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Everyone around here is talking about the blizzard. It is due at my house in the next two hours according to local weather services. They tell us so with exclamation points. These same news sources provide lists of schools and businesses who closed early so that everyone could be home before the storm. Local facebook statuses indicate that my neighbors have gathered their flashlights and blankets just in case. I look out my window at a golden sunset and no wind. Off to the North the sky is a little bit gray, but here things are calm.

In the midst of a storm there is something to do, actions to take, weather to watch. Before the storm, when you know a storm is coming, it is hard to judge whether precautions are wise or unnecessary. I stand at the window and part of me hopes that the storm is really impressive. I don’t want anyone hurt, or even inconvenienced, I just want the weather to be interesting rather than just cold and gray. We’ve barely begun with winter and I’m already tired of cold and gray.

I broke down this weekend. I’ve been trying to think up an appropriate metaphor for the experience, but I haven’t yet figured out whether it was more akin to a catastrophic flat followed by limping along on a spare tire or if I am more like the blender whose motor suddenly ground to a halt while exuding smoke. It felt like the second in the middle of it, and yet I am still here and I have accomplished things since. On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure it is over. I thought I worked through it on Saturday. Then again on Sunday. Yesterday was fine. This morning was most decidedly not fine at all. I’m forced to come to the conclusion that my emotional weather detection is poorly calibrated.

I don’t actually expect much from this snow storm. The wind will blow. The snow will fall. But everyone is prepared. They all went home early and found their blankets. Even those who lose power will be fine because they’ve formed plans. The killer storms are the ones that surprise people. I suspect this is why the weather service wielded those exclamation points. They want this storm to be anticlimactic, particularly on a day when people would usually begin their holiday travel. They wanted everyone to be complaining about how all the warning was for nothing instead of complaining because they were not warned.

My emotional breakdown this weekend completely ambushed me. Hindsight gives me many signs which I failed to interpret as an impending emotional storm. Now I am picking through my thoughts rather like a survivor picking through detritus after a tornado has blown through. I’m trying to figure out where it came from, whether it will be back, and how to prevent it all in the future. All of this logic is based on the assumption that I actually have control over my mental state, my faith in that premise is somewhat shaky right now. If I do have control over the causes, then I must figure it all out and take steps to avert future storms. If I don’t, then I just need to sweep up and move on. I’m currently leaning toward the sweep up and move on school of thought. This is in part because I think a major cause of the break down was me trying to plan, orchestrate, and control too many things over an extended period of time. It is nice when both schools of thought lead to the same place.

The wind has picked up outside the house. I think we will have snow soon. This means it is probably time for me to stop staring at this screen trying to wrap words around my experiences. I need to stop trying to analyze my life and go live it for awhile.

In the space between falling asleep last night and waking up this morning, I took a vacation to Italy. It was warm, filled with fascinating architecture, and the food was amazing. I don’t know why my subconscious chose Italy as a vacation place. I’ve never been there. I don’t know why it chose last night to dream a full length made-up vacation. I woke up feeling glad to be back home after a good trip.

This afternoon my subconscious took me on quite a different trip. It decided to be anxious and to spill that feeling throughout my body and brain. My logic centers scrambled to try to explain it, because my logic centers are quite convinced that things which can be explained can also be managed. The thing is that yesterday went seriously awry the minute the kids got home from school. I was completely unable to pull it back on course. I just had to shutdown and restart on the hope that the troubles would be gone the next day. My kids were going to come home from school again, and rather than sensibly waiting to see how it went, my subconscious decided to be anxious in advance. I didn’t get a whole lot of work done which gave my subconscious even more fodder for anxiety.

The actual arrival of my kids and ensuing homework events were not entirely happy, but I’ll take today over yesterday without hesitation.

So I hope that my subconscious has a nice trip planned for tonight’s dream. I think it owes me.

It is the kind of day when I wear my fuzzy florescent yellow socks out in public because it is the only way I can bear to brave the blowing rain/hail to get my errands done.

It is the kind of day when I close my eyes while listening to a teacher describe an incident at school. Then I inhale a random crumb so that I sound like I am crying when I am not. My supply of answers runs dry long before the phone call ends. It is replaced by a new repository of questions.

It is the kind of day where my daughter and I quarrel, not because anything is wrong between us, but because we each have a head full of gloom and they are crashing in to each other. Unfortunately the needs of the homework require me to wear my Meanie hat for a time because I understand that the best path for her to get to a better place is by going through all the things that she does not want to have to deal with. (Huh. As I type that it occurs to me that I should probably take my own advice.)

It is the kind of day when my daughter sits at the counter with her tutor doing two hours of Algebra homework even though she does not want to. She works through the cloud of gloom and I stay nearby, ready to triage the potential emotional catastrophe inherent in Algebra combined with teenage girl.

It is the kind of day where I click through my bookmark list multiple times hoping to find new happy things. Frequency of clicking leads to apparent decrease in new happy things.

It is the kind of day where I consider ranting on the internet, but don’t because I’m just temporarily grouchy and the words would stick around far longer than the emotion.

It is the kind of day when I look at my to do list and realize that despite my emotional experience of the day, I got a significant quantity of things done so that tomorrow does not have to be insane.

I have made my big Thanksgiving plans: I plan nothing. This is not to say that I will actually do nothing. I may do many things. It may be a very busy few days, but it will only be busy if I decide, in the moment, to do many things. This Fall has been full of schedule, scrambling to meet deadlines, and updating the calendar. I need a vacation from that. So for the the holiday weekend I will not have a To Do list. Instead I will have a list of options from which I can select. Alternately I can ignore my list and do nothing.

The one caveat to this plan is Thanksgiving dinner with family. I will do some planning for that. But not today. My planning engine is burned out for today.

Writer fugue is when the worlds inside my head obscure my ability to see/respond to the things surrounding me. It would be nice if every occurrence of writer fugue resulted in pages of amazing prose, but sadly this is not the case. I did some note taking, a little bit of drafting, and lots of thinking. Sadly, the other things in my day did not get sufficient attention.

Primary among these things is arranging for an activities committee meeting so I can assemble a team for the church Christmas party. I simply can’t pull that one off solo. And yet I keep procrastinating calling the meeting. I would not mind attending the meeting. I think I’ll actually enjoy being in charge of the meeting. I know the meeting is critical, but I don’t like arranging for the meeting to exist. At this point, I’ll have to schedule it for Tuesday instead of tomorrow in order to give people enough notice.

I need some more focus and prioritization. It’s good that tomorrow is Sunday and such things are much more likely to be found there.

It has been a very low productivity day. I think this is because all of my spare energy has been siphoned into beating back the cold that is trying to make me sick. I’ve kept the thing at bay like Dr. Van Helsing hanging garlic and crosses in Lucy’s bedroom to keep Count Dracula out. Unfortunately I fear that like Lucy I will eventually succumb and be walking dead. Or at least sniffling miserable. I have a much better chance of recovery than Lucy, so all is not lost. For now I will keep to my regimen of vitamin C and rest.

I took a nap this afternoon. It was interrupted twice in quick succession by Link who was asking permission to play a video game and then to play a different video game. I don’t remember the words of my response, but apparently they were sufficiently affirmative that he went away happy. My half-asleep brain pondered the occurrence with a grumpy tone of voice. Does no one respect my need for sleep? The kids will see Dad asleep and tip toe out of the room, but have no compunction at all about waking me from a sound sleep to ask their questions. This is true even when their Dad is around. Our kids have been known to walk out of the room where Howard is in order to wake me up and ask a question.

The simple solution would be for me to lock the door. Faced with a locked door, the kids would go find their Dad to get their problems solved. I don’t lock the door when I lay down for a nap. Half the time I don’t even close the door. To close and lock the door would be a declaration that the next period of time is designated for a nap. Somehow in my mind I’m only sneaking a nap. I still feel on-duty, so I leave the door open so I can still hear and respond to crises. It is silly, because unconscious people are not very watchful. When the kids were little I was clearly on duty and I didn’t sleep unless they were also sleeping or someone else was specifically assigned to watch them. Somewhere the lines got blurred.

After the interruptions I got a solid hour of sleep, so my nap was far from ruined. This is usually the case, which is part of why I’ve never taken steps to train the kids not to wake me. It is important for me to be available to them as much as I can, because sometimes I have to work.

Mondays always feel short, but this one felt even shorter than usual. I think it was the extra trips in the car. Today was one of Kiki’s late days, so that delayed the start of my work day. Then Howard needed a ride to the auto place because the Beetle’s battery died unexpectedly. Then Gleek and Patch needed warmer clothes at school because the weather surprised us. After that there was the retrieving of the car. And the kids get out of school early on Mondays.

In between all of that, I got the accounting and customer support emails done. Things have calmed down considerably on the business front, which means it is about time for us to take stock in advance of holiday promotional efforts. I also put in some writing time, which I feel good about. Hopefully tomorrow can be equally productive and less scattered.

The Halloween carnival went very well, or so I surmise from the kind comments of people who told me “good job.” I don’t feel like I saw very much of it. My focus was on making sure the food table stayed stocked, and then on getting all the decorations, tables, and chairs cleaned away. There were a few minor organizational troubles (Note to self: More ranch dressing, pre-test the microphone, and music for children’s parade) but nothing that impinged on the enjoyment or awareness of those who were in attendance. It was a good event.

And yet, I felt like a failure in the exhausted hours before bedtime. After I slept, I was able to sort out why. I failed to organize a large enough team for the event. I did too many jobs myself and too many gaps were covered by spur-of-the-moment volunteers. I am so grateful to the dozen people who pitched in to help clean up. I am grateful to the people who saw problems and solved them. It is because of them that the event worked. I knew that the event would be full of people willing to volunteer, I depended upon that, but it is better to have a crew of people with assignments to help focus the volunteers. I also depended too much upon my own family. Howard helped me run the event. The kids all helped with the decorations and set up. This meant that when I got home, the house was a wreck, everyone was tired and over stimulated. No one had the time or energy to reassure me that everything went well. All the evidence of success had been cleaned up, what remained was the evidence of all the family tasks I did not do because I was too busy doing carnival.

This morning brought a world of improvement. Howard managed the kids because it was all I could do to drag myself off to church. He even had Link carry all the loose bowls and ladles that I brought home to wash before returning. Howard also rallied the kids and got the house cleaned up. All of this helped me feel immeasurably better. This is important because my brain began to fill with ideas for the Christmas party which is the first Saturday in December just over a month away. Sorting out why I crashed so hard last night means I can plan better for the next party. The first assignment I made was to tell Howard that his only job for the Christmas party is to take care of the house and the kids while I’m busy. That step alone will make a world of difference.

Doing things myself instead of delegating is something I need to work on. It is probably a major reason I run myself ragged more often than I should.

Note to Universe:

I just finished organizing and event managing a Halloween carnival for 200+ people. I am excused from everything else for the rest of the weekend.

Thanks,
me

(I doubt it will work, but I can try.)