Present joys

I have felt scatterbrained lately. I want to do no less than: 

• Sleep train Will to transition from bed-sharing to a bassinet. Heavens give me strength. And patience. And coffee.
• Redecorate. (A blight on your houses, HGTV online re-runs, which leave the impression that my home could become chic with a mere can of paint, bolt of fabric and staple gun).
• Get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. (Curses on you, carb cravings and chocolate chip cookies that I made last night. And curses on you feelings of moodiness and neediness that made those cookies so alluring.)
• Clean out my garage, landscape of boxes, paint cans and past unsettled, haunted by spiders, pillbugs and geckos
• Mop up all the administrative minutiae hanging over my head - filing, investments, insurance and whatnot. 
• Start writing again. Or at least crawl my way to the edge of it.

And I want to do ALL of it YESTERDAY, whilst also cooking dinner and keeping abreast of the laundry and brushing my hair and juggling a baby (who always holds the trump card).


I don't know what to do first and so I am jumping about from thing to thing, unsure where to start. No wonder I feel scatterbrained.

And since I don't know where to start, I have started by doing nothing, taking naps, and baking chocolate chip cookies.

No wonder I felt a bit deflated today. Deflated. Discontented.

And then I hit the pause button. Then I looked in the mirror. What are all these discontents? These desires to have my life, my house, my body, picture perfect, tidy, ordered? Not that that is wrong. But will it ever really happen the way I envision? Will I ever reach that state of perfection?

Will I always be missing the bliss of this present moment, sitting on an admittedly stained sofa, lifting my baby over my head and saying "Bobo, FLYYYYY!" as he giggles and looks into my eyes?

I mean really, isn't that everything? Do the stains on the sofa matter so much? Or the boxes in the garage? Or the too-small jeans? Maybe everything isn't precisely the way I'd like it to be (ahem), but do I have to let this present small joy suffer because of it? No, I don't.

So I tell my half-decorated house to be quiet. My muffin top to cease and desist. My messes to sit. My writerly aspirations to wait. When I am old I will not care that the garage was once a city of spiders. I will only care that I said "Bobo, FLYYYYY!"

Remind me of this resolution tomorrow, please.

Thank you.