It seems this blog is mostly about my mental state. Ah well, it is what it is. This week has been hard. Rachel is in a production of Into The Woods which starts 2/21. Rachel doesn't drive. So I drive her to rehearsal every night. Which is four hours in length. And then do the rest of my business during the rest of the day.
All this is to say that I am getting to the giddy point of exhaustion. And that is quickly followed by the grumpy and insomniac points of exhaustion. It is true for me and very very odd that when I am really tired, I have trouble resting adequately.
So I'm tired which, of course, affects my mood negatively.
And then there's homeschooling, which is like herding cats with regard to the twins and the aforementioned Rachel. And then there's the house, which is a complete disaster because we're living in it all day long and have too much stuff that we don't return to where it belongs. That's the sword of Damocles hanging over my head ever since my in-laws decided to make it know that they hate the way we (read: I) keep (or don't keep) house. It's definitely the pain that keeps aching and aching.
Occasionally something positive happens but it's been a bummer of a week. Yesterday was one of those bummer days. Really a bummer day. I spent the last couple of hours in bed, trying to get past my pain and irritation from the day and fall into blissful slumber. I ended up having nightmares, which sort of botched that idea. But then today dawned.
Saturdays at least hold the promise of being good because I get to go out and do whatever I want. Presumably, I'm supposed to do homeschool prep but the underlying theme has always been, "Go out there and enjoy yourself a little." So I do. In my own strange way. I often go to the library and do my 3 hours of volunteer work there. I read a lot. I usually take a good nap. I go out to lunch. It's quiet, I'm not in charge of the kids, and I get to feel like someone who is not beaten down into the mud all the time.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a letter in the mail from the branch manager of our library. She was inviting me to attend an initiative to make plans for the betterment of the county in which we live. I was baffled. Why on earth would she invite me to do this? Nevertheless, I was tickled and I agreed to do so. The meeting was this morning.
It snowed about 4 inches last night. When I went out, ten minutes before the meeting was to start, to get the car, it was covered in fluffy, beautiful, cold snow and a bit of ice. Needless to say, I was a bit late. No worries. I got coffee (huzzah!) and sat down with six other women. One man showed up a few minutes earlier and there was a facilitator there as well.
The exercise was strange in that we were supposed to be having "conversations" about what we wanted our county to be doing in the next several years. Sounds like psycho-babble to me and my tolerance for psycho-babble was used up long ago. The facilitator was, likewise, one of those Toastmaster-type guys. I'm sure he was a nice fellow but I amused myself by counting up the number of times he did one of those hale-fellow-well-met things. And I didn't look him in the eye because I didn't want him to know that I thought his technique was a little...what? Forward maybe? I don't know. I dislike it when I think anyone is cajoling me along to do anything.
The "conversations" themselves were interesting, though. A couple of the ladies were retired, the rest were still employed, I was the only person not gainfully employed. But we got to talking about a lot of things, individually and in group settings. I was still kinda zonked (no sleep) but I was able to force myself to think and come up with some intelligent things to share. It was nice.
Afterwards, I did a little shelving seeing as I hadn't been into the library in a month, because of Rachel's intense rehearsal schedule. I was flying, I was so happy! I had ideas coming out and zinging around while I was shelving. I felt invincible. I wrote beautiful words and had amazing ideas. Why? Because I had been taken seriously, not only by other people but by myself. Scary and sad and lovely.
The buzz is largely gone, but it was pleasant while it lasted. And I don't feel like I have to crawl into bed to recover from a difficult day. I'm even planning to get up and use the last hour my family is out to the movies to clean the house. How's that? It's a pleasing thing. So, while I'm no longer at the top of the big hill, I haven't zoomed down to the bottom either. And the view from up here is marvelous!
No comments:
Post a Comment