Hanging In There

You may or may not have realized this, but work, apparently, takes up a lot of time. Like, a lot. As does parenting a small child (and dog). Thankfully I'm currently only a part-time wife due to DOH's intense work schedule, leading me to seeing him, like, never. However, I still wind up cleaning up his crap...hmmm... (You'd think with only half the wifely duties I'd only have to clean up half the mess.)

And speaking of messes, there is my house. Or, the house underneath the mess that currently occupies it (Occupy Wall Street, you've got nothing on my dirty laundry). I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed. No body enjoys coming home to a disaster each day, but, also, no enjoys cleaning up a disaster when they've been up since 5:30 AM and aren't getting home until 5 PM. I'm sort of feeling like I'm fighting a battle, and a battle that I'm losing badly.

Now, of course, I tell myself that maybe more would be accomplished if I didn't spend so much time, you know, going on Pinterest (and thereby somehow feeling like a productive person without actually having to do anything) or Facebooking. But, of course, both of those activities require limited energy and I can still play babies with Lizzie at the same time (for the record, I do not Facebook or pin stuff the entire time I play with my kid...just most of it). Plus, I can't cut out the real quality time I spend with my daughter and husband (when he's actually around). The bedtime routine is crucial on so many levels, including ensuring that my kiddo actually sleeps. Cooking and eating a vaguely wholesome dinner is important, too. Even if we can't all make it to the table at the same time, it's nice to have a meal and to sit down and eat and and talk to one another. Those both take up a lot of our evening time (and forget the morning--I'm all ready running around like a crazy person).

I'm just feeling as though I don't have time to do anything else that matters to me. In addition to, like, wanting to clean the house, I'd love to do some projects around here, too. Like finally wallpapering and/or painting the downstairs and upstairs bathroom and hallway. Or working the piece my mom and I started together (super cool, but totally top secret). Or sewing the advent calendar I want to be finished in time for December 1st (yeah, good luck with that one). OR actually writing here, on my blog. There is a whole huge list of things I'd like to be doing but am having limited luck doing. It sorta blows.

Well, before I take up more crucial moments of actual energy, I should go do something...else.

Is anyone else feeling like their precious time has been sucked up by some sort of vortex. (And have I asked this question before? Clearly I need better time management.)

An Extension

In light of what I wrote about (briefly) in a previous post here are some of the words of people who are still being affected by the man who we are "celebrating" today. Very well done.

Identity Crisis

As I've mentioned on here before, I'm pretty young. I guess I've been a bit of an early bloomer. I met my husband just a couple of months after I turned eighteen...and we were engaged 5 months later. Despite taking the appropriate precautions, a year later, we found out I was pregnant right after I finished a very successful first year of college. Four months after our daughter was born we got married. I was twenty.

I've always felt a strong need to know who I am, and I've seemed to always pin the repsonsibility of definition on someone or something else. It might be strongly identifying with a particular political group or ethnicity, it might be based off of who I was hanging out with (more in high school) or what sort of parenting technique I tried to adopt and then throw myself into, complete with extremely rigid rules (Lizzie cannot cry ever at night time!). I would tell myself I'm a mother, so I must be a certain way. I would tell myself I am a wife, so I must be a certain way. I am a young, so I must be a certain way.

I realize that I am really young. But because most adults I know who are in the same place I am, at least in terms of settling down and having a family, I feel like I need to be where they are (even though, maturity-wise, that may be impossible). There is an air of confidence and security in who they have become that I do not have yet. (And worry that I never will.) They have had many more years than I have had to craft who they are and who they want to be before having a family. I didn't get a chance to build. There are many benefits, in my opinion, to having children early in life, but one of the biggest disadvantages is that you weren't given much to time to decide who you are without children in your life.

Some days feel like a battle where I am fighting to find out who I am or to feel secure with the person I've become. I feel a little lost on these days, which seem to come more and more frequently lately as I struggle to find a job for the fall. (A job. Another thing I feel I must use to define who I am.)

I know that after some time, more time to mature, who I am with emerge more clearly. I know, at my core, what I stand for, what I believe, who I love, what I don't love--I just don't know what sort of person this will form in the long run. Some days twenty-three seems very old, far too old to not yet really know who I've grown up to be. But I know that's unfair.

I just wish I felt that way, too.

Should I Feel Bad?

Here's my answer for a prompt from Mama Kat:
Amy Winehouse died. Another name amidst a growing list of talented celebrities lost to addiction. Your reaction.
Yeah, that sucks.

But do you know what else sucks?

At least 76 people, many children, were slaughtered in Norway the day before Amy Winehouse was found dead.

To date, more than 7,000 men and women from all over the world have died fighting in Afgahnistan and Iraq.

In America, our government can't get a thing done. Supposedly some sort of financial apocolypse will occur next week if we don't get our crap in order.

In England, a man who owns more media outlets than I do pairs of underwear is being questioned about gross abuse of power, including tapping the phones of private citizens to get a better news story.

All over the world incredible amounts of hardship are being dealt to people who simply can't take any more.

And yet, here we are, talking about a young woman who died from a drug overdose. Yes, it's very sad and I completely agree it's an incredibly huge waste of musical talent. But people fight addiction every day. Some succeed, some don't, but because they weren't famous, we don't hear about them and their ups and downs any more than we hear about the other things I mentioned above. And I don't mean the casual news report, because, chances are, you know about all the things I mentioned above. I mean looking at and examining every inch of those issues, doing real reporting, not just glossy two minute bits. I know Amy Winehouse's life and addiction with be examined with great thoroughness. The E! channel, TLC, Discovery, and maybe one or two of the cable news channels will do about a dozen different shows about her life or related to her addictions.

It's frustrating to me that her life will go so thoroughly examined, yet things that actually matter in real life, that will affect me and you, are going to be left largely ignored. I will have a more comprehensive view of Amy Winehouse's relationship with her pets than I do about how our own economy is going to look this time next week.

And that is my reaction.