Never Enough

I’m struggling right now – with many things, but mostly with not being able to be everything I want to be. 

I want to be healthy and in shape (and perhaps 2 pants sizes smaller)

I want to be organized

I want to have a clean house

I want to have a cute, well decorated house

I want to blog

I want to read.  Boy, do I want to read.

I want to play my flute (and maybe more than once a week at band)

I want to do projects and go on fun outings with Parker

The problem is that I also want/need to have a little bit of time to do nothing.  To decompress.  By the time I get home from school with Parker (on a night when we have nothing scheduled) it is 5pm.  This leaves me 2.5 hours with Parker in which to cram all the things I want to do that involve her and all the things we HAVE to do that involve her (bath, dinner etc).  This is not a great deal of time and Parker is normally kind of cranky at the end of her day.  So, grandiose ideas of craft projects and things of that nature are gone. 

By the time she is bedded down for the night it is anywhere between 8 and 9pm. (Yes, it can last that long on a bad night and if one single person judges me on the way my kid goes to bed right now, I might actually throw this computer across the room.)  If I actually want to feel rested in the morning, I have one hour of time left.  If I want to merely function and get through my day while sleep-deprived, I have 1.5 or 2 hours. 

So, let’s say I run.  This takes 45 minutes of actual running and then 15 of getting ready and becoming  human again at the end.  There’s an hour.  If I’m going for merely functioning, I have 30 minutes to an hour left to do anything else.  (Please keep in mind that I am now operating in hour 16 of my day and I haven’t stopped.)  It’s at this point that I SHOULD organize something or read a book or clean the bathroom (or pick up the random clutter that is always laying around) or write a blog post.  But, instead I just sit and feel bad about myself because I’m too tired to do anything else.

And all of this assumes that we have nothing scheduled for the night (no pep band, no dance class, no random meetings, no band rehearsal)

The thing that kills me is that I know there are other Moms out there (Alicia, for one) who do this too, but I just can’t seem to get it together and actually get it done.

And then, all these people are posting about their freezer meals and the books they’ve read or the cute craft project(s – yes MORE THAN ONE!) that they are doing with their kids.  And here I am trying to get in “quality time” with Parker while she’s watching the rest of her Sesame Street and eating “cheese and bread with no crust” and I’m unloading the dishwasher.  My house looks like something has exploded in it.  Even when it’s clean, it’s not all nice and organized.  I feel like I’ve fallen off the weight-loss wagon and really the only thing in the entire world I want to do right now is organize Parker’s closet and drawers to get rid of the things that don’t fit her, but there isn’t any time for that, so I guess I will keep piling all the ill-fitting clothing on the top of her closet and hoping that they don’t one day come toppling down on me.

Meh.