am lucky!)

Strategies I am testing out, with little to no success:

Making a list. This did not cure all my problems in the LEAST, but at least I no longer have to frantically catalog everything I have to do in my mind.
Doing ANYTHING ON THE LIST AT ALL. Even if it’s small, even if it’s the lowest priority thing. Let’s get some momentum going. (The momentum is not interested in joining me.)
Getting extra sleep. I have been heading to bed at 9:30 lately. I do feel rested, I think? Or, as rested as I ever feel?
Getting up early. I am not good at this at all. I still feel frazzled but also resentful about being awake?
Doing something that is not on the list at all. Something that is OPPOSITE of the list, like reading or going for a walk or writing a blog post.
Procrastinating until the literal last second.
Buying things. To be fair, a lot of these things are on the list. But some are not. Like the therapeutic pair of pants I ordered from Loft yesterday.
Complaining to my husband. And now to you.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any actual solution to this current spate of frazz. I just need to grit my teeth and chip away at the list and hope my brain fullness subsides as I complete things.

Some of the posts you’ve recently published showed up in my feeder today. It must be related to this blog…

YOU UPDATED YOUR BLOG. Also, I lost my comment. Short version: I'm Dorothy, of course. And I can't wait to…

Hooray, thank you, Michelle!!! I do not feel like a tech genius; it seems like it should be much, much…

suzanne day by day

the mundane, the magical, and everything in between

Frazz!