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The eagle scout garden shed project is complete. All that remains is lots of thank you notes and a pile of paperwork.

We found some people willing to get on the roof. I am extremely grateful for them.

At the end of the day the shed was complete. Though the last bits of painting were done in near dark, so daylight will probably show them to be less neat than we would have preferred. I’ll have to go get a picture of the finished shed when daylight returns. For now this is what I have.

I’m too tired to feel triumphant. Instead my brain is helpfully supplying a list of all the people we need to thank and all the tools we need to return. Fatigue can do that, make even triumphs feel like failures. For now we just need to rest.

I can’t always tell when I’m stressed. The physical and emotional consequences of being stressed interfere with my self awareness. Usually I figure out the extent of my stress when I come out from under it. Usually this manifests in my house becoming more organized and clean because I’m able to notice small tasks and accomplish them instead of filtering them out of my attention because I’m focused elsewhere. My house is cleaner today than it was this time last week.

It is possible that canning creates a sense of well being, or maybe I only make time to preserve food when I’m feeling calm enough. I suspect the answer is a bit of both. Either way, I’ve been cooking batches of grapes so that I can make Jelly. Pears are picked and sitting on my porch to ripen. Walnuts are beginning to fall from the tree and in a week or two I’ll send kids outside to gather them.

This is not to say that the past few days have been stress free. Quite the contrary. There were several anxiety spikes, particularly on Thursday. I can see all the causes of them. Some of them earned every bit of that anxiety. Others are far less rational and I wish I could explain to my body that they are undeserving of massive adrenaline surges. At least I have practice in recognizing when I’m being irrational and trying to make sure my irrationality does not impose on others.

The best part of today is that Howard has returned from the Writing Excuses Retreat. That makes many things better.

This was the day when all of the planning, sawing, and everything was supposed to result in a shed and a completed eagle project. We got in about 3 hours of work before the rain came.

Link, wisely, said we should call it and finish a different day. I had a hard time agreeing to that, because I really wanted the project to be done. Instead we’ll be having Shed Building Day part 2 on Wednesday.

For now, I’m going to curl up in my bed and try to warm up after being wet and cold.

Assembly began today. This is the first time that the shed project has resembled anything other than a binder full of lists and a pile of lumber taking up my garage. They went together fairly quickly, which is encouraging. Hopefully the rest of the shed will go together just as quickly. Tomorrow we haul things to the build site. Saturday it becomes a shed for real.

I’m caught in that space between “Is it Tuesday already?” and “Wait, it’s only Tuesday?” which is a very dissonant place for my head to be. I would like very much for all the sickness in my house to get up and leave. We haven’t even been that sick. It has been annoyance levels of sick, but I’m quite thoroughly annoyed by it at this point. And we’re using far too much kleenex for a single household. Best option is to go to bed and make it be Wednesday instead.

It is the dark side of 4am and I’m awake. I used to be asleep, but around 2am something woke me. I should have been able to roll over and go back to sleep, but instead my task brain woke up and tried to sort out all the things I have to do. The list is long and so anxiety started to kick in because I knew that every minute I spent awake without getting things done meant that I would be even more sleep deprived and my list would not get any shorter. So I got up and began clearing things out of my email boxes. I can’t do all of the email related tasks, because some of them require printing or rummaging in the file cabinet, both of which are activities which might wake Kiki. But the clutter is cleared up and I feel like I have a better grasp on what is actually urgent.

On Saturday I drive Kiki to college, which is an all-day project. I’ve been looking forward to it, but it means that Saturday is unavailable as a catch up day. Or a catch-my-breath day. I feel like I’ve been running flat out since school started on Tuesday morning. Every hour had some urgent task, school supplies to acquire, gym clothes needed, disclosure documents, friend conflict to negotiate. And then there are the urgent post-convention tasks. And the urgent pre-convention tasks (SLCC is only two weeks away.) And the urgent tasks related to finishing Massively Parallel and sending it off to print. I had to bow out of writer’s group on Wednesday because I had nothing left to give. All of that, and I’ve forgotten how to make sure that dinner gets made on school nights. My kids have been fixing for themselves, which is great, but their options become increasingly limited when I haven’t had time to go grocery shop.

So far so good on the school front. Kids are coming home happy. They’re either doing their homework without argument or gleefully reporting that they have none. I’m quelling the part of my brain that wants to double check all of this to make sure their portrayals of homework are accurate. Homework is their job, not mine. I need to let them run the show until mid September (When my task crunch should be over. I hope.) Then I can check in and make sure we’re on track. Though part of my brain really wants to contact teachers and make sure that the understanding my child has of what is expected of him matches the teacher’s actual expectations. I don’t have time for half a dozen teacher meetings this week. I just don’t. So I’m rummaging in my head to find enough trust that it will all be fine.

I really need to complete some tasks and projects so that I can clearly see the ones I have left.

Spent the morning with the kids at the Museum of Natural Curiosity. The afternoon went to napping an a quick convention-related accounting session. (GenCon booth broke even today. Yay! Two more days of sales still incoming.)

This was my evening:

Kikaa does not normally deign to sit in laps when those laps are in a hammock, but today she wanted snuggles more than she didn’t want hammock. She only stayed for a few minutes before she leaped off to go stalk a bird, but it was a lovely few minutes.

Summer is when I lose track of days and hours. I get to the end of the days feeling all muddled and like I didn’t get enough done. So I finished off my day by taking a crowbar to the deck. all of the decorative trim has been removed and we can now use a flashlight to see underneath. Since most of the trim was in contact with the ground, almost every piece has rot on the end. There were many places where wood had turned back into dirt. Yet because of the construction of the deck all of that was hidden from view. The deck still looked sound. Also there were spiders and bugs everywhere. Not my favorite. But beating things up with a crowbar was kind of fun.

I’ve really got to get a grip on my schedule. I need to put some structure into days that have gone all schlumped. I need to declare work hours and tell the kids not to interrupt during them. I need to prioritize and get some things complete so that I’m not trying to juggle so many things in my brain.