Life's Excess

I am living an 'excessive' life ...

It has happened too often now. I can't find things. I will stand in my spot dumbfounded. Something isn't where it used to be. I have found a new spot for something old. I'm a logical person, so I look in the logical places. One item is still 'lost' in the excess of my life. One item found. Items I didn't know were lost, are found (who knew that I had the foresight to buy Christmas cards when they were on sale after Christmas last year??).

I have gazed at the 'room of plenty'. The spare bedroom that has been the gathering spot for the excesses of daycare living. Toys, movies, educational games ... stuff. I wander downstairs and see more evidence of my 11 years of daycare-life. Outside, the sandbox is full of toys and the play house is full to capacity. There are echoes of the kids I have tended, everywhere I look.

I think of the spare bedroom downstairs that may or may not become 'home' to one of my Older Sons in the near future. The closet is stacked with remnants of my daycare life.

The kitchen wall is lined with boxes of the excessive work that is piling up in my book keeping world. A world that I have little or no control of. The work has been sparse this past month. It's been good for my sanity levels. Not so good for my budget. If the work was all caught up, I could be content with the fact that I had a slow month. The truth is, that there are hours, days and weeks that are yet to be caught up. And I can't do anything about it. I am waiting. I'm ready, willing and able to work. But the work isn't coming.

I have excesses of things-to-do piling up in my brain.

Christmas. I am stuck this year. I have a well stocked supply of Christmas cards (not remembering that I stocked up on cards on sale last year, I replenished my supply by paying full-price this year). And there they sit. Unopened and starting to collect dust along with everything else in this house of excess.

I usually write a 'Christmas poem' to encapsulate our family's news for the year which I send along with my cards. This year? Nothing. I sit down, surrounded by the clutter of my life and the empty page before me is filled with the nonsense that is my state of mind right now.

Every Christmas, I write my way out of this mood. This year ... I am overwhelmed.

This upcoming month, I have to put in full days, every day at school to accumulate the hours that I need in order to take the same holidays as the kids over the Christmas break.

I have a growing list of things I need to buy but I've been waiting for 'December' so that I don't mess up November's budget. But December's budget is more dire than November's was.

I know that I have book keeping work that I will have to do this week. Work that I must do in the evenings because I must put in my days at school. Except on Friday (because the kids have yet another day off of school in December ... as if 16 days of Christmas holidays aren't enough?) ... a day off of school that I can ill afford to take because I need that day to fulfill my school hours requirement for December.

I have a completely empty slate today. I was wide awake at 5:30 this morning and I jumped out of bed, knowing that I could fill every hour that this day holds.

But what have I done? I finished watching a movie. I stared at the excesses that I am surrounded in. Instead of feeling grateful, I feel overwhelmed.

If I have so much 'stuff', that I can't find things when I want them ... I have too much. I need to clean house. Literally.

They say that you can tell a lot about a person's state of mind by opening their closets. When I open my closets (or drawers) these days, I feel like things are spilling out of them. It feels exactly like my brain.

A life full of too much. It's not all it's cracked up to be.