Saying Something For The Sake Of Saying Something

I really hate that if I don't post often enough, my front page becomes a blank, boring grey billboard advertising my slacknitude. ("Hey look! I'm a flaky blogger!") That itself is good motivation for posting *something*, I suppose. It's not that I have anything all that earth-shattering or heartwarming to say at the moment--it is, as usual, uncomfortably close to (if not past) my bedtime and it's been a tiring day, which pretty much always fubars my blogging even when I've got something I want to say.

The last few weeks (actually more like the last month or two) have been a whirlwind of work, both paid and unpaid. I get up in the morning and do the kid wrangle and then zoom off to work (where I am often late, which is driving me slowly crazy because I can't stand the tension that builds up, waiting for my boss to say something about it). When I get to work, I find myself spinning around and around from task to task, moving faster and feeling the pressure increasing as the day goes on until suddenly boom, it's time to go and I didn't finish this that and the other thing but it's on to more kid wrangling (and occasionally a social event) and dinner and bedtime and going to bed too late and then getting up earlier than I want to in order to do it all over again. And to make things harder, Josh is getting the work whammy too--now we both find ourselves with too much work and not enough time and patience. Normally I can withstand the "second shift" whirlwind pretty well, but the increased pressure that's been going on during my paid work hours is starting to really wear me down. (I liken it to Bilbo's "butter scraped over too much bread" feeling.) Tomorrow I'm leaving for a brutally compressed 3 day business trip to New York, and I haven't packed yet. I'm probably not going to until tomorrow, although I'm on duty in the morning and we have a buddy of Eli's sleeping over tonight so it promises to be an especially hectic morning.

But I'll miss the kid stuff and even the house chores when I'm in New York--I always feel so lonely and adrift when I'm traveling, so cut off from my grounding routine and the people I care about. Funny, isn't it? That quiet, clean, empty hotel room will feel like a fabulous luxury for about 15 minutes, and then I'll spend the rest of the trip pining for home and the familiar irritation of having to pick up other people's socks every day.

All right, time to be stern with myself and start getting ready for bed…