January Gray

This post is not about the kids.

It's about their mom, and January, and life after vacation.

It's rough, y'all.

Seventeen lovely days off.  Seventeen days of sleeping in til at least 7:00 each morning, drinking coffee in the kitchen, lingering in pajamas.  Seventeen days of time to play and cook and clean and still have some energy to wrap presents, shop, and spend time with family.  Was it a vacation of unending leisure, free time yawning before me?  No.  It was hectic and full and just as overscheduled as the rest of my life.  It had its share of frustrations and tedium and even a nice bout with intestinal illness to round it all out.

But it was vacation.  And it was good.

I know this now, with my amazing acuity in hindsight.

Because these last three days, since I've been back to work?  Dorothy, we're not on vacation any more.

Will you allow me my litany of complaints?

I'll start with the 5am wakeup time-- ouch!-- and the sub-par workouts at the gym thanks to the aforementioned illness.  Follow that with 8 hours of constant rushing at school, frantically trying to fit in a week's worth of paperwork into 70 minutes of planning time, and then working my tail off to manage my increasingly squirrely group of middle schoolers into some semblance of good student behavior.  All while trying to teach them something.  Then, some tutoring.  And some driving, always a rush, no time even to stop at a bank, errands and to do lists piling up every day. And home to my own children, my beautiful children with all their energy and light, whose perfectly age-appropriate behavior bears a remarkable resemblance to the behaviors I fought with all day at school.  And my dog, my beautiful dog, with her incessant panting and tremendous ability to aim her breath right at my nose and to make me feel deep guilt for not walking her more often. And the dishes, which are always piled up. And the laundry, which is always piled up.  And the desolate, ramshackle mess that is my house in the aftermath of Christmas cleanup.  And the floors, spotted with salty boot-and-dog-prints, the floors that were just clean clean clean (with Murphy's oil soap no less!) when I was on vacation!

And I am TIRED.   Falling-asleep-while-playing-Legos tired.  Ready-for-bed-at-eight tired. I am tired to the bone and it's only been three days.

This January is getting me down.  It's a new year!  I should be filled with positive energy at the potential wonder and growth that 2014 has to offer.  Instead I am slogging through each day, forgetting to find joy in the small things, and only seeing the grime and clutter and work all those small things add up to.  I'm out of energy to even think about house projects or lovely, enriching parenting ideas. I'm feeling, to tell the truth, old.

I've been pulling out gray hairs a couple times a week recently.  I've always pulled them out at the first sight, because you see, I'm not old enough to have gray hair.  So, pluck! and problem solved. But 2014 may be the year I have to stop, for fear of creating a bald spot.

And that scares me a little.  I'm not ready for this.

I've gotten used to living my life at breakneck speed, trusting that I can fill every hour and minute and fit it all in, that somehow through force of will I'll get everything done and have some energy and joy to spare.  With a few notable exceptions (random periods of 20's angst, let's say) this approach to life has worked out all right for me.   I boldly burn my candle at both ends because it shines brighter that way!

But this year I am feeling like the wax is thinning a bit and that something might have to give.   Because it shouldn't be this hard.  It shouldn't feel like a grand victory to still be awake and typing at 10pm on a Friday, after tackling nothing more than the basic routines and chores of life.  I need to have something left at the end of the day because this feeling of depletion does not work for me.  It eats away at the gratitude and erases the moments of wonder and leaves me gripey and pale and not the person I want to be.

2014, you are going to challenge me, I think.  Challenge me to find some more balance, to find a way to be a mom and a teacher and wife and a homemaker and a daughter and a friend and still, also, somewhere...myself.  Challenge me to find more time to breathe in gratitude for this life, with all its exhaustion and gray hairs, this life I am blessed to be living.

But I'm going to have to face that challenge tomorrow.  Because it's 10:30 on a January Friday night and this mom?  She's going to to bed.