Why do I always do this? You know what I mean. . .
It's fall, my favorite season. The air is crisp, falling leaves layer a colorful blanket on the grass, and I get re-energized. So I start taking on new projects, one right after another, until I am banging my head on the wall wondering why I do this every year.
Yesterday after painting class I stopped by my favorite craft store to pick up a few things for Ian's birthday party. As I wandered through the store, I ran into one of my doctors. She is so sweet. She recognized me first and said, "hi". We started talking, she asked how I was doing, and in that second when I started to say "fine" I realized that I was completely exhausted. After that, all I could think of was going home and taking a nap. . .so I did.
I awoke to the phone ringing at 3:00. Steve answered, then came over to the couch where I had been deeply dozing, and he said, "Carla, are you driving carpool this week?"
I looked at my watch, couldn't really focus on the time, raised my eyes back up to Steve with a perplexed look on my face, then stared at my watch one more time. "Yes," was all I could say; but in my head, a loud voice was screaming, "YES! OMG - I forgot to pick the kids up at school!"
With what felt like lightning speed, I sprang from the couch to grab my keys and get to the school. What I really resembled was Tim Conway dressed as an elderly man shuffling across the floor in some vain attempt to do something quickly. "I think you're going to have to go get them, Steve. My body is not fully engaged yet." So off he went, to pick up Ian and his three carpool friends from the principal's office.
You would think I would learn from the shock of all that. But I didn't.
While Steve was gone, I made the first layer of frosting for the R2-D2 cake, the assembly of which took the next two and a half hours. Dishes from the previous night's dinner were still piled in the sink, and I was adding to the mess. Sigh. "Will I ever get caught up?" I wondered silently.
Then I tried about 150 times to get Ian to come to the kitchen to do his homework. He said I was mean, and marched upstairs. Yeah, right. That's why I am doing all this, kiddo, cuz I'm mean. Sigh.
So I started dinner and waited for him to come back down. He did. But getting him to sit down long enough to complete one part of his homework took forty-five minutes. He was distracted by Ainsley mostly, who was running around the house being silly. He can't resist participating in silliness, especially when the alternative is doing his homework. Every few seconds I would stop him, turn him toward the bar where his homework was waiting patiently for a pencil to complete it. He would write for a few seconds, break his pencil lead intentionally, then march off to the office to sharpen it. This happened four times. No wonder I wasn't making any progress with dinner. Sigh.
Then I remembered something I saw once on a co-worker's desk: a neatly framed, scroll-lettered paragraph which read:
God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of tasks. Right now I am so far behind, I will never die.Yup, that's me all right.
Right now I feel like I am running on an exercise wheel. All I can see is what is straight ahead, directly in front of my face. But the world keeps throwing bits and pieces at me from the side, trying to get me to pay attention. But I have to ignore it and keep on running. If you want me to see it, put it in front of me, otherwise it isn't going to get my attention. I have a job to do. Must. . .keep. . .running. . .
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