Friday Night -- Do not sleep. Just can't. Keep thinking, "What if I forgot to tell them something? What if I didn't study the letters and rubrics closely enough? What if they don't do well because of my inability to read or follow directions?"
Saturday -- Spend all day (as in 7:45 AM to 8:00 PM) judging All-State auditions and waiting on scores. Also fail to sleep because of excitement.
Sunday -- help Chad lead at church, straighten up house, take short nap, go to birthday party. Because of short nap, fail to sleep a third time.
Monday --
Such lovely deep valleys under my eyes.
I think it's a side effect of living in this culture that I am never quite certain I am doing enough. Even on days like this, I don't feel like my tiredness is really justified. I think to myself, "Well, Mom held down a job, went to school and had two young 'uns and you didn't see her whining about how tired she was!" I compare myself to other women with much larger stressors in their lives and feel like I'm weak or defective for not being able to handle my little plate of responsibilities any better than I do. This afternoon, I came home with Tchaikovsky's piano solo setting of the Nutcracker suite with hopes of learning it so I'll have some fun pieces to play over Christmas. I thought to myself, "The only thing left to do at home is dishes and they can wait until tomorrow." Just to be sure, I went ahead and called Andrew and asked if he was cool with me waiting on the dishes. He said, "Yeah, that's fine...I may go ahead and do them just to get them out of the way."
The voices in my head were started by the time I hung up the phone. "What is wrong with you? You can't take 20 little minutes out of your day to put some dishes in the dishwasher? What sort of worthless wife are you?" And so the guilt consumed me and I did them. Now I feel a little more like a worthwhile person, except that there are still bits and pieces of clutter in our living room and I haven't really cleaned the hall bathroom mirror in a while and the kitchen floor could use sweeping and [insert a million other little things that anybody visiting my home wouldn't give a crap about]. The image of the coiffed and polished pearl-sporting homemaker of decades past hangs over my head beside the goal-oriented career woman of contemporary era. Can I learn to buck up and satisfy both ideals like it seems so many of the women in my family do?
I sure hope so. I hate feeling inadequate.
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