Parties and lines
Gleek’s birthday was on Wednesday, but she assured me that she can’t actually be six until she has a cake. Fortunately we’d schedule a birthday party with cake for today, so now she is actually six. Running a child’s birthday party with six guests turned out to be not that hard. When I was first parenting such a task was daunting. But I ran a home preschool during last year, so whipping together a couple of hours of activities wasn’t too bad. Also, Looney Tunes are always a big hit with kids. Yay for Sylvester and Tweety.
Even though actually running the party wasn’t all that hard, I found myself wiped out afterwards. This could be because last Saturday morning I forgot to take my thryoid medication and the delayed reaction hit me today. It could also be that I’m trying to eat healthy and my body is complaining about the lack of refined sugars. It could also be that I spent all morning moving really fast to get the house all cleaned up for the party. Whatever the reason I’ve gotten nothing done since the party ended. Unless you count watching Back to the Future on my portable DVD player as a productive activity. Back to the Future is still a really fun movie, but I can’t count it as productive.
This of course brings up the ever reoccuring issue of downtime. I’m a mother who runs a small business. I always have a huge list of things to do. If I try to get everything done before I relax, I will never relax or sleep. At least not until I go completely crazy and stop caring about anything. So there has to be a line. I have to find a place on the never ending to-do list to draw a line and say “that’s enough for today.” Theoretically it is easy. I just decide in the morning which things I have to accomplish before I can relax. Only those morning assignments never include the unexpected tantrum that sucks 30 minutes and piles of energy right out of the day. They also never include changing soiled pants, conflict resolution between two kids, the hour long phone call with the insurance company to discover why the hospital bill wasn’t paid, and all the other oodles of things which just pop into existence at a moment’s notice. There are some days where I am busy with important things all day long and yet I’ve not crossed of a single thing on my to-do list.
I think the line was in a good place today. There are some days that I relax before I should. There are others when I don’t get to relax at all. I guess it all evens out. At least today my house is clean, my Gleek had a good birthday party, and the Netflix DVDs already arrived so we have fun shows to watch after the kids are abed.