First, I want to honour the men and women who have fought bravely to protect our country, our freedom, and our safety from those who do not think we rock as much as we think we do. While I am far too wussy to join the army, I salute those of you who have and who will. Thank you!
It's a wonder I managed to write that at all. I was sure I'd forget, even though I appreciate Remembrance Day and what it reminds us of. When I signed up for NaBloPoMo, I knew it would be one heck of a commitment. I knew I would have to post every single day for thirty days. I knew I would have a hard time. What I didn't know is how much it would drive home my current situation. I was lying in bed with Spawnling a few minutes ago, waiting for his breathing to slow and his eyes to close and his cute little feet to stop kicking the wall in a very un-cute fashion and fall asleep, for the love of my sanity, please. While I pretended to also be sleeping so he would stop talking to me and take the hint, I thought about what I would write tonight. It didn't take long to come up with a topic: feeling completely overwhelmed. What took longer was figuring out how I would put it into words.
I often use metaphors. In fact, yesterday's post involved one mother of a metaphor (self, that was a fabulous pun!), and today we will continue that trend.
Lots of people equate that overwhelmed feeling with drowning, or suffocating, or some other unfortunate situation that impairs the ever-important human function of breathing. That's great, but it's getting old. I need to use something more unique. I am The Maven, after all, and I don't do imitation very well.
Try to picture life as a beautiful house by the ocean. It's everything you've ever wanted: it has cute red shutters, nice wood floors, and a beach for a backyard. Most importantly, it has everything that matters to you set up so you can see it, touch it, and rearrange it if necessary. You like being in your house because the control is entirely yours. Want to redecorate a room? No problem! Just feel like a light dusting? Sure thing! Need to pull out that old recipe book and whip up something nice? Look no further, it's right there!
One day, an alert pops up on your smart phone from the weather station: There's a tropical depression heading your way. Tropical Depression Intrepid, they're calling it. That's fine. There's nothing like some active weather to spice things up a bit! You close the windows, lock the door, and watch the wind blow. A few things shake inside your living room, but it's nothing to text home about.
Then, another alert lights up the screen: Tropical Depression Intrepid has been upgraded to Tropical Storm Gutsy. Well, dang. Guess those clothes will have to come off the line. And, hey, maybe the shutters should actually get shut for a while. Before you close the last one, you notice something fly by... is that the patio furniture? The roar of the storm can be heard from your bedroom, and you hold tightly to some of your most important things. Still, it's just a storm. You can ride those out: you're a trooper!
Another alert: Guess what? This weather hates your face. It doesn't like your positive attitude and ability to wait it out until it passes. It's having none of that. It is now a full-blown category 4 hurricane called Spawnling, and it's going to eat your house down to the foundation.
***
Wow. What a bummer of a post, right? What the hell is going on? Am I trying to say that I hate being a mom by conjuring up images of weather phenomena causing mass amounts of destruction to all I hold dear? Sure sounds that way, but you know that's not the case, right? If not, you don't read my blog enough and should commit to doing so more often.
Like I mentioned above, I'm just feeling completely overwhelmed today. I have what seems like a million things to do and I just can't seem to do them. Emails are piling up, phone calls are not being returned, the kitchen looks like it was a North Korean nuclear test site (except there are no creepy flags of the Great Leader planted in the rubble), Gutsy's birthday party is on Saturday, Intrepid's is in two weeks, we have more commitments than a metropolitan mental hospital, and more appointments than a droopy-faced heiress at a Botox clinic. Throw in what seemed like an unending wave of illness until a couple of days ago, and well, I've been foaming at the mouth.
Anyway, I've been doing some thinking. Let me finish my most excellent metaphor and we'll talk about that.
***
Your attempt to board up the windows does little to save your house and its contents from the hurricane's wrath. In the end, Hurricane Spawnling and his brother storms suck everything up into the clouds, or drown into the waves, leaving you to wonder what on earth happened to your perfectly manageable and very quaint
The thing is, you can't blame the weather for your problems. Intrepid, Gutsy and Spawnling are not responsible for your insistence on trying to maintain your home after their arrival. A smarter move would have been to accept that you can't possibly keep up with everything else while dealing with natural phenomena of that degree; by realizing you're only human. That maybe you should have been more dynamic in your thinking and accepted life on life's terms.
The hurricane churns, and as it does it spits out a few broken reminders of what you used to have in your house: Remembering everyone's birthday, cleaning the gutters, writing songs, painting the hallway, finishing school, jogging every day... You collect what you can and put it in a bag. You start up the beach toward higher ground.
The funny thing is that there are a lot of people doing the same thing. The beach is positively filled with other bewildered individuals. You all turn and walk up the sandbank, worriedly looking behind you for fear that nothing will be as good as what you're leaving behind.
But you know what? It's going to be okay. The weather is still crazy down by the beach, but it's good up here. You sift through lost memorabilia and find a few things of interest: nights out, contracts you don't have to leave half-finished because the school called, the rare R-rated movie, an uninterrupted conversation with a friend. You dust them off and put them on a shelf, one at a time, in your new place a few miles from where you once lived. It's a cluttered, smelly, inhumanely loud patchwork of a place. It really is. But it is what it. And it quickly begins to feel more like home than anything else. Besides, there are always smelly candles and headphones, right?
***
Acceptance. I need to use some of that. My house will not be clean, I will not be able to see everybody I want to see when I want to see them, my plants will die because I forget to water them, I will take a month to finish a 300 page book, and I will swallow my pride when I hear specialists say "We were supposed to see [insert child's name here] [insert a time so old it should be carbon dated here]"The problem isn't that I have too much to do. We, as parents, always have too much to do. It's how I deal with it that matters. In the last few days I haven't exactly been the essence of serenity.
Acceptance. That's what I need.
And maybe a little less coffee.
Unless it's decaf.