Stress | Table for Five

Just the usual Holiday Stress around here.

December 21, 2010 By Elizabeth

If I wasn’t a blogger, would the holidays still be as stressful? If I didn’t wake up every morning with a list of posts I need to write, reviews and giveaways and unanswered emails and sponsored posts that pay the bills, all swirling around in my head, if I didn’t wake up every morning thinking about all of that, would I still be stressed out just because it’s the holidays?

Probably.

I don’t even know what I want any more. I love blogging. I love the opportunities it brings me, the people I get to meet both virtually and in real life, the new products I get to review, the giveaway opportunities that bring me new readers. I just wish I could organize it all better, integrate it better into my family life.

Today is Nathan’s 12th birthday. I bought his presents, but I didn’t wrap them, didn’t buy him a card or order a cake.

I haven’t addressed or sent out a single Christmas card. Or wrapped a single gift. At least they are all purchased though.

Gah. I’m just a ball of stress today.

How are all of you holding up?

Filed Under: Welcome to my Life Tagged With: holidays, Stress

Single Moms and Dads, I Salute You

October 19, 2010 By Elizabeth

This past week has given me a whole new appreciation for single Moms and Dads. I do not know how you work, either in an office or at home, plus take care of kids, plus keep up with grocery shopping, meal prep, dishes, laundry, housework, doctor’s appointments, checking the homework, getting everyone to bed on time – it’s exhausting. Mentally and physically.

I am a terrible housekeeper, that’s no secret. I can’t prioritize the work and so I just let it go as long as possible. I’m trying to delegate chores to the kids, but yesterday Ryan was standing next to me rinsing a dish at the sink and I noticed he looked really sad. I asked him what was wrong and he of course said “nothing”. I said “honey, you know you can talk to me any time about any thing. Is everything okay at school?”

“Yes.”

“Everything okay with your friends?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then what is it?”

He heaved a sigh and said “it’s just so stressful here at home.”

Oh. OH.

Now, this is a kid who is more than happy to help out around the house. But without realizing it, I had been piling more work on him than he could really do, and he was trying hard to keep up with my requests without complaining, but it had just gotten too much for him.

I’m just glad he said something. I put my arms around him, which isn’t easy since he’s a foot taller than me, but I pulled his head down towards mine and kissed his scratchy cheek (14! razor stubble at 14! who knew!) and told him I was sorry. “I’m so sorry, Ryan”, I said. “I”m so, so sorry.”

He nodded his head. “I love you”, I said, and kissed him a couple more times on his cheek. “I love you too”, he said.

I’m lucky. So, so lucky.

I’m hanging in there by my fingernails as far as the house is concerned. Everyone is wearing clean clothes today, but I think the boys had to hand-wash spoons this morning to eat their cereal. There’s toilet paper, but the bathroom floor is in desperate need of sweeping and mopping. The kitchen floor – well, probably best not to look too closely at the kitchen floor.

I go to Sparrow Weight Management this afternoon for the start of Week Two on the program. It includes a weigh-in. I’m terrified they will tell me I haven’t lost any weight. I feel lighter, my jeans are buttoning without digging into my stomach flab, but scales can be tricky things. If it’s two pounds, I guess that’s two pounds less than last week, and I still have 23 weeks to go. I’m trying to not worry myself into a high blood pressure situation like last week.

Anyway, I’ll wrap this post up by once again saying BRAVO, Single Moms and Dads. You are unsung heroes.

Filed Under: Being a Mom, Health Tagged With: optifast, parenting, ryan, Stress

So This Is What Calm Feels Like

December 21, 2009 By Elizabeth

: Image by Elizabeth/Table4Five via Flickr

Sometime last month, around the same time I mustered the courage to call my doctor and say HELP, I’M LOST IN A BLACK FOG, GET ME OUT, I made a decision. All I had to do to convince myself that it was the right decision was think back to Christmas 2008, when I was an anxious, nervous ball of stress every single day. Christmas is always stressful for me anyway, so the last thing I need to do is make it harder for myself.

So I decided this year that after a certain point in December, I would allow myself to stop worrying about my blogs all the time. I saw how I had been living more of an online life than a real life, and I saw everything I was missing. I decided that I was going to make my husband and kids the number one priority. I began choosing to close my laptop and actually LOOK at my kids when they talked to me, instead of listening halfway while continuing to type. I started actually watching TV with Chris instead of half-watching while continuing to type, then looking up every couple of minutes saying “wait a minute, what did that guy say?” and making Chris rewind, which drives him nuts.

I’m a lot happier this year, my friends. The combination of the Effexor plus turning off the panic switch in my mind has made such a huge difference in my life, I can hardly explain it. I feel like I’m HERE, like I’m really being a wife and mother.

I’m still feeling a little bit of stress, mostly related to the fact that I STILL didn’t get cards sent out before Christmas, or do the baking I had planned to do, or get any presents wrapped yet at all, but I don’t lay awake for hours every night composing lists of posts I have to write. I don’t jump out of bed in the morning in a panic about the state of my email inboxes (which is pretty major since it used to be a daily source of stress for me). I don’t feel overwhelmed, I feel…calm. I just wanted to share that with all of you. Thanks for reading!