One of those days

Today was one of those days… it feels like I did a lot, I’m pretty tired, and yet… not an awful lot to show for it. This morning I cleaned out the girl’s closet. I’ve been rearranging closets for the past two weeks, it never ends. Unfortunately, in Italy small closets are the norm, in fact walk-in closets are practically non-existent we basically use armoires, and since houses here don’t come outfitted with closets and furnished kitchens and bathrooms, as they do in the US when you’re renting you tend not to want to spend too much money on these sorts of things. Ergo, small closets. This leads to a biyearly tradition called “the seasonal closet rearrange”, which is a pain in the behind of monumental proportions. Basically, at the end of summer (and again at the end of winter), when the weather starts getting nippy everyone starts going through their closets, folding away they’re spring and summer clothes, and taking out their fall and winter stuff. There is one advantage to this ritual, at least as far as I’m concerned, twice a year I get to go through my stuff and through sheer frustration at folding and packing away I manage to get rid of some of it, this is how it goes: “oh geez, another black t-shirt, do I really need another black t-shirt, I’ve already packed away four… aw, man… not another tank top… now where’s the box with the tank tops… I actually never wear this…” and off to the church pile they go. Anyway, I’ve done my closet, the boy’s and today the girl’s… all I’m missing is the husband’s and then I’m done for a whole six months, sigh. (for time saving tips related to children’s clothes read this)

So this is where my morning went, and then I managed to spend most of the afternoon baking a cake. How does that even happen? Anyway, the cake was yummy, so worth it.

The kids played, their Nonna came over, so did their friends D & L, we ate cake, finished decorating the house for Halloween and then promptly removed half the decorations cause the boy thought they were too scary (incidentally, they’re not at all scary, he even  made me put away a singing and dancing pumpkin man. Unless he meant they were so ugly they were scary, not frightening scary, hmmm…). Well, there you have it, just one of those days. Though it did give me material for two posts other than this one so I can’t complain.

The Quest

Yesterday I had my usual Monday morning therapy session, yes I’m going to therapy, and let’s just get this out of the way real quick: for those who know me I realize it seems strange since I always said that I would NEVER go to therapy, I wouldn’t be caught dead in therapy, and why would I want to put myself in a cycle that never seems to end of co-dependency with a virtual stranger (or actually just dependency, since the therapist isn’t dependent on the patient, or rather, not emotionally dependent maybe, but the therapist is in fact financially dependent on the patient, so it could be considered a co-dependent relationship after all…). But as usually happens when you mouth off to the four winds about how you are never ever going to do something, you generally end up doing it, so here I am, in therapy, hopefully not for life. Now that that little explanation is over, let’s go back to the main subject shall we?

So, yesterday I had my usual Monday morning therapy session and I was complaining that I never seem to have time to do anything and I simply don’t understand where the time goes and this frustrates me to no end, because, well, you see, to live life one must actually be able to do stuff, right?? And the therapist being a therapist gave me no insight, nor made any comments, nor in any way indicated that she had a solution to my problem, but she did let me vocalize my stream of consciousness all the way to the following reflections:

The more time I have, the less time I make. (and no, I’m not trying to sound like a Chinese proverb. Oh ok, maybe a little…) The fact is that right now I don’t have to clean my house nor iron my clothes as I have help with that and I have someone to watch the kids when I need to do something really important and yet… the closets need the seasonal rearranging, the thank you notes from the girl’s baptism need sending, the house hunt needs to be picked up more vigorously, two fun and interesting new business ideas need to be researched and implemented and the blogs need updating. Whereas now the closets are a mess of summer, some winter, the wrong size and who the hell does this belong too, the thank you notes are inching along one a day, maybe, the house hunt looks like it’s going into a biblical timeline, and the fun and interesting business ideas are still just ideas three months after I had them while the blogs get updated between 12 and 1.30am, which means I’m sleeping approximately 4 hours a night. And for the life of me I don’t understand the reason, where in the holy heck of a heck does the time go????

You cannot be organized without if you aren’t organized within. This I got from an article in parenting magazine on Jamie Lee Curtis and how bleeping organized and time efficient she is. I actually believe this to be deeply true, if you’ve got mental chaos (my case, completely) your house and life will be disorganized and completely inefficient, my question is, how the heckety heck do I organize my head if I can’t even organize my sock drawer (though, apparently I can’t organize my sock drawer because my head is disorganized) and why, you may very well ask, would I want to organize my sock drawer? Well, because in my disorganized brain I think that if my sock drawer (and here you can insert any number of household objects like pantry, cupboards, desk, filing system….) was more organized, I would have more time to get stuff done rather than wasting half an hour to hunt down the other blue sock.

I obviously just ran out of time to write this, so we’re closing here with the following edict from my disorganized self: I am now hereby and henceforth on a solemn quest to create order in my life (and head) and to find the time to actually get things done. Now if only someone would show me the way, the how and possibly the why. All I know is that I’m sure to regret this.