This Summer Has Kicked My Butt

In the last forty-eight hours I have worked twenty-one hours, skipped my writing time, begun a diet and an exercise plan, chewed someone out, threw a temper tantrum, developed a cold and had a cry-fest/pity-party. I have been a very busy girl. Last night I slept for twelve straight hours. I wonder if there is a correlation.

What a difference a day (or night) makes. I feel like a new person. I hope this feeling will last. My reality is – I can’t blame everything on the last forty-eight hours. This summer has kicked my butt. To use the cliché, I burned the candle at both ends, is not an understatement. My grueling summer was a result of necessity, choice, and circumstances beyond my control.

It was necessary to get up and go to work everyday, it was necessary to put in nine or ten hour days, it was necessary to work some six-day weeks, and it was necessary to do work beyond my physical capabilities in one-hundred degree weather. It was also necessary to keep my house in some semblance of order. I had to clean and do laundry and grocery shop and cook. I had to run errands and pay bills and balance my checkbook. I had to do the things necessary to maintain life as I know it.

It was my choice to put in a home garden which required me to get up a little earlier to tend. It was my choice to “have a life” – to spend evenings out with friends, to entertain, to attempt to be a good wife, mother and friend. It was my choice to say up too late reading and to get up too early to write. I chose to make some I-don’t-really-have-time-to-go trips to the lake cabin. And, most regrettably, I chose to waste time on facebook and in front of the television.

Then there were some things I had no control over. I had no control over others who unintentionally (or not) invaded my time or space. Well-meaning friends/neighbors whose “Do you have a minute?” or “Let me just tell you this one thing” sucked the life out of an entire evening. I have no control over my obligation to those I love. I am hard-wired that way. My one-hundred-three year old grandmother has been my closest friend since we were roommates in 1977 and this summer there were things out of my control because she is, well, because she is one-hundred-three years old. I have no control over the economy which has added a strain on my personal finances and added an impossible workload to my nonprofit organization. I have no control over the insane politics of the wackos who tire my patience daily. But perhaps the thing most out of my control is me. I can’t control that I am growing older. I am not twenty-one (or even 40) anymore. There are some things I can’t or shouldn’t do anymore. I shouldn’t lift an eighty pound bin of squash at the farm. I can’t stay up all night anymore (and still expect to be productive the next day). I can’t drink of fifth of tequila anymore – okay I never did that (no matter what anyone says), but you get my drift; age has changed the things I can and can’t do.

Twelve hours of sleep has made a dent in the damage done by the last forty-eight hours and by the summer. I feel so good I think I’ll take a nap!