Time Management

Am I the only woman to convince herself that she is not in fact a mere mortal but is in fact Superwoman? Are you too trying to be businesswoman of the year, Mother Superior, family events organiser, chief cook and bottle washer??

This is the one week of the year when I come very, very close to losing my marbles completely. It is of course all my own fault. It’s not as if the five family celebrations that occur this week are news to me. Nor is the fact that I convince myself that this, the first week Finn returns to school, is the week I am going to throw myself back into work, and strip the house bare ready for the upcoming Seasonal Scrub, when it is all I can do to get Finn dressed and put out all the online fires a season of  technological crisis seems to have caused in my summer wake, any body else’s fault.

Nope. It’s all down to me, and as a friend commented earlier this morning, ain’t it a fact that doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results every time, is the definition of madness?

Bring on the men in white coats, this lady is completely off her head.

You see if I was a sane woman I would write this week off on an annual basis. I would give myself over to school and birthday parties, and put all thoughts of work and housekeeping straight out of my head until next Monday dawns sunny and bright. But I don’t. Instead I get myself giddy with expectation about how wonderful it will be to get back to work with a vengeance. And I make mad plans for a child free, soothing, calm house and picture myself reading in quiet, tidy peace. And then when I have to attend fundraising meetings and ferry children backwards and forwards and shop for gifts that look as if I’ve given them some thought and donate an entire weekend to celebrating my truly scrumptious nephews first birthday, and the darn car goes to car hospital and doesn’t come back, I get a tinsy bit mad, and ever so slightly seethe with something like resentment and bang around the house at midnight, causing an argument about the state of the place and worrying about thank-you letters unwritten and lying awake dwelling on nutty things like the dragonfly fluttering across my face in the dark, why Alice the kitten is a mini escape artist and whether Lauren Harries really did have sex with Russell Brand. (There’s hope for me yet!)

Today I have to go shopping. Tomorrow I am taking my Mum out for birthday lunch and bestowing gifts on Kath for it will be her birthday too. The day after I am going with Finn and friends to watch them climb walls at a kids outdoor activity centre and on Saturday morning I am travelling with Mum and Dad to Oxford to celebrate Clarry’s first birthday. This then is life. This is how life is in the first week of September every single year.

This would actually be of the loveliest weeks of the years, if only I could talk myself down from this ludicrously high mountain of expectation. Silly moo that I am.

Tell me Darling, are you like me?