tidbits and babblings...mostly on the never-ending battle for sanity...

*Never-ending feeling of being behind. On everything. Same old-same old. I get overwhelmed, barrel full-steam ahead in one area to make myself feel better, end up feeling worse because I'm then even farther behind on everything else. I know this is largely a problem within my own head, as opposed to outside of it. Ana put it perfectly yesterday when she said, "...I should know that holding on to 'shoulds' is the bane of my life..." 

*I started thinking about Christmas a couple days ago...and I nearly broke down. I'm already feeling like I'm way behind, and I just can't stand the thought of so much stress coming around as it does every year. Self-imposed stress, at that. So I made decision...and I'm going to try so damn hard to stick with it. I am taking this Christmas off. No, not from Christmas itself, of course. But from the "I have to do everything, and I have to do it all by my own hands" mentality. In other words, I am not making our Christmas cards this year, I am not making gifts this year (well, maybe just a couple...but not a couple hundred!), I am not making a dozen different kinds of cookies, etc. I'm just not. I'm not. I'm not.

*My physical health has, well, pretty much sucked the past few weeks. Even here I am my own worst enemy...I constantly do things I know I shouldn't do. I don't know when the very real fact that my stubbornness is doing me no favors will ever truly take hold in my head, but I know it needs to. 

*I am excited as all get out over the fact that there is now less than a month left of the school year!!! I only wish there wasn't still so much to do. :(  And of course, as soon as this year is over, it's time to start working on next year...but the pressure doesn't feel as crushing during that first month of summer vacation and I am greatly looking forward to that. :D

*I feel awful that I haven't been participating in Saturday Farmers Market as of late. (Just as I feel awful about not yet having sent a thank you note to my dear friend Jean for the wonderful surprise that arrived from her in the mail a few days ago, and about all the as-of-yet unreturned emails sitting in my inbox, and...) But hopefully next week I'll have a post up, as things have definitely changed since my last garden update. 

*I can't believe May is almost over, which means medical/psychological theme month is almost over as well. I didn't get all that many "theme" books read, but I enjoyed all the ones I did read, some more than others. And I have one I'm still hoping to finish as well, one I'm really enjoying. I didn't post about a cool moonlight by Angela Johnson, but I really liked it. It was sweet, but not saccharine. It had a unique feel to it, almost magical though it was set wholly in the realistic world. It was the first of Johnson's books I've read, but it definitely won't be the last. And happily, I know I already own a couple others. Another I read but didn't post about for this month's theme was Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. What a unique voice this book had! And I enjoyed it, but honestly not as much as I thought I was going to. I think that may have been a matter of false expectations though, as I really thought it was going to be more of a mystery. I was blown away by the author's ability to pull off this story from Dr. Jennifer White's point of view though. Which is the point of view of an intelligent, fiercely independent woman falling further and further under Alzheimer's grip. It was impossible not to feel deeply for this woman, and yet, I can easily say she wasn't a person whom I would have been friends with in real life. It's not so much that I disliked her, but we're two very different people. To be honest, I didn't feel like I would have been close to any of the major characters in this book, except maybe the policewoman (and she wasn't really a major character). Anyway, that means I read four books (Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, A Cool Moonlight, Turn of Mind, and Silent to the Bone) for this theme (five if I finish The Fever in time). I am really looking forward to next month's glbt theme, and hope to read many more books than I did this month (but I make myself no promises).