>The little things

>I’ve mentioned before that I prefer big overhauls in my life when something needs fixing.  I don’t want to just put things away in my room; I want to empty the entire room, go through it bit by bit, rearrange all the furniture, and put the stuff I’m keeping back in some newly organized fashion.  It’s almost as if I feel like if I can’t just do it ALL at once, it’s not worth doing.  This is obviously a counterproductive way of being now that I have a small child and am 7 1/2 months pregnant.  Hence the lack of any major improvements in my house since my mom left and I can no longer do the overhauls I love.

It turns out I’m a bit like this emotionally as well.  Right now I’ve been working through a sense of being a bit trapped into this life, even though it was my choice and I recognize how fortunate I am to have options in how I balance my work & home life.  Nevertheless, I am going stir-crazy being a full-time mom, and the idea of doing it for another year or two is making me twitchy.  Many kind people have tried to help me by suggesting things I can do to make sure I have some meaningful adult time/work in my life, but the fact that I’m about to have another baby makes it a less than ideal time to take on any new challenges.  I’ve also found that even the things I have done for myself this year – like volunteering at the public library teaching computer classes or doing science and drama clubs a couple mornings a week at my school – just aren’t cutting it.  Turns out that I miss my career, I miss my colleagues, I miss having days in which I change only a couple of diapers.  On the other hand, the idea of working full-time and having someone else spend the majority of the week with my child(ren) makes me a little sick to my stomach.  Not that it’s wrong for everyone, just wrong for me.

But before I go on and on about why I’m feeling a little stuck in the SAHM life that I wish hadn’t been the lesser of all evils for this year, let me get to the point of this post.

Since I can’t make any major changes to my life right now that will make me happier, I’ve been feeling really stuck in my Bad Attitude.  But it turns out that the little changes do matter.  They really do add up, or overlap, or even give me some temporary relief.  I can’t spend a week going through every box in my garage to get it all wonderfully sorted and give away the junk.  But my husband and I did set a goal to at least be able to park in there again and spent a week doing whatever it took to clear out the center.  And you know what?  It makes me happy every single time I pull in or out of the garage, even if I do sigh a little at all the unsorted boxes.

As to my emotional well-being…alas, there are ever more frequent days when I wake up feeling tired, cross, and, well… pregnant.  I’ve been a bit inconsolable, I admit it, faking it through in order to not be the Worst Mom Ever (especially not this close to Mother’s Day).  But it turns out that a walk to Starbucks and splitting a piece of pumpkin bread with Sebastian gave me just the genuine lift I needed to get through the rest of that day.  Buying a new song on iTunes did the trick another day, and neither of those things cost me more than a buck or two.  A phone call with my sister helped one morning, and laughing through a friend’s baby shower perked up an afternoon, and those were free.

So my house is still cluttered and half-organized, and my near future is one big Unknown right now, but it’s a bit comforting to know that small steps really will get me…somewhere.  I’ll let you know where that is exactly once I figure it out.