Facing down my to-do monsters

Okay — the situation is, I have LESS THAN 2 hours to do . . . a trajillion things.

(Why am I bothering with this blog post that probably nobody will read? Because I would be writing this note to myself regardless; I might as well put it here in case anyone else ever finds herself in this same situation and needs to know she’s not alone. OR in case anyone else wants to feel reallllyyy good about themselves in comparison to me).

“I could so easily freak out right now.” – Rachel Green, FRIENDS. Also, me, now.

So how the f*** did I get myself into this place? That’s a BIG question for another day. For right now, the issue is this:

A.N.X.I.E.T.Y.

That’s not an acronym or initialism for anything, it’s just a written way of expressing how terrifying it is, how big, it is, and how impossible it seems sometimes. It gets in the way of me being honest and authentic with people, it gets in the way of me getting stuff done when I’m supposed to, and it really gets in the way when I’ve been procrastinating.

So I freak out. But not outwardly — outwardly I’m so cool, calm, collected. I am neutral, I am Switzerland. I’ve got this.

And inwardly, I’m pretty damn cool, calm and collected — or so I think. But really I’m numbing the panic and whatever else is behind this nonsense with unnecessary tasks, important-but-not-urgent tasks, Netflix, and food.

There it is, laid out plain and simple. The truth I don’t want to admit to myself, and definitely don’t want to admit to anyone else.

So, I can sit back and take a good look at that sentence — and then grab a handful of popcorn and the next episode of Gossip Girl. And deal with it Later.

Or.

I can set aside some time to figure out why this is happening and how to fix it, and right now, in my less than less than two hours, I can get something done.

So here goes — setting a timer for 20 minutes, in which time I will have made progress on one of the tasks I have been behind on.

Because I think, “at the end of the day,” to use that tired and irritating cliche, it’s just about putting one foot in front of the other. Doing one thing that wouldn’t have been done if I sat and numbed out.

So here goes.

Thanks for listening. If this is you, I encourage you to pick up one foot and set it down in the general direction of where you need to be. And then do the same thing with the other one. And after you’ve done something you need to do, give yourself a big hug. Sometimes this shit is hard, y’all.

UPDATE: 20 minutes later

Dude. I am doing the hardest task that was on my list. And I am getting through it. BAM.

 

Signs You Have a Little Boy

Not to gender stereotype, but these are things I do NOT hear my friends with daughters mentioning!

1. Your child is obsessed with body functions.

“Say ‘poop,’ mama!” “I sneezed out of my butt!” “Daddy poops! Mommy poops! Everybody poops!” -all quotes from my 2 year old this week.

2. You get That Call from daycare

Thankfully, NOT the “come get your child, as he is projectile vomiting on the sensory bin” call, but the “everything is fine, but we wanted to let you know that he was about to take a nap when he announced he had a sticker in his nose. We used tweezers to fish it out, and looked in there with a flashlight and we don’t see anything else. We reminded him that stickers don’t go in your nose.”

3. You get excited when you see a digger, a train, or any type of unusual vehicle

I swear, I was *this* close to elbowing a coworker and shouting when we were outside and a news helicopter flew overhead.

4. Rocks — everywhere

Being handed to you at the playground, rolling around in the washing machine after falling out of a pocket, sitting on the front porch, in the dog’s water bowl. There is just something about rocks!

5. The obsession with the pen15 (<– avoiding being flagged as an “adult” blog + any opportunity to harken back to those middle school days!)

Some boys start this in infancy, some wait until toddlerhood, but at some point the penis becomes a main focus. I was changing my son’s diaper outside on a windy day (he was standing up) and he looked at me with concern and said, “my pen-iss blow off, mommy?” (That’s how he pronounces it)

6. You worry about how to help him grow into a good man.

How can I make sure he respects women? That he will stand up for himself? That he stays away from violence, drugs, and decisions that lead to making a girl pregnant before she and he are ready? That he stays away from hurt in general and keeps at least some amount of his little boy sweetness? That he grows up but doesn’t grow away too much? That the world doesn’t replace his innocence with anger? That he will know he can always count on me, no matter what? That he will forgive me one day for talking about his “pen-iss” on the Internet?

Steps to Patience: Endurance

“Where do you find calm? Where do you find endurance? Where do we draw the line between being “uncomplaining” and being authentic? How can we find tolerance for those around us? Where do we find self-possession in the face of want or high anticipation? What is the source of diligence?”

According to the Internet, Thomas Carlyle said “Endurance is patience concentrated.” Endurance is often praised, particularly in this day of the “weekend warrior” who trains for marathons in her spare time between juggling kids and a job. The more you can do, the longer you can do it, the farther you can go…somehow, the better you are.

And maybe that’s why I can’t enjoy running — I don’t have the concentrated patience to get through the distance.

But some times that call for patience really call for endurance. For us to live through, to let time progress and bring what it will. For things to develop, outside of our control. That endurance can be difficult.

But maybe we can take a lesson from those crazy-awesome marathon runners here. A Runners World article tells runners who want to boost their endurance to consider some or all of these tips:

• Take one step at a time
• Run loops of the same 800-meter length until you build up to your desired distance
• Run long and slow
• Make every workout count
• Do simple exercises that will make small but meaningful changes to your run
• Run longer tempo runs — runs that are timed to a particular cadence
• Run long and fast

Take one step at a time. Exactly what you need to do to endure a wait for information or for an event to arrive. There may be some things related — or even unrelated — to that day you are waiting for that you can do in advance. Address these tasks one at a time. If you are anticipating an event or information that will open up a whole new world of decisions, and it’s making you anxious that you can’t address that world yet…remember to take it one step at a time.

If you are heading into something that you need to be prepared for, part of the time of endurance could be practicing your role in whatever way makes sense for the occasion.

Run long and slow — look ahead to that destination, but let your body and your mind become okay with getting there less quickly than you might have expected or wished. If you get news that sets your timeline back, remember…long and slow.

Make every moment count.

Approach your life with simplicity, and see what simple changes in your life you can make to help your capacity for endurance. Cutting out stimulants like caffeine, taking the time to regularly practice yoga, etc.

What else can you do to increase endurance?

Steps to Patience: Sources of Calm

“Where do you find calm? Where do you find endurance? Where do we draw the line between being “uncomplaining” and being authentic? How can we find tolerance for those around us? Where do we find self-possession in the face of want or high anticipation? What is the source of diligence?”

A moment of calm in the park

These are our questions from yesterday.

If patience is finding calm during the waiting time, where does that calm come from?

In an interview with NPR, Allan Lokos, author of Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living, noted:

We can learn what [exercising patience is] like by stopping and taking a moment to just become more aware of what is going on within us; specifically, the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations that arise. And they’re constantly arising, one after another. They arise, and they die away. When we cling to them, that’s when trouble can begin.

During your time of impatience (maybe you’re having one now! I know I am!), stop.

What are you feeling? A sense of physical urgency? Fear? Tension in your face and body?

What of those can you release? Bodily tension can be focused on, acknowledged, and released. Fear can be examined, and often reasoned with.  Once you are aware of what feelings and sensations you are experiencing, consider:

-deep breathing

-taking a whiff of an essential oil like jasmine or lavender, thought to bring relaxation. Some people prefer mint or other scents. If you are going to be experiencing a long journey of patience, consider creating a relationship between a scent and a feeling of relaxation. Lie on your back, sink into the floor, and breathe in a scent. Play relaxing music, and bring your mind to relaxing thoughts, even if those thoughts are brief and fleeting. Regularly doing this can create a connection between the scent and the feeling you get during the exercise such that just smelling the scent brings the feeling of relaxation. It worked for Pavolv’s dog, right?

-meditation

-distracting yourself with a worthwhile, rewarding activity

What are your secrets to calm?

Why So Silent?

I started this blog with the intention of reflecting on “doing it right” in pregnancy and parenting. Perhaps the blog would include notes on products that worked for me, anecdotes about the journey, and maybe some humor on the side.

But I couldn’t write. For the same reasons the blue scrapbook and beautiful pens, papers and cutouts sit on the desk in the nursery. Part creative block, part overwhelm with work, part laziness. But mostly fear.

I used to think miscarriage was one of those tragic events that happen to other people, usually people with other health issues or people from Victorian novels. So the loss of my first pregnancy early in the first trimester was a tremendous shock to my physical and emotional self. The exuberance of expectation had taken over me in a way I normally wouldn’t allow. I basked in it, totally free of the fear I normally harbor of the drop of the proverbial other shoe.

My life froze. The physical part was thankfully relatively easy, no surgery or medication needed. But the emotional part left a wound that will always be just a little bit tender. And it left the knowledge that the other shoe may just be hanging right above my head.

It was over a year before we became pregnant again. This time, along with the tiny miracle flowering inside, a persistent doubt took up residence. An early scare at 6 weeks when we were hundreds of miles from home didn’t help — we spent a week staring at the ocean, me afraid to venture anywhere, as we held in our minds the words of the ultrasound tech (” looks like it might be triplets!” and later “you have some hemorrhages — don’t Google that”) and the words of the radiologist (“you’re probably having a miscarriage”), the hospital discharge papers (diagnosis: threatened miscarriage), and the image of the little egg sac that may or may not contain the bearing heart of our little baby.

I prayed so much. Standing on the balcony at night, pleading to God over the waves and under the moon. Please, let this be our baby. Please, let him or her be okay.

The fear lingered even as we heard the heartbeat when we visited my doctor back in Michigan, as we saw the 12 week and 20 week ultrasound images and found out I was carrying a boy. I looked forward to every doctor visit, held my breath through every test result, so aware that something could go wrong at any time. The well-wishes, the home and work preparations, the baby shower were all inside a fog of uncertainty. Of worry that I was slowly building a stage for a play that would end only in tragedy.

So I didn’t write. Not here, not in my journal. I prayed but not as often as I should have to bring me feeling as close to God as I would have liked.

But now I’m writing. Our beautiful boy is here and doubts still linger, but it’s a time finally for celebration. For abundant love and ceaseless joy.

I’m still trying to do it right. The pediatrician called me “super mom” this week for nursing around the clock as we tried to increase the baby’s weight, which had fallen after birth just slightly lower than they like to see. That felt reassuring, although I don’t want to strive for that title. I’ll take loving mom, loving and loved wife.

So soon I’ll talk about some stuff that was helpful to me during pregnancy and stuff that’s happening now. Probably not always as personal as all this, but to feel authentic I had to put this out there.

God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind – 2 Timothy 1:7