Help, Help, I’m Being Oppressed! (aka, please forgive me for being so behind on everything I’m supposed to be doing.)

At the risk of misquoting Monty Python in my title, I stand before you now with a confession: I am in serious danger of being eaten alive by my computer inbox.

Allow me to explain. I am not good at balancing my life. I am not good at spreading out my work in easy-to-manage portions. I want to take all my medicine at once and get it over with. I don’t enjoy daily maintenance. I’m a sprinter, not a marathon runner.

This makes for a slightly chaotic life.

It also makes for overwhelming piles…of clean, ready-to-fold laundry…of dirty dishes…of e-mails, blogs, snail mail, and children’s papers from school.

Our back yard – a lovely place to escape the piles.

These piles get so large, so oppressive, that my mind then shuts down and I do nothing. Well, I do stuff, just not those stuffs. I pick the kids up from school (which takes an hour every day), I drive them to music lessons and scouts and other activities (often having to wait around town and do errands while waiting because it’s not worth the half-hour round-trip home in between). I cook, I wash laundry, I exercise (sometimes), and I spend my 2 hours, three mornings a week, writing at a local café. I go to Mothers Of Preschoolers, I go to the Friends of the Library meetings, I take the cats to the vet, I go to church (where I teach twice a week), and I do other stuff that I can’t think of right now.

I do all of these things in jeans and t-shirts because I forgot how to walk in heels years ago and, though I like comfortable, loose, down-to-my-pale-ankle-length dresses, sadly the fashion world does not. I long for the jumpers of the ‘90’s.

And, while I do all that stuff in my cross-trainers, I ignore the growing piles.

And they grow, and Grow, and GROW.

The kittens are doing great!

I’m holding out for next fall, when our youngest enters Kindergarten. I’m holding on to this fond dream that I will then be more organized. That I will designate certain days as Laundry Day, Cleaning Day, Writing Day, Blogging Day, Errand Day, Preparation Day, Meeting Day, etc. etc. If my math is correct, there are more than five days listed there, which, when taking the five-day school week into consideration, could be a problem.

Now here is a pile I can enjoy!

In the meantime, I am feeling overwhelming guilt. Guilt that my husband has to dig through the laundry basket morning after morning (though he never complains) because I forgot – again – to fold stuff. Guilt that my children sometimes get fed frozen chicken nuggets. Guilt that I haven’t read or commented on ANY BLOGS for, like, a week.

If I consider blogging to be my job – and it is part of my overall writing career – then I am not deserving my pay.

How on earth do women with full time jobs ever get anything else done?

The playhouse, the rhubarb.

So…I am apologizing to you fellow bloggers who might have felt neglected by me lately. I am apologizing to my family for the six baskets of laundry that seem to have taken up permanent residence in the hall. And I am apologizing to you all that I am whining.

Perhaps life will improve next week when school gets out for the summer? Yeah, I know, wishful thinking.

In the meantime, before I figure out how to handle being me, please understand that, though there may be a “temporarily out of her mind” sign posted in my front lawn, I appreciate your patience and if you have any advice for my insanity, I would greatly appreciate it.

P.S. – My doctor assures me that it’s normal to drive by rote and to forget to turn and that I don’t have A) early on-set Alzheimer’s, B) a brain tumor or, C) early on-set menopause. I was both reassured and depressed by her words.

Now I can only blame it on myself.

Advertisement