I can’t add up without you

It seems to me my life is getting busier by the hour. I am never going to catch up with myself there really is too much to do. And now as if to emphasis the point something else has literally just landed in my email inbox.

It’s not that life was always easier with Andrew here beside me but at least I had someone to share some of the tasks with, someone to make me go to bed when I really was too tired to function and someone to hold my hand when it all got too much.

Andrew was also someone to check up on my mistakes. I had a really blonde moment today, I went to pick up the tiles for my new kitchen and when I returned I discovered they are about an inch smaller than the ones we already have.

This shouldn’t be a problem but I had based my calculations on just counting the number of tiles on the walls and ordering the exact same number (with a tiny allowance for half tiles and breakages – oh so sensible!)

Andrew would have checked, measured and measured again, we would invariably over order but there is no way we would arrive home with too few.

I just can’t add up on my own, my brain has turned to mush and I am getting very lackadaisical lurching from one mini crisis to another.

Last week I got in a muddle over tickets for Wimbledon. Our local tennis club is allocated certain tickets and members can express a preference and enter a ballot. I glibly selected and won tickets for the first Monday, Centre Court no less only to discover the next day when I decided to check the calendar that Oldest Son has his last GCSE exam on that date!

After a grovelling email and phone call to our efficient club secretary I managed to get them changed but I feel awful for putting her out and getting in such a mess.

On Monday I only just made a school governor meeting with minutes to spare, it had almost completely slipped my mind.

 

I am forever asking my friends for help with looking after Youngest Son while I ferry Oldest around. I’m counting the months until he is 17, fervently hoping he will pass his driving test then I will gladly get him a car!

It is his diary that is the fullest; May and June are full of tennis matches and exams.

Youngest doesn’t get much of a look in but he’s quite happy with the Wii and a bit of Lego (or a lot of Lego, he’s counting on getting the biggest Lord of the Rings set in the summer hols.)

So what about me, apart from playing taxi driver I am chief kitchen designer, I daren’t think about the muddle we will find ourselves in only a few days’ time. I haven’t even ordered a worktop or thought about flooring yet – GULP!

Obviously there is filing on the dining room table to be cleared away/hidden while we need temporary storage space for the kitchen stuff.

Then on top of the mundane household stuff there’s that old recurring dream of writing…

As I mentioned I have just been away on a writing weekend, now I am back I feel wrung out rather than rested. This is because I have decided I really must get my unravelling-edges blog into shape with a view to publishing and that is the manuscript I showed to the real-life-published-author who was running the weekend.

He would like to see more.

It’s not easy plunging back into that level of grief, the water is cold and icy. The emotions I thought I had laid to rest are stripped bare and churned up again. However I know I need to complete this project for my own satisfaction if no one else’s.

So my task is to write but in the real world writing becomes just another thing to do on a very long list.

I need to prioritise what’s really important between the house, the boys and all my other commitments.

I need to sit down and do some proper calculations. My adding up has been a bit unreliable of late and my greatest fear is that I make a huge mistake somewhere along the line.

It’s easy to buy a few extra tiles (OK another 160 tiles – I’m sure I’ve over ordered now!) but what if I spend my time doing something that turns out to be completely pointless? Meanwhile I miss other opportunities I should have taken.

Will someone check my adding up please?