In Which I Share My Overwhelmedness

"How often does FB's greenhouse thing have to be watered?" my mom asked when she visited recently.

"I'm not sure," I answered vaguely. "It couldn't hurt to water it."

"Why don't you check? The directions are sitting down there." This was, in fact, true.

"Because if I'm the one that reads it, then it suddenly becomes my responsibility to make sure it's watered as needed."

My mother laughed a little, and I smiled a bit to take the edge off my words, but I wasn't joking. I'm so tired of bearing the sole responsibility for everything. Lately, I've felt like I'm drowning, to be perfectly honest. We still have about 24-36 hours' worth of work, not including painting, that has to be done before we can put the house on the market. Most of this work, I've been putting off, since the nature of my house is that what I do, someone else undoes. I'm nearly finished planning our next school year, but as you all know, nearly finished is not the same as done. I'm busily preparing for our upcoming trip, and suddenly it's the beginning of the food season, too.*

I'm tired and overwhelmed, and so when I went online this morning to register EG for a class I wanted her to take this autumn, and it was full, it seemed... like something was out to bring me down, at the very least. If I can't get her in this class - there is a waiting list, and another section may open - then I will have to teach her, and it's a teacher-intensive class. I don't know if I can add an additional teacher intensive class to my schedule next year. I really don't. All of FB's work requires me to be right there with him. EG is independent, more or less, for mathematics and science, but our language arts is heavily teacher intensive, and most of her other subjects involve some amount of my involvement. Adding this to the list? Feels like the proverbial straw, this morning.

It doesn't help, of course, that I'm short on sleep, as thunderstorms rolled in around 3:30 am and didn't abate until about 5 am. I had trouble falling asleep last night, as I could feel the weather changing. I didn't just hit snooze a few times, I have no recollection of my alarm sounding this morning!

Standard Disclaimer: Yes, I know. First world problems. There's always someone who has it worse. I get it. I'm still allowed to feel overwhelmed and tired at times.

*Food Season: We aspire to eat locally and organically as much as possible. Currently, I'm co-coordinating a group purchase of quarters of local grass-fed beef, with pick-up around the first of June. The farmers' market opened on Saturday, and yesterday we went to the local u-pick strawberry farm, which means that I need to get some of the strawberries washed, trimmed, and in the freezer today or tomorrow at the latest. I also am trying to decide how many chickens I want to purchase from the local purveyor of pastured chickens. I already make a special trip each week to purchase milk and eggs from a local farmer. Sometimes I wish I didn't know so much, so I could be content with going to the supermarket for everything, not just flour, salt, and so forth. Then, of course, I feel guilty that I haven't found a local source for flour... or is it that I should feel guilty for not grinding my own wheat and baking my own bread? I can't remember.