Stress

It's been a challenge here in the last week - the children are shrieking and fighting when they're not making huge messes (I'm looking at the mop water all over my kitchen floor right now) and refusing to sleep or eat.  "It's a stage, it's a stage, it's a stage" is my constant mental refrain.  When I feel angry and overwhelmed, as I do a lot right now, I have a tendency to micro-manage, which I am doing my utmost to control.  I like to channel this desire into massive cleaning and purging sprees, as though by organizing my outside environment I will somehow also organize my interior environment and wake to a blissful, peaceful, FUNCTIONAL reality.

This likely explains why I just rearranged the livingroom furniture.

But this is also the time when I download, or brain dump, onto a piece of unlucky paper and begin another Big List.  You'll remember the last one, which was only a few months ago I think.  Let me check...ah, here it is.  Actually, it was two months ago; that sounds about right.  When I mentioned the last Big List, it was because I had fallen behind on Things That Needed Doing.  Lots of little chores, and some big ones, and lots of multi-step (have to call this person before that person and simultaneously do this thing and THEN I can do that thing...) tasks.  This is one way in which I utilize the Big List.  The other way is what I tend to refer to as a Family Re-Evaluation, which is what I'm doing right now.

A Family Re-Evaluation isn't always accompanied by a list, although pretty much everything in my life has a list attached to it in some way so likely if I'm in charge, there's going to be categorizing going on somewhere.  No, the Re-Evaluation is generally when everything is Not Working.  In this case bedrooms are not working, bedtimes are not working, meals are not working, the car seat situation (again with the little car chairs, Lord) is still, STILL not working, the car in general is not working, life isn't working.  It isn't working.

Sigh.  ANYway, it's a stage, it's a stage, it's a stage.  And I don't live in a bubble.  Although like the main character in Mom's Night Out I think I would also find a white bare room to be relaxing.  But that is not going to happen so onward and upward.