folding to the panic and chaos
Last night, everything kind of hit me all at once. Some things I can talk and write about, others I can not.
I am trying to take care of everyone and everything and starting to feel very overwhelmed.
There is just too much going on and not enough of me to go around...
My reserves are severely tapped. I feel as if I am driving an old beat up car and just filling it up $5.00 at a time and never running on a full tank.
This is not a good way to live.
I spend my days daydreaming of sleeping for a whole day (or a whole weekend). Of taking off to a far away island somewhere to stand in the sun, like some kind of mom-version of Olivia Pope. Of not having to worry about anyone or anything for just a few hours.
It just doesn't seem to be the year for that.
We are in the height of flu season, I have had a head cold for over a week that I just can't shake, and I am perpetually paranoid about passing any kind of respiratory illness to my son. I know I am going to have a giant panic attack the day he gets his next fever and while I rationally know that this is ridiculous and that he will be fine, it's not something I can get away from yet.
Yesterday, he had a follow up appointment with the audiologist. It's an almost 2 hour appointment and halfway into the second hour, my phone rang. It was the kid's school. They were sending my daughter to the office and asking me to come pick her up because she had a fever and a tummy ache.
I froze. I didn't know what to do. I was on the other side of town, finding out that my son's hearing is not improving and may, for some reason, be getting worse, and my daughter was at school with a fever and a tummy ache and historically, these symptoms usually precede some kind of expelling of bodily fluids. I am fully aware that I have had far worse days than yesterday, and some quite recently, but it was just all too much. We cut the audiology appointment short and promised to follow up on another day for the debriefing part. We made it to the school within 25 minutes and I found her with a warm forehead, red cheeks, and a rumbling tummy, waiting quietly for me in the office. We all went home, changed into our pyjamas, laid out some towels on top of the bed (just in case) and had a nap.
Well, that was my plan at least. The kids "napped" for all of 15 minutes and then went off to play and demand things like snacks and Netflix access and reading of books and a bunch of other things that were not SLEEPING. And damn it, I was just so tired (and a certain someone got over her feverishness very quickly).
After dinner, The Consort and I managed to get the kids to bed early and then I planted myself in front of the TV in the living room and settled in for my version of a soothing, brainless, providing-order-when-I-feel-surrounded-by-chaos, activity: folding laundry. I sat and folded and surrounded myself with neat little piles of my family's perfectly folded wardrobes and felt a calm descend upon me.
And then I decided to watch Benjamin Button and cried all the tears.
{Sigh}
Maybe I should just take up colouring like my friend Elan has.