Stuck In Panic Mode

Honestly, I'm really friggin' overwhelmed right now.

• The weather is hotter than the dickens. No a/c sounds kind of salt of the earth but it just stinks right now.
• The yard is overwhelming me. (too much trimming, mowing, harvesting and watering to do...not to mention fall planting!)
• I'm out of touch with friends and support. Feeling alone. Drowning. Must rectify.
• I had my phone stolen...AGAIN...and am consequently without my: calendar, timer, reading list, housework routine, alarm clock, address book and phone list, gps, wrist watch and general contactability. Feel like a modern idiot but that doesn't really fix the honest helplessness of it all.
• There are far too many boys in this house! I can't seem to get anything done.
• Have many new house repairs (hello broken windows!) and no new renovation progress since the dining room paint job of yore. Am falling behind in the scores.
• Am feeling so frustrated with my kids moral development sometimes. How do you teach niceness for crying out loud?!?

So, that's the story. Also, we went camping and pulled ticks off of every single one of us....the grand prize winner being Nib who collected 10! ARGH! SO GROSS!!!! I am tempted to run screaming away from New England tomorrow. I would like to move to Hawaii or else Seattle.

There are however, shasta daisies in quantity....it has to be admitted. It is far too hot to bake things with them but there are berries to pick. (Maybe I will take the boys raspberry picking and we will make cheater ice cream with them?) The library is wonderful and cool and full of happy, comforting stories. I am going out to dinner with a woman friend tomorrow night for a mama date alone. (May there be memorably delicious food and conversation.) I did pick up paint chips today in reference to several projects in the house that I have buzzing around in my brain. I will not be defeated. But man, if you have tips on any of my bullet points...please feel free to chip in. 

My Inner Neat Nick

I am not pregnant, but I have a few friends who are at the moment...among them one of my sisters (Hi Doubleddog!!! *waving*). And the other day a few of us were sitting around sympathizing with one very pregnant pal over her irresistible nesting urges.

"EVERYTHING must be done now. It is really important. It will not be okay if we plan on doing it later and I think I'll cry." 

You know, that sort of thing. And I we all ended up in stitches laughing about how dire the whole thing feels and how ridiculous it sounds out loud, especially when you're not pregnant...and also how fabulous it is to know that other people have been the same sort of mutant life-form you turn into when you're making another small human. Golly there is hope in solidarity. Such a great word.

And then tonight A and I went out for dinner and I told him that although I'm a mildly messy person and not very organized about my housekeeping systems and methods I recently put my finger on the fact that disorder really bugs me. On some deep psychological level that is not very overt, I come undone and begin to unravel at the seams. Its just like how some people get grouchy when they're too hungry. I do that when there are too many dirty dishes and none of the toys are in the toy box anymore and the floor hasn't been swept in four days. I am not sure if this is a new part of me emerging as I become neater or if I've always been this way and just noticed, but I've found that if I notice I'm feeling ultra-grouchy and snappy and think about why, sometimes I realize that I think the house is driving me nuts. And then, if I find a little space to work on the house, I magically feel better.

And yeah. Its a tiny piece of that same mania that I feel when I'm at the end of a pregnancy. Except I don't feel that way all the time, around the clock even at every potty break in the middle of the night. I just feel that way when things get too out of control. But, yeah...its the same feeling.

And then today, while blog browsing....I bumped into a cartoonist's blog and they had this fantastic entry that made me giggle, but my favorite part was this drawing which perfectly captures "the feeling."

Occasionally, this beast is me. I feel it coming on.