Being present

I constantly feel overwhelmed.  It's like my to-do list is addicted to eating Alice's cake and grows so large so fast, that I can never keep up.  As a result, I feel like I'm on-edge, all the time.  Like this weekend when C-man picked the aforementioned daffodil from my garden because he wanted me to have a beautiful flower and I almost started sobbing because it was my only garden daffodil and now it was destroyed and why is it the only garden daffodil, I really need to dig out that bed and re-do it because it's too overgrown. Thankfully I didn't actually break down, and I just thanked him, but it's still not okay.

I have wracked my brain trying to figure out what it is I'm doing wrong.  The quick answer is, "a lot".  But that doesn't fix it.  So this is what I've come to in no particular order...

We try to do too much ourselves. Everyone else in the neighborhood has a van parked in the driveway for each little faucet leak.  But not us.  Hell, we build own roof when we want to get rid of the flat one.  I know I'll be thankful for the extra money I've saved someday, but I question if my stress level will let me live that long to enjoy it.

I have arthritis.  Like it or not, it's a fact of life.  It makes me exhausted.  I need more sleep than the average person, and tend to get less because I'm up several times a night moving around to alleviate the pain.  And when I have ridiculous flare-ups, like I've been experiencing the past 3 weeks, it makes progress even slower, because I can do even less.  But I resent being slower and less able, so I try to do more, which is a horrible death spiral into oblivion.

We're doing a lot.  All the time; geocaching, zoo visits, baseball games, playgrounds, baking cookies, reading books, wall painting, water tank installing, laundry, groceries, dog park visits... In addition to working 2 very full-time jobs that require regular travel.  When I think about everything we do in an average day, it alone feels totally overwhelming.

But more important than all that put together is I so often forget to enjoy what's going on now.  When C-man gives me a flower, why can't I just think how simple and sweet the gesture is?  When my to-do list feels long, why can't I just revel in all those items that got checked off it? And why do I have to bend over to pick up yet another pair of damn socks off the floor?

But I digress.  I need to lighten up.  Find my zen. Enjoy what I've got while it's here. Because C-man doesn't even stutter anymore when he gets up on that first bus step. And Harry's not getting any younger.  And hell, let's be real, neither am I!