The latest permutation

For the last couple of weeks, I have been overcome by inertia. At work, I'm fine. I know what has to be done, where things belong, the timetable in which things have to be done. Sometimes I chafe against an external structure of my time and priorities, but now it's really helpful. When I get home though, I see so much that really, really needs to be done, and I have no clue where to get started. It all seems too much, and I just don't feel up to anything. I've been reading fun, frivolous fluff like Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels, grabbing fast food meals and just letting piles build and build and build. It's not that I want to live this way. I just don't seem to have the energy to do anything else.

I decided today that had to end. Honestly, I'm out of clean underwear. The laundry absolutely has to get done at this point. I don't have a choice. so I made myself. Wash, dry, fold. I will put it up. I will put it up. I will put it up before I go to bed. I cleaned the evidence of meals eaten on the run from my car. I cleaned my kitchen counters. I swept the house. Then I tackled the monster. For the last couple of weeks, I've just tossed all the mail in a basket. It overflowed last night, and I said enough. I sorted out the junk mail. I moved the magazines to their assigned basket. I separated R.'s bills from mine, went through all the sympathy cards and information packets from Organ Donor Services. There are now two women in Arkansas who can see. I pulled the cards from the floral arrangements and put all the funeral stuff together. Then I hit a wrinkled and crinkled wad of receipts and three months of bank statements. And that was all I could do. It was just too much, and I came here to escape.

My mind is whirring with the things I need to do. It's time for one of my lists. My mother-in-law already has all of her thank you cards done, and I haven't started mine yet. I have important business to take care of, like Social Security stuff for the womanchild and finding out about R.'s benefits from work, and college registration for C. in a couple of weeks. This is stuff I can't let slide, but it feels like everything is skidding from my grasp. Definitely a xanax moment.

I no longer feel like anything can wait, and I feel like I can't do anything right now.

So, what do I do? I breathe. I feel my heart pound. I pull a Scarlett and refuse to think about it now. Tomorrow will come soon enough, and maybe, then I can do more than just breathe.