WIMBM

February 19, 2009

Brienne helping to paint the closet:
love the diptych the mirror door created

I started to write this blog in my head earlier today.

I don't know how other bloggers write but everything I post has already been swirling around in my head, looking for an escape route. I write (before blogging, I wrote in journals) as a means to relieve myself of these thoughts. Wait a minute, did I just compare writing to taking a pee?

Oh brother. Back on track. So I was writing in my head something along the lines of "blah, blah, blah, blah.... but I'm not stressed, just busy." You can see where this is going.

Then somewhere in the tasks of feeding the kids, cleaning up the kitchen from breakfast (this is a hefty chore since breakfast is a meal here - not a bowl of cold cereal), answering calls about our suite for rent, making plans for next week's winter camping, gearing up Brienne for outdoors, shoveling the driveway and walks from the fresh snowfall, helping the kids with their snow people, addressing our New Year letters (I guess I can't call them Christmas letters anymore), reviewing the recipe for supper, doing math lessons with Laurent and Celine, helping the driver unload our buying club order, cleaning up in the basement (the suite we have for rent), and preparing vegan quesadillas for lunch I became aware of my stomach churning and I realized - yep, I'm stressed - dang it! I hate that.

I pride myself (that in itself is a problem) in not getting stressed, not because I have a high stress-threshold but because we work hard at having a simple, sustainable life. But even that breaks down sometimes.

I can't say it's broken right now but some days, like this morning I feel at the edge.

This month's consuming project has been to work on our basement apartment before we rent it again for next month. This is "on top" of our daily life that already has us going from morning till night. Everything else and then some, that we thought we'd get done isn't - or is having to squeeze into whatever cracks of time we find. Like the family "New Years" letters, school, planning for our winter camping trip, finishing Damien's families Christmas gifts - yes we are that behind!

I'm not complaining, really I'm not. Renting part of our house makes owning a home affordable for our family. But sometimes it also makes life very busy. And this just happens to be one of those times. Things could be a lot worse, I think of all the people who are losing jobs and homes - trust me I'm not whining.

I'm just being real, lest you think I merely float through life as a care-free homeschooling and homemaking mama. Not everyday is Fun In My Back Yard. Sometimes the truth is more like Work In My Base Ment.

It's not all bad... Sleeping in on Saturday morning, preparing baked apples for breakfast, listening to NPR, drinking coffee. I just had to end this on a better note.