Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Round and Round We Go

I've been seriously inhibited in doing the second part of this post, about how Wonderful and Amazing our friends, family and church family have been in the last month, by the fact that I've been actually trying to write proper thank you notes, and so have been conserving my writing energy to attend to that giant endeavor. Unfortunately, I' m not doing a good job. In fact, while I've written a few notes, I have not been able to seem to put addresses on them and send them. And then there's the long list, of course, that I haven't written. I'm caught in that awful place of not doing my duty on either side-writing here or writing there.

Which is really where I find myself so much of the time now. I flit from one thing to another, never finishing anything, starting a thousand things, unfocused, overwhelmed, and guilty. 'Oh' said Matt yesterday, 'You're that woman.'
'What woman?!'
'That woman I preached about three years ago. I thought it was someone else but it appears to be you.'
'What woman?!'
'That woman who starts to vacuum the house, looks up and sees that the laundry isn't done, stops vacuuming to do laundry, sees that the beds aren't made, stops doing laundry to make the beds, sees the bathrooms need to be cleaned, stops making beds to clean the bathrooms. So finally at the end of the day, the house is in more of a wreck than when she started.'
'You're right! I'm going in circles' I said.

I wasn't always this person. I've probably always tended toward it, but crisis brings out both the best and the worst in us, and in this case, we have So Much Stuff, and so many little things in life have piled up, and then I wrecked the car, and we're a touch behind in school (to make the understatement of the century), that I feel to myself that I'm going in circles.

I can vaguely see light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually spring will come and we'll be able to bear being out in the garage looking for all the things we want. And hopefully by then we will have lived without them so long we won't want them any more and will be able sell them, or give them away. And we're gradually falling into a routine. And I'm slowly beginning to feel comfy in this house. I'm not thinking constantly about the door handles in the old one, and the way the light would stream through the window in the morning, and that certain cobweb over the piano that I always meant to sweep down but never did. My minds eye has slowly been turning to imagine what color the dining room ought to be, and whether we should keep a lot of things in the hallway, or nothing at all. And just now the snow is seriously pouring heavily out of the sky, so I will go and have another whack at those notes, and help Elphine and Alouiscious think of possible clubs to start-a Castle Club, a Book Making Club, A Picnic Club, a Girls Club With No Boys Allowed, or a Coloring Club. I think those were the options. My suggestion of a Memory Work and Reading Club did not fly. Oh well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

While I know that it's not the answer to everything, I think hugs definitely help. All of your family have had so much on your plates, and keeping so much going at once. It's natural to feel tired and/or overwhelmed at times.. I'm sure you're all feeling that way. I know that when my family was going through the worst of times some a bit over a few years back, some times, even if one or more of us got tired or irritated, the other tried to just reach out and give the other a hug. I think it helped a lot, even when I might not have thought it did.