Meh… I don’t have any excuses.
What I have are strong feelings. Strong feelings usually accompany big events or changes. In the last 2 months, I’ve moved, I’ve found out my office is moving (not closer), I’ve spent more money on housing & repairs than ever before, and in general have thrown everything in life up in the air. For funsies.
Oy. It’s just been a long … year, I guess. Lots of great things, but lots of big things. Let’s be clear: almost all of them are great, and even the ones that aren’t great aren’t that bad. So I’m NOT complaining. What I’m doing is processing all the horse shit feelings I’m having as we try & deal with all of it at once; it would be much easier to process if I had a meth habit, methinks. Lemme get back to you on that.
What is really striking to me in everything that’s going on is how inefficient we FEEL, especially related to the move, even in spite of the sheer volume & crazy-short timelines we’ve been working on. I think that feeling has to come from just bad expectations. (Some of it, admittedly, is because a few things have not lived up to the most basic expectations we had – like lawyers breaking contract laws.) Because we didn’t really know any better, we just sort of expected everything to be fine as we moved into a completely-rebuilt 1950s ranch home. And we really didn’t prepare ourselves for being stressed out for doing the move in the middle of our busiest two months of 2012. In September, we all went to Southern California for a working vacation. Then I went to Chicago for work. I came home on a Thursday & then we closed that Friday. Then 2 weeks later in October we went to Ireland for a week with a 2.5 year old toddler. And now we’ve been back for 10 days and feel like we’ve literally made zero progress since we moved.
It’s a completely irrational feeling, but that’s how we feel. We have, in reality, put Kate into a great preschool, hung curtains, met neighbors, bought a rug, consulted landscaping, chimney & roof contractors to deal with water issues, unpacked 80% of the boxes, purchased a washer & dryer, and shopped for a shit-tonne of furniture. (Our only real success on that front was a $75 queen box spring I bought from an Indian guy on craigslist, which was a great price considering it came with a free cumin smell & cricket jumper.) That’s not a short list, nor is it an easy one. But because we aren’t 100% settled, even feeling 99% effective feels completely unacceptable.
We suck at expectations, I think.
Anyway… this ended up being a bit of a therapy session for me. Thanks for reading; may not have been the most interesting post ever, but it IS better than a meth habit. If you’ve got any thoughts or consoling words, I’m all ears. And penis. I still have a penis.
