Stress Biscuit

 

I'm so weepy lately. It's not PMS, even. I haven't been eating well or exercising, so I'm sure that's part of it. I feel inexplicably sad and scared about the Virginia Tech shootings, that school being so similar to mine, that student probably no stranger than some of the kids I've taught.  I think about how horrified those professors must have been, how disbelieving, maybe.

And then, there's so much going on. We head to San Diego this weekend to see Eric's family, and work is just so totally overwhelming.  My kids are amazing, but demand so, so much time and attention. 

Having our life in boxes is hard, too--I need a pretty neat environment to function really well, and we're just in transition at the moment.  There is so much to moving:  the kids needing new care, the paperwork, the packing, the bills...on and on.  This move is such a happy thing, and yet I feel I haven't had a chance to really process it, to even get excited.  Things are just too busy.  And not really a good busy.  A breaking-point busy.  A drowning busy.

These ten to twelve hour days are just killing me.  I can't sustain it.  Only a few more weeks in the semester!  I just need to hold out until then.  Then we'll be in the new house, and I can spend some time with the girls, nest, and take some time off. 

I can't get over this paradox, the strangeness of having so many things in my life be so great, and at the same time to be exhausted and pushed to my limits almost every day.  An important task this summer will be to take some time to set priorities, to rediscover the part of me that is not wrapped up in working so much.  I just need some rest.

You know what's funny?  I always think about the pioneer women, for some reason, and wonder if I would ever have been able to cut it at that gig.  Did those ladies have "me" time?  Or did they just bust their asses every second of the day?  Why am I complaining?  It's not like a have to churn butter or anything.

I know, I know--the pace of life was different, the challenges unique.  I'm romanticizing things in a big way.  I just wonder what my problem is, sometimes, why I can't just tough it out.  It's not like I'm a single mom, or living in poverty, or with a terminal disease.  Things could be much, much tougher. 

Why doesn't that make me feel any better?