Today was about laundry. Hanging loads on the wind-whipped line, sudsing tomato sauce stains in the bathroom sink, swapping my summer wardrobe for wool, tacking duvets into their covers, ironing, ironing, ironing. Yesterday was about terrifying (to me) doctor’s appointments and even more terrifying (to me) social commitments. The day before was about choosing renters for our lonely house in the States and channeling a hefty build-up of financial worries into legalspeak.
Recharge time has been conspicuously absent from the week, and my batteries are starting to flicker and buzz. I don’t like who I become when creativitiy gets pushed to the back burner by busy work; it’s like subsisting on cream of wheat while my untouched four-course dinner turns lukewarm and begins breeding salmonella. It makes me grouchy. (I’m always grouchy when I’m hungry.)
More than that, this sense of having my attention forced toward things that don’t particularly interest me feels for all the world like pressure. It’s not like laundry is especially stressful or someone’s holding a gun to my head over the wording in our rental contract. But still, I feel the heaviness of unmet expectations after a tiring day settling squarely on my chest.
So here’s my question: How do I…
A) Clone 24 hours into 48, or
B) Survive on less than a full night of sleep, or
C) Find a personal assistant who will work for cupcakes, or
D) Be content when the real world’s demands drown out impulses of the heart?
Did someone say cupcakes?? DROOL.
If you find the answers to any of your questions, let me know. I could use a time-cloner. I can survive on less than a full night’s sleep but not more than one, and even the first one isn’t pretty.
I also have a difficult time in joyless tasks like housework. I hate it. I avoid it until we have no underwear left. Then, I do laundry…all of it. It sometimes takes me two days to get through it all. I am an all-or-nothing kind of girl. When I read a book, it is my priority. Catch up on my Tivo-ed programs, cook for the freezer, you name it. But it is the housework that is the most difficult. It is so time-consuming, depressing and BORING, the only joy of it is when it is done. I would love to hire someone for cupcakes as well. If you find any kind of agency that operates on baked goods, let me know, too…right after Lizardek.
If only you’d posted this yesterday…when I got home today I found that Lindsey had made cupcakes, so my services are spoken for already.
Bethany, fyi those cupcakes were for my jv volleyball players. And besides, Tom’s “services” consist of checking facebook and drinking beer leaving Greyson to his own devices. Oh well, Grey hasn’t died while I’m at practice…yet. But now he’s crawling, so we’ll see how long that lasts.
When you find the answers let me know. My oldest has been on a FOUR. WEEK. VACATION. from Kindergarten (hello?? four weeks??) and the last four weeks have just gone down the wormhole of “the real world’s demands” as you put it. I am not a pretty picture when entire days go by without a minute during which I can disappear into my head and get lost in there.
So…are you saying our very helpful Sophie does NOT count as a personal assistant?
Liz – I guess the term “survive” is open to interpretation. Like you, my version of sleep-deprived survival isn’t pretty.
Megsie – I used to be all-or-nothing (a.k.a. obsessive!), but my brain seems to have taken on the life of a hummingbird–always flitting from concern to concern and whirring angrily when it has to land for something as banal as housework. I know some women really do find joy in it though; wondering if they’d be the ones to talk to about labor for baked goods?
Tom – That’s okay; we already have Facebook-checking and beer-drinking covered.
Lindsey – Maybe you need to implement a cupcake reward system: 1 for loading the dishwasher, 2 for cleaning the bathroom, 3 for keeping the baby alive!
Jennifer – Four weeks?! Natalie has barely been in school that long! When did your son’s school start? I like how you put it–disappearing into your head and getting lost in there; it’s exactly what I’m longing to do right now (preferably in a hot bath with mango-scented candles and a Lindt truffle within reach).
Dear husband – No.
I’m having this same crisis. I’m trying to get my manuscript edited before we leave for 10 days in France, and the kids are guilt tripping me left and right for “having to work.”
The only thing I can consol myself with is that this ins’t my average week, and that it too shall pass.
I’ll meet you for cupcakes soon!
Have any good gluten-free cupcake recipes?
Oh my dear, kindred spirit friend – how I needed to read this TODAY. Not yesterday, not a week ago, but TODAY. My batteries are just plain dead, I think, and I need to spend some time with whatever charges me up. Too much people time (even GOOD people time drains me when I don’t get a break) and not enough quiet time. I, too, like to get lost in my head, or in a day where there’s nothing really pressing that must be done. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I like to think I’m all about the “slow” movement with my life.
I am just reminding myself that there are busy seasons in life, and then peaceful ones where I’ll feel lonely and longing for some diversion. I am promising myself a more at-home November than September and October have been…that NO is a complete sentence. Though now I have to worry that I might be hosting Thanksgiving in my tiny apartment…holy Mother of God! Too bad we can’t have pizza and call it good.
Why not have pizza for Thanksgiving? You could compromise with the traditionalists by putting turkey, corn, and sweet potato toppings over a layer of cranberry sauce on a biscuit-dough pizza. Or maybe not. 🙂