Is this just life now? None stop crisis on top of crisis? Never enough time to be caught up? I swear it wasn’t this hard pre pandemic… but then again we had less children, pets, everything back then. I know it’s a season and I’m trying very hard to lean into this season and just enjoy it for what it is.
And if it was just craziness related to schedules and tantrums and general living with small people, I think it would be easier to understand. But it definitely feels like more lately. Covid is hitting more often and closer than before, which is stressful. It’s really hard to sit in a work meeting listening to your boss tell you that it’s no big deal when you’ve got a friend with a baby in the hospital. When you have two friends who have lost parents to Covid and your parents are home sick, hours away from you. When you have friends who are dealing with long Covid, and how it impacts their life every single day.
So we’ve got our boosters and the kids are vaccinated and then there was the logistics nightmare of scheduling everyone for flu shots as well. Followed by the actual nightmare of getting the actual flu shots (when does that get easier with kids??). The mental lists and calendars I’m keeping is insane.
There’s “adulting” headaches too. We’ve both been called back into the office which means that commuting is a thing again, and all the lovely issues that comes with that. Plus in the first month one car had an attempted break in and the other had a tire burst. I’m thankful we at least had the means to fix them, but in the moment both were exhausting.
There have been big things like sick kids and doctor’s appointments and finding out we have no coverage to watch one kid on early release days. And there have been little things like teachers who decide to change your kid’s shirt on school picture day or a furniture delivery that gets messed up over and over. But sometimes it’s the small thing that comes after all the big ones that just breaks you. Like when the day is going poorly so you decide to treat yourself with a coffee and they get your order wrong.
My hair is falling out like it thinks I’m postpartum again, and I’m so exhausted I wake up tired every morning. My body hurts, my brain is cloudy and slow, and I don’t see anything changing any time soon.
I’m sure my parents dealt with things like this when I was little too. In fact I know they did. It makes me feel better knowing that it didn’t impact me much back then, which means that hopefully my kids don’t notice or care either. I often wonder what the kids will remember from these days. I’m hopeful they’ll come away with memories of fun, happiness and time together. And maybe a bit of resilience.
But gosh I’m ready for things to be a bit easier. We’re barely keeping work, the kids and the house together (and by together nothing is getting cleaned more than once or twice a month) and anything that isn’t mandatory is getting skipped at this point. We’re having fun, but we’re also exhausted.
