I have been taking a break after finishing up that giant gorilla, but time is not on my side when it comes to being lazy. You see, the one really artisitc thing I do often is work on my kids' lifebooks - you know, scrapbooking. My son graduates on June 27th, and I should really be in a hot panic right now because his book is in the middle of a major re-do and not even close to being finished. I have pieces and pages and nothing is complete. Honestly, I should be working on it right now - but procrastination seems to have overtaken me and I don't even want to start looking at his book.
This is pretty bad, because for an older adopted child, lifebooks are pretty important. Especially for my son - he was moved at least 15 times before I adopted him, and all that being jerked around can make a child awfully confused about the past. A lifebook helps to straighten out the mess and keep the timeline in order. Lots of children can pick up the family photo album and see pictures of themselves growing up, but not my kiddos. They have parts of their story, but will honestly never have it all. The lifebook is as close as I can manage to get to what happened in their past and where they came from. And right now, I am failing miserably at it because I cannot get motivated.
Not to make excuses, but I have a lot going on right now. My son is graduating, and there's an end-of-school flurry that has my calendar full of appointments for him. Those appointments, of course, are in addition to the normal schedule I have to run for him - school, work, therapy. His senior banquet was last night, and later this week we have his college registration. He lost his driver's permit, so I gotta run him to the DMV soon, and I've hooked him up with a rehab program that promises to give an honest evaluation as to whether or not he'll ever be an independent driver. And yeah, planning his graduation party and getting the details of that down with his father has been a nightmare. And that's just my son. My daughter is joining the Army National Guard and I've been focused on tracking down medical paperwork for her (almost impossible since she was adopted too) and reading every last bit of information I can about joining the military without getting screwed over. And she's failed her first driver's test and going for her second next Monday, so we have practice time to schedule in yet. And of course, getting her to and from work. And helping her to make decisions about how her senior year of high school is going to go. If that wasn't enough, I also have my new daughter visiting this weekend, and she's moving in with us forever in 2 weeks. That means phone calls and paperwork are stacked up so deep, I can't even see where they end. Appointments for therapy (3 kinds) AND another with an actual psychiatrist, school registration and specialists, plus the calls from/to 6 different social workers in the queue at any given time of day.
The only reason I've been able to hold all this together for so long is because I am insanely organized and I spend less and less time on the things I'd like to do - which include the scrapbooking stuff. But of course, if you really look at it, that's for my kids too. But I enjoy it, so I don't usually count it as work, or something I need to schedule. But right now I have this graduation deadline that I made for myself hanging over me and it's really bumming me out. So that is fueling my procrastination. I can't see how I can get it done in time so I just put it off some more. Which is really easy, since I always have my kids themselves to focus on, and while they are in school I have the regular household stuff to worry about - endless laundry, dishes, cleaning, paying the bills. Gardening - which I absolutely love - has completely dropped off my radar because I just can't find the time for it, and my yard is a mess. We switched cat litter and our pets are wandering around peeing in random places and I can't seem to get them to go where they're supposed to. Oh, and I have an entire spare room that has to be cleaned out and redecorated before graduation - because my husband's family is coming in from out of state and they all need a place to stay.
Writing all of this has made me exhausted. Re-reading it has made me feel disgusted - I'm not trying to martyr myself, honestly. After I check the mail and eat lunch, I am going to say fuck it all and go do a 2 page spread. Because I really need to, and if I sit here and whine it won't happen.
