Stressiday

The big list of recent stressors:

 

1. Sleepless nights.  It’s not the dairy.  I’ve reinstated cheese, ice cream, and yogurt in my life and Freddie is not exhibiting any gastrointestinal distress.  But he still ISN’T SLEEPING.  He wakes, gets changed, eats, falls asleep on my shoulder, is gently laid in his crib, and opens his beautiful blue eyes right up, fussing and fighting.  It takes an hour or two to get him back to sleep every time he wakes in the night, which is often.  He naps like a dream, though.  Too bad I don’t have time for naps, because…

 

2. We moved our business.  For the past four months, we have been renovating (ha!  I say “we,” but I really mean that we have been paying contractors and relying on the attentions of our parents to manage those contractors – I’m a 33-year-old woman and without the help of my parents these past few months, I would not have a business to run.  Grown up, but I still need my mommy and daddy) an old building here in Mount Vernon and we moved the entire business over the past week.  You know, during…

 

3. Christmas.  The most wonderful time of the year, right?  Or the most stressful because all three of my children were out of school/daycare, I had extra family in town long-term (not stressful because I love them and they all have suitably low expectations, but still more bodies in a small space) and I was the default meal-preparer, and I completely put off Christmas shopping because of busy-ness and the business.  Conversations were dominated by the business move, children were shunted back and forth to workspaces that became increasingly uninhabitable as the office and the warehouse were boxed up and put on trucks and you know the thing with moving, right?  It all looks profoundly worse before it looks better.  It still looks worse.  I cannot find my stapler.

 

Okay, so it’s not a big list.  But put it all together and it made for a hell of an end to 2014.  As a family, we didn’t do anything extra this holiday season.  No Lights of Christmas, no driving around to look at local light displays, no cookie baking, no Christmas-themed movies… bare minimum up in here.  Fortunately, no one felt the lack.  We filled in the spaces with love, of course.  And presents.  And grandparents (thank God for grandparents).

 

It is tough not to carry the stress forward into what should be a less-stressful new year.  After all, the business is now only making one rent payment, we are all moved, we have a full complement of employees, and Freddie and Jamie are in daycare together three days a week (gasp!), allowing me just enough time to focus on my job.  Things are calming down; I need to do so, too.

 

So, here’s my short list of resolutions for 2015:

 

1.  Be more thorough.  I just thought of this today, but it’s a good one.  I tend to do a job just enough to get by because I have so many jobs.  Maybe if I break things down into easier-to-accomplish tasks and quit bitching about them, I’ll get more done.  I’ll reorganize one shelf of the “pantry” (a set of shelves in my garage) at a time and instead of just shoving things on shelves when I come home with a load of groceries, I’ll organize them right away.  I’ll put appliances away immediately after using them (bread machine, I’m looking at you).  I’ll wipe down the counter and table after each meal.  I’ll hang jackets up or yell at my kids to do it so they don’t pile up on the stair railing.

 

2.  Lose these last 20 pounds of baby weight.  Slowly but surely.

 

3.  Continue to lavish attention on my children.  You would think that this wouldn’t be tough, but I am easily distracted by the abundance of tasks that awaits me every day.

 

What are your resolutions?

 

Merry New Year!