What's up?

What's up?  How am I doing?  Well I will tell you.  I have pretty much figured out that on a day to day basis things are fine.  Go to work, come home, do light housework and minimal interaction with family, on weekends catch up on housework and family time, lather, rinse, repeat.  It doesn't feel like I am optimizing my life but it has become comfortable.  Doable.

The problem is my life doesn't remain in this simple place where I have nothing to do but work, housework and family.  And the moment something new enters I don't know how to deal with it.

Thus begins my panic about graduation. 

Last night I used my "hostile voice" with Jake while discussing the Eagle project which is now on the calendar for May 19 and 26 and will need to be actually planned.  I told Jake he had 3 years to get his Eagle and now that he has barely 3 months I will only be using my hostile voice to discuss this project until he is done since my nice voice and my patience has clearly not been working.

I have to create a "body", a lifesize representation of Jake for the Edina senior party.  Apparently they are one of the big hits of the party.  One of my neighbors does them for people for a small fee.  I am tempted to hire her but it is the kind of thing I would love to do on my own.  But I just can't even think of where to start.  I did manage to pick up the template from the senior party committee last week but now it is just sitting in the corner tormenting me.

I have to throw a graduation party.  Now if you don't live in the midwest you might think I don't "have" to throw a party but trust me I do have to.  And also I want to.  I have been looking forward to throwing this party for 4 years (OK 17 years).  It isn't the party that stresses me it is the realization that I don't have the time or energy to put into the planning that I had imagined.  I do need to get our yard cleaned up.  I wish we could do like many people and throw ourselves into house projects.  Finally get the house painted and fix the landscaping.  I remember my parents laid sod in the backyard, which had been dirt my entire childhood, before I graduated.  And we watched a neighbor a few years ago re-side her house and re-do all the landscaping in the front yard before her daughter's graduation.  My big plan is to have someone come kill the weeds this spring before the dandelions take over our yard as they usually do.

I have managed to release the idea that I will actually complete Jake's childhood photo albums but in the mean time I would like to do something with the pictures I have all sorted.  Maybe I will just buy some poster paper and create a few posters of my favorites.  Which makes it sound like a funeral...Will keep thinking about that one.

I would say if you need me the next couple months I will be working on one of these things but the truth is I will probably be sitting in a corner rocking back and forth because when I am overwhelmed I prefer to do nothing and prove the imposibility of the task rather than rolling up my sleeves and making it happen.

Until it is almost too late (which it practically is right now) and then I get up and do a sloppy job and just get it done and tell myself it is what it is and I am busy.  If I am honest with myself that is what I do.  Self sabotage is my life.

I hate that after being so involved in Jake's life and education, pushing him, encouraging him, directing him, that I am too overwhelmed by working full time to throw the party I want to throw, create the photo books I want to create and make his "body" myself.  I am actually planning to take a couple days off work to make sure this Eagle project happens but it just might kill us both.

OK just thought I would share what is up.  I march forward.  It is what it is.  This is where I am right now.  I won't be here forever.