Turn on a dime - however that saying goes...

I feel like I'm losing my mind.  I think that's what happens when you NEVER have any extended time alone or in quiet or in anything resembling peace.  Peace should be inside me right, and sometimes it totally is.  Those are the times when screaming boys, crying babies and obnoxiously loud TV don't bother me at all.  Today - I can't take it.  I feel totally raw on the inside...and outside.  I want to run away from my life...

Rewind to a few short hours ago...it was 3:00, I was in a staff meeting, feeling really good about all the work I had gotten done in preparation to be gone for 2 days.  I have a big event on Friday that everything had to be set up for.  It's in the morning so there's no other time than now to get things settled.  We hit some snags but worked through them, securing food and a location to meet.  I spent the morning and early afternoon rapidly data-entering all the "leads" from our last 3 events.  My boss told me to "save time and just enter ALL 150 email addresses into an email and worry about a spreadsheet later".  Yeah right, that's not what I call saving time.  I had to get some help figuring out how to export or otherwise get the addresses into an email from excel but we figured it out!  I was so happy and was about to compile my 2 groups to receive their own emails when - all the addresses were gone! I "saved as" and even put it on my flash drive...GONE!  Before I panicked, I called Brian who I had just finished talking to about the code we put in it (blah blah excel crap blah).  Then I start crying!  This is what I do when I'm really angry/frustrated.  I'm already late leaving, I have to get home, make dinner (for 9 people) and get out the door for yoga by 6:30.  <fuming>

So, Brian re-sends me one version of the emails, but it won't work bc I have to sort them by the event they attended.  Now, I'm furious.  WHERE did the finished document go?!  Then I noticed something...a tab I hadn't made.  It was Brian's and it contained all the info I had been working on but didn't realize it was in a different tab.  I resolved to just finish it at home before I go to bed and before I leave for this 2 day conference at 7am.  ANYWAY, who- besides me, cares about stupid excel stories?!  No one, I know.  So I'm done with that part. 

I got packed up, left the building and I'm about to call Tracy to see if we need anything for dinner.  My phone doesn't work.  My brand new, expensive to own and operate iPhone.  I try multiple numbers, including 911 and was comforted to find that if I were in an emergency...God would be the only one getting people alerted.  WHY!?

I rolled the windows down, gave myself a little pep talk...resisted the urge to punch my steering wheel and try to rationalize with myself.  The wind didn't really blow the stink off, but I turned on some worship music and started singing and that helped.  I heard somewhere that gratitude and depression are antithetical.  Is that the right word?  Well basically, if you're feeling depressed...think of and possibly say out loud all the things you're thankful for and the grip of depression will lift.  I've tried it, it does work.  Currently, I just have a horrible attitude combined with what MUST be a hormonal imbalance.  I'm not sure if it's my body still getting normal, or moving in with another fertile female that has my bizness all whacked out.  No one can be in their right mind when they're PMS'ing every 7-9 days!  Sorry if that's TMI...it is what it is.

So dinner took forever, Paul was WAY late getting home from the hospital and so since it was my dinner night, I missed yoga.  My dinner night is getting switched, immediately, so this doesn't happen again.  Yoga is my therapy.  My quiet and peaceful time and something I will be guarding with my life from now on.

On other news - I somehow managed to lose Laura's wedding veil.  Yep.  Me.  I lost it.  It's inexplicable.  Every square inch of this house has been searched.  I've been through my car.  Lisa checked her place.  We looked in all the shower gifts and at Laura's house.  Nada.  I called Monday to find out about a replacement - $100 minimum.  I had a melt down about that one too...VISTA's can't afford to buy wedding veils, especially not ones that are to be worn in less than 3 WEEKS.  Friends and certainly bridesmaids, don't do such things...but I did.  And I'm finding all sorts of lessons are wrapped up in this mishap.  Too bad none of them are amusing.  At least not now.  Although, I don't know that $100 on a piece tulle and a comb will EVER be funny.

I helped clean up the mess in the kitchen, then I had to leave because the screaming was going to drive me insane.  I came down stairs and just sobbed and sobbed.  My pastor once said when everything is going crazy in your life or when you're having an unusual reaction to a situation, you need to trace the cord back to the wall and verify the source.  That could mean, the source we're plugging into and it could also mean the source off the odd/abnormal reacion.  So I thought about it: partly I was crying because I missed yoga and it's the ONLY alone (ish), me thing I do and it leaves me feeling relaxed, centered and peaceful and I NEED that.  Yoga is a must for me, it's not a want.  I was crying partly because I'm so tired of the noise and chaos, yet I feel super alone.  I feel like I'm running on a wheel and while I work to be present and live for now...I cannot help but think - this is not what life is supposed to be like. 

Getting up while you're still tired to run sprints at work for 9 hours to rush home to make food that you can't enjoy either because you're too tired or because there's so much else going on or because you're already on to the next thing.  In Paul and Tracy's case, it's the crying kids, the baths that need to be given, the homework they need help with or oh yeah, just spending time with your kids in the few hours you have before bed.  You clean up the kitchen, for some semblence of order and peace...feeling totally exhausted and hosed from the day.  Knowing, the second your head hits the pillow...it feels like, the alarm is going off to start the routine all over.  And you think the weekends are better, but that's when the house stuff gets done, the groceries are gotten and the oil gets changed.  Church on Sunday and MAYBE you reserve that as your family Sabbath and "relax" in between meals and mediating fights.  I hate to sound like a pessimist but seriously, THIS is what I was dying to grow up to be a part of?!

The only solution I can think of at the moment is to not have kids.  But even I know that's pretty selfish.  Plus I want kids...just not 6 of them.  I used to say 4, I'm officially and without hesitation downgrading to 2.  If onlies did't have such a reputation I would say ONE is enough for me.

Anyway, I'm just tired.  Tired of feeling like a dingy being tossed around in a typhoon.  I want to feel steady on the course and I just don't.  But I also can't hear myself think right now so who knows what I'm really feeling?  My phone (even if it did work) doesn't work in the basement - AKA my bedroom.  So no calls and no texts in the one place there might be enough quiet to think or talk. 

Is that just irony or do you think the Lord is trying to teach me something?