Falling apart.

What you're getting is an abbreviated summary of what Hannah got in the last twenty minutes of our day yesterday, while we were cleaning the kitchen.

I went away for two weekends in a row, and it feels like I have lost control of everything.

Laundry?  Piling up.  Schoolwork?  A major goal this year was to do school with Milo every day, and it's not happening.  Teaching the children to do their chores?  Out the window (Hannah put it better than me:  "If I had an extra two hours, I could get him to pick up that one toy over there.")  House?  Messy everywhere:  the upstairs, the downstairs, the schoolroom is a disaster.  The cockroaches we thought we'd beaten back for good?  Making their presence known again.  

The voices in my head are getting hoarse:  Make Halloween costumes!  Write up an evaluation for Oscar's first school quarter!  Schedule a doctor's appointment about that funny-looking mole!  Cut the childrens' hair!  Buy some supplies for the kids to make Christmas presents!  Find the Advent calendar!  Stop eating those gumdrops!  Pick up your prescription!  Get the library books before they get sent back to the main library!  Follow up with the city about those speed bumps!  Email the neighbors you invited last month to come to dinner on Monday!  Return those DVDs you borrowed from a friend!  Did you hear what I said about the gumdrops?  You don't even LIKE the white ones, do you?  STOP ALREADY.

Our family's made a lot of changes in the past year.  Changes for the better.  I'm getting to the gym, I've lost lots of weight, we're spending more time with friends and relatives, Mark's cut his gas consumption way down by biking and running to work, Milo's started school, Hannah and I recently recommitted ourselves to firming up the attachments among our family on our school days together.  It all seemed to be going very well but it turns out that it's only a metastable state.  ("Life is metastable," pointed out Mark.  "We're not really going for equilibrium here.")   All the new things are going well but the background (groceries, laundry, etc.) is falling apart.  Something's gotta give somewhere.

It's not that I'm depressed about it -- the problem, as usual, is a surfeit of blessings.  Tough decisions will be coming up, though.  We will have to cut something out, or back, somewhere.  I'm pretty efficient.  I don't waste a lot of time.  I don't think I'm going to find more time in my day by applying yet another productivity hack.  When "Bathe the kids" is on the "Someday/Maybe" list, you know you've got some pruning to do.

Mark:  "Look, we can't have everything.  It's nice to have the kids in swimming lessons, but they don't have to be in swimming lessons.  Not that we should pull them out. It's just an example.  Everything in our lives is good.  That means that when we cut back, we have to cut back on good stuff sometimes."

Jen at Conversion Diary (was Et Tu Jen) has written about this quite a bit.  I took some time this morning to think  and write about it myself, and promised myself I wouldn't freak out when that meant I had less time later for other things.  Breathing room has to come from somewhere.  

First principle I've discovered:  Going away for the weekend and losing my handle on the basics (feeding/clothing/teaching children) is proof that I've been trusting too much on catching up over the weekend.  Let's start there.

Comments

[mary]

You know, even before I had our first and worked full time, going away for the weekend was always something that made the rest of the week harder. I actually think it's easier since I had my daughter, since now I'm only out of the house 3 days per week and can get more done at home. Just know that you're not alone. And I for one can say that I'm normally a time-waster and procrastinator. Though with #2 on the way, I seem to have discovered an endless reserve of energy for organizing. Just ask dh: I'm - nearly single-handedly - reorganizing the entire house. If it doesn't move, it's likely to be evaluated for its usefulness and then sorted and stored, or else added to the growing pile of things we don't need. Of course, I was completely useless until after about the 16th week of pregnancy, so maybe I'm just catching up.

[SteveG]

I recall reading an interesting article a few months back on heart mind and strength.

A study being cited basically explained that, in fact, you have to build a good 20% slack into your life in order to not be overloaded.

Only by planning to be under capacity by that 20% do we have any hope of actually not being overwhelmed.

We've been relentless in approaching life like that over the past year, and it's made a tremendous difference in our stress level.

We keep ourselves regularly 'under-scheduled' and the end result is that life has slowed down a good bit.

That's not to say that we still don't get overwhelmed by laundry and mess on occasion, but recovery seems to be pretty manageable when it does happen.

We even have this amazing thing happening where a couple of times a week we find ourselves 'bored'. The entire clan just ends up hanging out in our family room 'killing time' playing board games, dominoes, playdough, wrestling, or whatever strikes our fancy.

Unsurprisingly, those unstructured, impromptu 'boring' times are the most enjoyable moments of our week.

Here's to under-scheduling and cutting back!

Good luck!

[Amy F]

I am right there with you on the voices-in-the-head. In the past five minutes I've debated whether to can applesauce today, email Peter's pre-k teacher, put away all the laundry, or generally pick up the house. Yet I'm doing fairly well losing weight, exercising, putting up food for the winter, and working a new 15 hours/week job. I know I spend too much time on the computer, although I see Steve G's point about purposely under-scheduling. Our kids don't do any official activities outside the house beyond pre-k for 4.5 year old Peter and Sunday School for both of them. Are you the one that posted about the internet sucking away moms' feeling of having time to ourselves because we go online instead of reading a book or talking to real people? Maybe that was Faith and Family Live's blog. My from-home job is on the computer and I found that if I turn off bloglines and Gmail notifier and avoid the internet, I get so much more done and feel much better about myself. So the computer is definitely my downfall.

[mrsdarwin]

I feel like this and I haven't even gone away for the weekend. Perhaps it can be attributed to the new baby -- but not necessarily; I think I'd be behind even without someone taking up one arm most of the time. Though I'd like to note: I used to blithely respond, "What's one more?" when friends asked how we'd handle having four. Not any more. One more is a lot, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.

Good post.

[mrsdarwin]

I feel like this and I haven't even gone away for the weekend. Perhaps it can be attributed to the new baby -- but not necessarily; I think I'd be behind even without someone taking up one arm most of the time. Though I'd like to note: I used to blithely respond, "What's one more?" when friends asked how we'd handle having four. Not any more. One more is a lot, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.

Good post.