projects

I have all these projects in my brain that I want to do but I can't seem to find the time or the energy or the two together. I can't figure out if I'm just a lazy ass or if everyone with a two and a half year old and a 13 month old is in the same exhausted place. I recently read a quilting blog that said this is what she does during naptime. And she wasn't just quilting, remember. She was taking pictures of it and blogging about it in addition. What the hell? All I can do during naptime is take a short nap myself (20-30 minutes and something I really really need) then straighten up the kitchen. Sometimes I read about 5 pages of my novel (which right now is The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant and is wonderful). I'm glad I'm reading these days; at least I'm doing something that's just for myself. I think that's essential in the exhaustion/meltdown battle. Do these other people just have more energy than I? Are their kids spaced further apart so that during baby waking hours they have 8 or 10-year-olds to help? Do they have parents that live with them? Maybe they're only 24 which would explain some of the energy thing. (I now fully understand why it is that we are meant to have kids in our early 20s rather than mid to late 30s.) Do they drink 8 cups of coffee a day? Maybe that's the real issue--if only I could drink caffeine, just imagine the things I'd accomplish! It's a thing I mourn regularly.

Then there's the evening time. You'd think that I could work on these projects in the evening. But after we've gotten the kids in bed and the dishes done and counters wiped and toys put away and coats hung and laundry folded, I just don't want to. I'd rather sit on the couch and watch bad tv, or lie on the floor and listen to music, or get in bed 30 minutes early and read my novel. Lazy? Maybe. I just can't tell.

Still my head goes on making plans for these projects. There are so many! Some are fix the house things, painting and new hardware and steaming off wall paper and getting art on the walls; but many more are quilting, or sewing big fun flowers on Frances' t-shirts, or painting a landscape on the inside of the closet in her room. I need to mount a mirror her height in the bathroom and want to paint a low kitchen cabinet with chalkboard paint. Perhaps the exercise of imagining these projects contains some of the satisfaction as following them through. You think?

Or maybe, a year from now, when the kids are bigger and need me less, I'll have time and energy for these things. I hope.