RushRushRush

I've been really busy at work, constantly behind, but not quite buried enough under piles of paper to justify bringing in a temp to help out. The situation stresses me out. No one expects me to do more than I can, but I still hate to miss deadlines. I've my nose to the grindstone, taking breaks only to eat lunch (I'm slurping soup between sentences while I write this entry) or send a quick e-mail here and there. Oh, and go to the bathroom, where I sometimes find  yesterday's underwear in my pants leg.*

I'm not usually in any rush to get to work in the morning, but last week and this week have been exceptions. When I start every work day off feeling behind, it's hard not to hear every tick of the clock as we get ready in the morning. The weekend time change means that the kids are (blessedly) sleeping until after 7:00 a.m., but their later waking means that I lazily get up later, too, and suddenly we have all the same things to do in the morning but much less time to get them accomplished.

It all came to a head this morning. I never actually lost my temper, but I was harried, short, and less than warm. Reasonable requests from the kids were met with a whiplash "No!" followed by a curt, "Fine" when I couldn't deal with the whining that came after the no. I spilled milk twice as I raced around to get daycare lunches ready. By the time we got out to the car, my back was so tight it felt like it was made of 2 x 4s. Or just one giant concrete slab.

We had a nice drive to school, with the kids singing along to Baby Beluga and saying all manner of cute things that I have since forgotten. It gave me some time to think about what I learned from my Morning of Hectic Craziness:

1. I need to get up at least fifteen minutes before the kids.

2. Rushing never helps anything.

3. If I say yes, I need to mean it and follow through nicely. If I say no, I need to mean it and deal with the consequences (also nicely).

Simple enough, right? Why, then, do I feel like these are lessons I've been learning over and over and over? Sometimes I am really quite slow.

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Lots of people have been to look at my condo. None of them have made offers yet. Grrr.

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In addition to being super-busy at work, I'm also dealing with some (potentially very exciting) unbloggable situations. I hope to be able to blog about them soon. They are not bad—quite the opposite—but they do take up time. 

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I haven't had time to fully process in the in-law visit, but overall is was quite good. For Maddie and Riley, the highlight was spending both mornings of the weekend swimming in the pool at the hotel where everyone stayed. I had told the kids they could go swimming, and they seemed excited about it, but they have never loved water and it was not at all clear to me that they even knew what a pool was. When we went over Saturday morning, my expectations were pretty low.

They adored the water. They had a blast floating around in some little inflatable boats I had from last summer, and they liked jumping from the side of the pool into my arms. Riley, a true lover of physical comedy, would laugh as though he'd never stop when his Uncle Al would go underwater and blow bubbles.

Here they are at the pool; in the image of Maddie, you can see Riley in the background getting some help from his Hatchi to get his trunks on. Such bathing beauties!

*When I pulled on my jeans to get dressed today, I got them all the way pulled up and was about to button them when I felt underwear from the day before yesterday stuck in the thigh. Yow. 'Tis my week for underwear mishaps.