Jam-Packed

Just a quick note …

Have a really packed schedule this weekend, one of those weekends I secretly hate because seemingly every single minute of my day is taken up by something. I don’t know how I’ll get through it except by taking it one minute at a time.

Sigh.

Today I have to pay bills and balance the checkbook, take Patch out with me on errands (post office, library, grocery store, et cetera), do a few loads of laundry, put up Christmas decorations outside the house in the afternoon, go to 5 pm mass. I am also pushing hard to get significant amounts of my two other websites done, websites where I hope to make a few bucks a week. Weighing heavily on my shoulders is the fact that I will have no income in 72 days.

Tomorrow, instead of relaxing watching some football games, we have to get up early and drive into New York City to meet up with my father-in-law and sister-in-law. It’s her birthday, and she’s the godmother of Little One. We’ll all go see the big tree – Little One made a bagel bird-feeder in Daisy Scouts and wants to hang it up somewhere in Rockefeller Center (it’ll be lunch for a homeless person, my mother says). Then we’ll all have an early dinner somewhere in the Big Apple and head home when it gets dark.

I also want to reach the halfway mark in Ben-Hur and skim through a couple other books I have. Plus we have about 18 hours recorded on the DVR, so I’d like to watch something; only problem is teevee watching is starting to feel more and more like a guilty pleasure, emphasis on the word guilty with images of ticking clocks and overturned sand glasses abounding.

But I don’t want to sound like a wet blanket. Well, a 24/7 wet blanket, that is. Occasionally I’m fun. I will enjoy seeing my in-laws, as I always do. And it’ll be nice putting up decorations with my six-year-old. But damn am I tired and stressed. I want so bad that drink or five or six that I’m afraid to have due to my heart/lung condition. It’s just impossible to say, “Honey, the kids are really getting on my nerves. I’m going upstairs to meditate!” So instead I drink soda and eat cookies for the short-term fix (about ten or fifteen minutes), then I feel worse than before.

Double sigh.

Okay – I promise no more venting for a while. That’s another short-term “fix.”

I do have a few interesting posts coming up in the next few days if I can find some undisturbed time to write (also a chore and, now, a guilty pleasure). Something definitely on Tolkien, something possibly about Henry Rollins, something about dreams, and probably something about seeing the Tree, which will no doubt be the setting for something weird, interesting, or unusual, knowing the cast of characters involved. Oh, and on a positive note, I picked up two “self-improvement” CDs from the library which I want to find time to listen to as a pick-me-up of sorts. I am very wary of the “self-help” movement since 99 percent of it is utter b.s. But I had such a great time listening to one I bought (recommended to me by a literary agent) during my solo PA-NJ commute last week, I decided to try these two. If worthwhile, there will be a post about them, too.

All right, LE – now get to work!