Seven Quick Takes: Loops

Perhaps I’m the only person in the universe who gets caught in mental loops, where the same set of insanities lug themselves through my mind over and over. I justify myself by taking real enjoyment in thinking something to death before moving on to another idea. As a way of burying it I “share” it with Matt, repeatedly. He loves that. I think blogging sort of breaks the endless loop. So not blogging, or so I’ve been telling myself, is just evil. I should always blog, without ever stopping. But that’s also insane. Anyway, here are some of the loops in which I am caught.

One

Every few years we change something big in the order of our lives, just to shake things up. Most often the change is something that we chose, but occassionally it is imposed on us, like having another wretched infant. That wrecks everything no matter how organized you are. This year our long standing way of taking Monday off, all of us together, was thrown up into the air. Matt fairly quickly managed to rearrange everything so that he could take Wednesday off, with relatively good success. I often wander into the office on Wednesdays and find him sitting, reading an actual book, or watching an interesting movie, and looking pretty happy.

I, on the other hand, have not had so much success. First I went through a long period of anger and mourning about losing Monday. Then I cast about trying to figure out how to take another day. Then I gave up and decided I needed to still have Monday even if Matt can’t have it. That led to a long laborious process of getting the children to begin doing school on Saturday instead of Monday (because if they’re doing school I can’t take the day off) and trying to reorder other days to make room for the work that had fallen onto Monday. Necessarily I think about it All The Time, mainly because I’m genuinely tired, but also because I’m a little OCD (or as Matt likes to day, DCO, because that way the letters are in order).

In this long process I discovered a few things, the biggest of which is that schooling the children, even if it doesn’t last all day, takes a whole day of mental energy. Its as if I’ve done an 8 hour day, even if it didn’t take 8 hours. So, thinking that because I ended school at two or three, I can then go on and do another amount of mental work, like maybe some stuff at church, is seriously foolish. If I end at 2 or 3, that should be when I put in a load of laundry and cook something and then sit down and read something, or do what other people do to decompress. In other words, I’m not God, thinking I can do two days worth of work every day.

Two

I wish I could stop thinking about the laundry. I wish it was just something I did without thinking about it. Everytime I sit down at my desk, or in my school chair, or at the kitchen table, I think, ‘Oh shoot, I should go down and do laundry.’ Of course, I don’t get up and go do it. I just sit there and feel bad. I wish doing laundry was like eating food or drinking tea, you just do it without a lot of agony. You have to plan a little, but on the whole you just do both those things, eating and drinking tea, without a whole lot of angst. Well, maybe not you, but me. Whereas with laundry, I can’t do it without tying myself into mental and emotional knots. Tragically, listining to me talk about how the laundry is going along is Not one of Matt’s favorite activities. Poor man. Maybe I should start an alternative blog where I only talk about the laundry.

Three

For two years I’ve been wanting to put together a set of bureau drawers for the children. I have thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and never actually done it. So this week I put the drawers together. And then I turned over the page to continue on with the body of the bureau beast, and saw, plain as day, that I’m too stupid to carry on. I don’t know what on earth it’s talking about. So I let the paper fall gently to the ground and wandered back upstairs, and there the matter rests. I continue to obsesses and do nothing about it, it continues to lie there, in Sheol, mocking me.

Four

I’m in a little mental loop of shock and confusion about how well school is going. This, as you know, is February. And February is when we fail. That’s that the word “february” traditionally means. So I’m a little unclear about what on earth is going on. Elphine has taken it upon herself to wake up at 6am every morning and go downstairs and start working. And I walked by the boys room the other day and saw Alojicious lying on his bed working busily out of his history book. Of course, I realize that by writing this out in fifty shades of black and white I’m going to completely jinx and ruin it and they will all stop this incredibly weird behavior and we return to our normal pattern of sorrow and frustration about school work in February. Anyway, I keep trying to tell Matt about how crazy it is, and he keeps glazing over.

Five

I mentioned fifty shades of black and white, just then, not because I’m trying to get lots of blog hits or anything like that, but because my idiocy has not been fully plumbed. For the last several months, as that particular book and movie has been discussed and promoted and railed against, I have quietly wondered why any book about the supposed allurement and glory of weird sex had the word “gray” attached it. Surely sex is something not gray. Isn’t it warm and nice and um, well, I really prefer not to speak about this subject under any circumstances whatsoever, which is why I never brought it up with anyone. But last night, as I was catching up on my endless facebook feed, everyone had something to say about how terrible the movie is and everything (that’s because 90% of my facebook friends are Christian so even if they plan to see it, they still have to post on Facebook about how it’s evil) I finally whispered to Matt, “why is it gray? Why so many shades of gray? What is gray about sex?” And then he laughed uproariously and said, “you know, the opposite of black and white, like right and wrong? But this is in shades of gray, like morally neutral. Gray.” And then I felt really stupid. How obvious! But also, what a big fat lie.

Six

I really really really really need to get over to church and clean out two closets over there. They’ve been weighing heavily on my mind for two months as I’ve watched them fill up and overflow. Every day I examine all my minutes and find that I don’t have the time to do it, or worse, that I don’t feel like it. So I don’t. In a great gift of love and sacrifice to Matt, though, I haven’t repeatedly moaned to him about it. So at least there’s that.

Seven

So you can see that my life is not all that fancy and that I do not think Deep Thoughts. But I don’t feel terrible because it’s February, the month of wandering around in a circle caught in mental loops of hating the weather and believing that the month will never end. How can such a short month be so long? And taking even one day off from blogging left me feeling bereft and out of control. Spent the two days I didn’t blog thinking about how sad it was that I wasn’t blogging. For Lent, I’m going to blog more! Just kidding. How could I possibly blog more. You wouldn’t have time to read it, especially if you give up the Internet for Lent. Oh my word, please don’t do that! Just vow not to go see that movie or read that book, and eat less chocolate.

Have a great weekend!