Keep it Together!

One of my Facebook friends shared an article from the HuffPost about the funniest wildlife photos of 2017 and hey, that sounds right up my alley and who couldn’t use a good laugh in the middle of all this…you know. So of course I jump right in and the very first picture is hilarious and also, it’s basically a picture of me during the holiday season:

I’m the owl on the left there, barely holding on, looking altogether not even a little bit graceful, while the other owls sit calm, cool, and collected. This is me; literally every day, every minute of every day, leading up to the holidays. Trying to keep it together, trying to get it all done, and let’s just say—not winning.

One example was the Girl Scout meeting I took my daughter to a couple of days ago. We were early actually, but not because I was so well organized, but because I thought it was much later than it actually was so we were rushing out the door like the house was on fire, and do we have the gift basket I volunteered to put together for the Me and My Guy Dance which is not until February by the way, but it was due two weeks ago, and no, I didn’t iron the new patches onto your Brownies vest yet, so you should definitely have a major meltdown because of that. We get to the Girl Scout house too early and no one else is there yet, so we sit in the car and wait and I begin to worry because I left the boys home alone with the new puppy who will most certainly poop on the rug before I make it back there because I’m the only one who ever takes him outside. And we sit, and we sit, and then I realize—there is no Girl Scout meeting today because today is Tuesday and Girl Scout meetings are on Mondays (every other Monday to be exact  as an extra evil plan to throw me off my game.)

Now if this was an isolated incident, I could still pretend like I’m on top of my life and the holiday preparations. But it’s not. And I’m not nearly done with my Christmas shopping, the Christmas cards are still sitting on my counter (hey, at least I ordered cards this year!) and what about the tips for the UPS guy and the school bus monitor and the gift for the piano teacher’s ninety-three-year old mom who knitted the kids scarfs last year and…

I was beginning to feel like my usual method of storing all of my to do items in this amazing hub called my brain wasn’t really cutting it anymore, so I wrote an actual to do list. And then I remembered why I don’t do that because it ended up being three pages long and that’s just a really scary, intimidating thing to look at. And I’m sure I forgot several items, so the last item on the list is: “try to remember the other stuff” (right below the second-to-last item, “spend some time thinking about why you have to volunteer for freaking EVERYTHING”)

Somehow the other moms around me look like the other two owls. They don’t seem stressed. They didn’t show up on a Tuesday for the Girl Scout meeting, they probably even wear matching socks. Or maybe they’re just much better at pretend-you’re-keeping-it-together. Either way, maybe I should stop looking at funny animal pictures and tackle that to do list. Although I did save that hilarious-looking video of the Great Danes trying to sit on peoples’ laps, so I’ll just watch that one real quick and then I’ll get cracking on those gingerbread boys and girls I volunteered to cut out for the holiday craft in my daughter’s classroom next week.

Happy Holidays everyone!