I'm watching the chickens poke around in the yard and coo and chirp and pretend to fly. They gallop and flap their wings, lifting their feet every so often. It looks exactly like a three year old leaping around the house with a Superman cape on.
My husband is leaving for work. I hear his car door close and the ignition turn and him drive away. Some days I'm glad he goes so I can get some work done around the house. During most of his days off I mill around restlessly, knowing I should be doing something but fretful that I'll miss quality time with him if I, say, run errands.
But today I don't want him to leave. I try to shed the feelings of abandonment and decide how my day will pan out.
My intention was to process the eight pounds of strawberries I picked yesterday, after picking them. But I'd promised my son a visit to friends. I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent there admiring the house and the cool games and books on the shelves ... and the pantry! Oh my. I want my food storage to look like theirs. What a bounty.
So I decide to make the strawberry jam this morning. I leave the house early to get the extra honey and sugar I need and then stop at BiMart to get the lids and rings we were too tired and hot to get yesterday. Oh, and the tool one uses to reach into boiling vats of water to retrieve glass jars from the canning bath. I need one of those, too.
BiMart was closed for another hour. I have to leave to get home so my husband can go to work.
I finally manage to get the children dressed and they brush their teeth. But now I don't want to go. I don't want to make jam today. I'm feeling that familiar monster, Overwhelm, prance around my shadows this morning.
I have to take the children to TWO birthday parties today. Hideous thought.
I enjoy gathering with friends as much as the next person, but when Overwhelm strikes, I notice all the things that need to be done immediately.
I'm picking up more raw milk tomorrow but still have over half a gallon in my fridge from last week. This is probably because I haven't baked any bread in weeks and my housemates have stopped drinking milk ... and Paul's afraid to now. I need to do something with this extra milk.
I can borrow my friend's butter churn and make butter. I can make yogurt; I can even make a farmer's cheese.
I need to make that strawberry jam.
I need to work on my book pitch again.
I need to continue compiling my book. I've got essays and prayers and pictures and journal entries but I want to round it out a bit more -- and I'm frantic to know in what order to put the essays. Should it be chronological? Thematic?
My kitchen is a mess; I can't find the candy thermometer for making the jam.
I need to call 811 Call Before You Dig's number to find out where we can dig post holes for the clothesline and I'm worried about the Chilean Guava bush I planted last week. (Two weeks ago?) It's crispy and rustly ever since being sunk in the ground. Should I fertilize it? Water more? Move it to a shadier spot? My wisteria is looking shabby, too.
Overwhelm can lead quickly into Despair if I'm not looking, and I can start to believe that I'll never make it as a gardener, I'll never be able to live off my own land (small as it is) and Monsato will still get my business because I can't seem to find any products on the supermarket's shelves that don't have soy something in them.
I still have soap making supplies on my kitchen counter from WAY before and I desperately want to go to the chiropractor and for my kids to stop fighting. Also, the chickens still need a home. The dog crate won't cut it for long.
After a handful of gluten-fee pretzels with soy lecithin in them -- shit -- and a cup of organic, shade-grown, fair trade, decaf coffee with raw cream and agave nectar in a chipped Willamette Writers mug, I start to calm down.
Gregory Kompes once said at a Willamette Writers Conference, "Do just one thing a day." He was talking about writing careers and websites and marketing, but I think it applies to harried, un-schooling, wannabe urban homesteader moms, like myself, too.
It's sound advice. Just do one thing. Just one thing.
Funny. At the conference he handed out little wooden cubes and told us to write on each side something that contributed to our writing career: updating your webpage, adding an article to a directory, submitting something, writing, sending a thank you card to an editor. The idea being you'd flip the cube everyday and to do your "Just one thing" for the day, and know that that was enough. It had to be, or we'd all go nuts trying to fit it all in.
I took two cubes, confident that I had more than six things to do.
Today I re-wrote the cubes directions for more homier things: write a letter, go on a field trip for fun, sew a project, hand-make a gift for someone I love, freeze or can something, write an essay or blog entry, research a plant or garden tip and do it, knit, make a dairy product (cheese, ice cream, butter or yogurt), bake bread, weed, make dog food.
In a panic I realize I have far more than twelve things and I need more cubes. What about trying
new gluten-free recipes on the kids? What about the family cookbook I want to compile? What about submitting query letters?
Should I erase the field trip and substitute the cookbook?
Oh my god. I forgot I need to touch up the paint on the bean bag toss board for Faerieworlds this Friday! And the kids' swimming lessons start this week!
Despair retreats as I start to laugh at the sheer enormity of chaos my brain imbues. (It could be hysteria though.) Oftentimes I feel I'm living a Seinfeld episode where either so much happens at once that it's funny, or a bunch of beautiful "nothings" happens all day long.
It astonishes me that I can think of all these things at once without breaking into a nice calm meltdown. A friend once told me that women's brains were spaghetti and men's were waffles. Men could compartmentalize and blessedly think of one thing at a time. Lucky bastards. Waffle brains and they can pee outside without wetting their jeans? Come on. This is hardly fair.
Yes, I have spaghetti brains. Everything I think of reminds me of something else, which reminds me of something else.
Which reminds me -- I need to put the chickens back in their pen before we leave for the birthday parties, lest a neighborhood cat comes calling, or one of the chicks manages to crawl under a neighbor's fence and they turn us in to the City for having five chickens instead of two.
I think I'm Kramer today. Or maybe the Jason Alexandar guy. What was his name? George.
I wish Paul were home. (sigh)
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