It's nearly midnight on Saturday, and I'm wide awake, having consumed inordinate amounts of caffeine throughout the day to a) wake up, b) stay awake, and c) have faux energy to get things done. In reflecting over the last 24 hours, I find myself completely baffled by something: I have barely sat still during that time (except when I finally passed out into sleep from around 3 am to 11 am -- thank God for Saturday mornings and Marty pulling daddy duty), yet I am surrounded by things needing to be done. During these past 24 hours, I have: done 6 loads of laundry, cleaned Will's nursery, changed the sheets and dusted in our bedroom, worked on a baby photo album, bought a birthday present, ran the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen, researched recipes online and in my cookbooks, made out a meal plan for the next week and a half, went grocery shopping (with a detailed list and on a tight budget), paid bills, bathed the baby, washed and sterilized all the bottles, reorganized the pantry, and worked more on cleaning and reorganizing my office. During that time, I also managed to play with Will (I'm teaching him colors and shapes, we're reading Winnie-the-Pooh, and we're practicing saying "Mama"), spend some quality time with my husband, watch a movie ("Sunshine Cleaning" -- anything with cutie-pie Amy Adams is worth watching), and almost finish
One Fifth Avenue during an extremely long bath this morning from the deliciously silent hour from 1 to 2 a.m. And all this after I put in a very long and hard full-time workweek, during which I completed 4 projects in 5 days, which is an excellent showing, trust me. So you'd think after all this energy expenditure and things accomplished, I'd feel good about where I stand in all areas of my life. Well, you'd think. But to be completely honest, I feel the exact opposite. I'm facing a mountain of work at my job next week, and if we don't get a daytime babysitter soon, I might very well break down and cry 5 times a day instead of my usual 2, as I look with extreme guilt at my poor son who's
so over his bouncy seat and swing and play mat, my only aids in keeping him occupied while Mommy works on laying out congress posters for her clients. I'm in the middle of about 18 projects in our household, from washing and packing up all my maternity clothes and rearranging my closet for seasonal purposes, to creating a new method of bill-paying and budgeting as we continue to work toward our savings goals while paying off the last of my divorce debt (to put it nicely, my ex didn't exactly stand up and take his share) and other yucky bills (um, I wish doctors would inform you of the $3,000 after-insurance price tag when they dangle a C-section in front of you in your most desperate moment -- might take some of the edge off that desperation). Instead of going on about the rest, and I could, let me just state unequivocally that I'm overwhelmed. Meanwhile, I haven't responded to about 95% of the emails received in the last 2 months, I haven't talked on the phone with anyone in about 3 weeks -- save for my mom who got all of 5 minutes today, and I really need to give myself a pedicure and a root touch-up. And figure out how to get out of sweats and stop sporting the ever-present ponytail. And shower before 8 pm each day. To top it all off, I look outside and see the warm autumn sunshine and breezes blowing the first leaves to the ground and I know that fall is already starting to pass me by, when I already missed spring and summer because I was hugely pregnant and then a brand-new mom who briefly lost all concept of time.
I'm not one of those girls who's going to put a big fat smile on her face and pretend to the world like she's got her act together. Nope, I'm done with faking (I was miserable in my first marriage but made sure no one knew until the day I decided to be done being miserable). So I guess I'm swinging to the other end of the spectrum -- brutal honesty. I'm just not doing well at this juggling thing. And I'm sharing this with you, all 8(?) of my readers, in a desperate plea for advice, tricks, tips -- help of any kind. What's your system for paying bills? Grocery-shopping? Meal-planning? Answering the phone? Getting sleep? Cleaning the house?
Getting out of the house???I just re-read the title of this blog post, "Doing it all," and laughed to myself. Of course it should say "Not doing it all." Or, "Doing it all, crappily." Well, now that that's off my chest, I'm off to go soak in the tub for an hour and escape to a building in Manhattan whose inhabitants spend their time gossiping and shopping at Louis Vuitton. Sigh.
