Reaching For Parental And Personal Sanity

Ever have one of those mornings where you look around and have no idea where the days have gone, what direction you are actually working toward, or how everything managed to get so rear end over tea kettle?

That is my morning today.

Our house was spotless and lovely last week.  No longer.

I could use the biopsy and exhaustion afterward as an excuse, but I won't.  We utterly and completely suck at keeping up with housework, even knowing that it needs to be done.

On top of that, I'm feeling woefully behind in planning for the library, especially for lesson plans and such, despite having all my reproducibles copied for tomorrow's classes and my topic and everything well in hand. 

It makes no sense.  I am a detail-oriented, utterly and completely into planning person when it comes to vacations.  Why can't I put the same effort into caring for my own home?  Or, for that matter, into getting my rear end off the couch to exercise more often? 

It's a conundrum.  And I'm wondering if part of my problem is that I'm not scheduling in the drudgery like I do the fun -- maybe I need to be more like Martha Stewart and put "weed the front flower beds" on my calendar for Thursday and then make myself do it so that I can cross it off. 

I wonder if that would work?  Better yet, do you think Martha might show up to weed my flower beds for me?


Juggling ninety bazillion things at once has become a feature, not a bug, in our household.  And it is wearing me down.  In Lord of the Rings, when Bilbo says to Gandalf that he is beginning to feel like too little butter scraped across too much toast?  That's me this morning.

Aside from sitting down and making a "to do" list that is a mile and a half long, and then actually doing a lot of it, what's a girl to do?

How do you manage it in your own life?  Am I the only one who is ready to throw her hands  up in despair, because honestly I'm this close to doing just that this morning. 

With all the running around, lesson planning and teaching thought process, more running around for The Peanut's activities, etc., etc., etc., there just isn't a lot of time for any personal reflection and growth time either.  I realize that this is almost certainly the lot in life of every parent out there who is trying to do too much.  But outside of manufacturing a lifelike clone to cover my myriad of tasks while I sneak in a nap (and don't think I wouldn't try it if I had the chance!), what's a girl to do?

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but the laundry is piling up while I'm writing this and I'm not exactly getting any younger so it is only going to take me more time to do even less going forward, I would imagine.  How on earth does anyone really get all of this done?

I'm reaching out for some wisdom on parental and personal sanity in the middle of life's ever-churning maelstrom.  Any advice?  I'd love it.

(Photo via espiritosanto.  Lovely.)