Under Pressure

When I woke up this morning, I had every intention of finding some cute and/or funny story to share with you, but about five minutes after waking up I realized...it ain't gonna happen.  I'm under pressure and freaking out. 

It feels like the past few weeks have brought one stressful situation after another, from a string of doctor's appointments to surgery and then recovery.  Now that all of those things have died down, a new batch of things to do seem to have found their way to me.  My spring semester is almost over and my class project is eminent, I have to start planning for summer school (my last class, though...YAY), my 14 year old Goldie is having some minor health issues, we're having a big problem with the drainage in our backyard, and the piece de resistance, a huge kink in the family budget has forced us to pull the kids from part time preschool at the end of this month.  All of this on top of the normal, day-to-day things I have to contend with.  I have all of these pots on the hot plate that are about to boil over and I feel like there's not enough time in the day to deal with them all.

So what do I do?  For starters, I had a good long cry and felt sorry for myself.  I'm not sure it made me feel any better, but, whatever.  Then...I did the only thing I know how to do.  I sat down with a piece of paper and a pen and tried to make a game plan.  Oh come on, I used to be a project manager, so it's not like I could help myself.  First, I wrote down a list of all of the things I know I have to get done every week...the household chores and errands.  The Man pointed out that I have a habit of saving these chores for one or two days per week, then get frazzled when I'm trying to get them all done at once.  So, I sat down with my list and pulled up a spreadsheet in Excel (project manager nerd alert) and built a schedule, spreading the household chores across the week, so I was doing a little bit at a time each day rather than everything at once. 
 
That was the easy part.  Now that I have it all down on paper, the hard part is fitting in all of the "moving targets", those things that come up on the fly that also need to get done.  Add to that my school work, my blogging, creating things for my Etsy store and all of the sudden the straightforward weekly plan begins to look messy again.  Still, I've paired up my cool little schedule with my weekly planner book and I've been trying very hard to keep to the schedule.  It's only been four days since I created my schedule and already I'm learning that it works like this...plan, adjust, execute.  There have already been days where I didn't accomplish everything I meant to.  At the end of those days, I had to look at what was coming up for the next day and then figure out where the things that were left incomplete could fit in, without over stressing the schedule.  Do I have it down to a science yet? Not a chance.  Am I any less stressed out? A little...except for today, where again I'm feeling like a paper doll in the middle of a hurricane.  That might have something to do with the fact that my hubby has been called out of town unexpectedly and I'm coming to grips with the fact that once May arrives, I'll also have to fit in some learning activities for the kids to make up for the school lessons they won't have anymore...and...and...and...

It's not all doom and gloom, though.  In a couple of weeks, we'll be headed to Disney World for our very first "real" family vacation and we were able to find a summer gymnastics program for both of the kids.  Sure, it's only 45 minutes once per week and I'll have to stay with Lil Buddy while he attends his class, but something is better than nothing.  Of course, then there's all the last minute planning and packing to do for our vacation...and...and...and.  I better stop thinking about all of this before I get an ulcer!



P.S. I do so solemnly swear that next week I'll ditch the whining and find something funny to talk about!