Random thoughts that I’m sure are linked but only in my head:

Sorry, sorry, sorry! I’ve been meaning to blog! Dying to, committed to, not wanting to, deciding never to again, and everything in between but since my last blog I’ve been on a roller coaster of life, but what else is really new? First, I got writers block. Then, didn’t know if I had anything worth blogging about. Then, went through a few weeks of I have so much to do I don’t know where to start. Lately, it’s been more of my day has flown by and I have so much to do I can’t do it all.

I have several that I’ve started but haven’t finished. As more time goes by, it’s kind of like a long lost friend. If you lose touch, sometimes it’s hard to start again. If nothing big has happened, it’s hard to share the details, they seem too mundane. You can’t just call up an old friend you haven’t spoken to in ages and tell her what you had for breakfast like you could your best friend you just talked to a few hours ago.

My wife was reading to me my Myers-Briggs personality type “worst fear”. Mine happened to be, “you share your thoughts and no one thinks them worthwhile or original.” Ha! That would be me, and yet I choose to blog.

Where we live, spring can get a little rough. I’m good until about mid-April, fine with the fact that it’s always winter and never Christmas. But then, you just reach the end of your rope with our weather. It’s convenient to blame things on the weather so I shall do that. It’s the end of May and I’m wearing a heavy sweatshirt, preparing to go to #2’s baseball game packing a coat, hat, and blankets because by 6pm, it will be freezing. Currently it’s either hailing, or, what only happens in this neck of the woods is “thundersnowing”. It’s a thing. Nope, just hail right now. Good thing it’s been too cold to plant anything yet and I haven’t had time anyway. For the past few weeks I’ve been in a strange mood. I have to renovate one of our apartments. Normally I do well under pressure, so having a timeline and a financial cap on the project gets me motivated. Not this time. I would just look around and cry. Not knowing where to start, knowing my other work (cleaning, cooking, kid time) is being put off, presented such a conundrum I couldn’t start. Every day. Where to start? SO overwhelmed you can’t start anywhere. Everything is an insurmountable obstacle. The thought of meeting with a friend or going to a moms group seemed like way too much time to take off from stressing about all the work to be done. And it wasn’t just the apartment. Everything. Grocery shopping? Who has time? But then what? We have nothing to eat! What should I do but cry?

And then life, like it often does, it plays a trick on you. Apparently I just wasn’t under enough pressure. We are preparing for a pretty huge life change, and suddenly, guess what? I’m getting things knocked of the list, putting on my big girl pants, determined, list in hand, let’s do this. Suddenly you can handle anything that comes your way, and you will do it well. No time for tears. No time to feel sorry for yourself. Every time things step up, you step up too, even though you thought you were really at your limit. And it’s not that bad at all. In fact, you realize you can handle it and it’s not going to kill you. You’re Wonder Woman again. Or, maybe it’s just that I have amped up my coffee intake.

So apparently now that I have no time at all is the time I will start writing in my blog again.

What have I been doing? I ran my first triathlon this weekend post babies. That was amazingly fun. I had a huge smile on my face on the first mile of the bike, remembering how much I love that sport. I didn’t train as much as I wanted to but I did surprisingly well. I’m surprised my body is stronger now than it was a decade and a half ago. I’m making progress on the apartment. I haven’t lost any of the children. I had a sick kiddo that then turned super crabby for the following 10 days. We are both still alive. I haven’t been able to do my little cleaning schedule lately but the house doesn’t look too shabby. Everyone still has clean underwear, even though many in our house don’t really care. I’ve managed to feed us every night. I’ve managed to go grocery shopping a few times.

Which brings me to my next thought, which may become a blog of its own. While we are about to embark on another life changing event, I’ve realized as a mom that it’s up to you to manage not only all of the physical needs of your family, but also the emotional ones. We all know that say in a family of 7 you have a relationship with each person, right? But then every other person also has a relationship with each other. So, that means, there are 49 relationships in our family. 81 if we count the dads. And whose job is it to monitor, foster, nurture, protect, and encourage those relationships? The moms. That really sounds like a full time job in itself. Maybe I’m no different than any other mom out there but I do have a tendency to feel everything everyone is feeling. Sometimes it can be exhausting, even though you aren’t actively trying to manage those feelings, emotions or relationships. It’s still a lot happening all under one roof.

I’d better sign off, get the house cleaned, fold the last 4 loads of laundry I’ve folded out of 8 total today, throw another coat of polyurethane on a floor, plan on how I will feed most of us while sitting in the cold, concrete steps of the baseball field bleachers tonight, be ready to welcome 3 kids home from school in 10 minutes without being distracted. Take a deep breath, prepared to be talked to at the same time by all 3 of them, find them an adequate snack (which we are out of), and drink some more coffee.