Wasabi in my eye

By Juli

I have a new resolution. Not a New Year’s one, just a garden-variety resolution that I’ll file along with the many others in the “self-improvement” area of my psyche. (Where I’ll revisit it from time to time when deadlines loom, and I can’t Swiffer anymore to procrastinate).

It’s to do less, and do it better.

I know, not mindboggling. Not even original. But new for me. Because I’ve always been a little slow on the uptake (more turtle than hare), and well, I’m finally at that place where Captain Obvious has handed down the mandate. I need to FOCUS.

I started down this path, in part, because I’m a list maker. Compulsive, with good intentions. It comes with the proverbial territory when you’re just a wee bit anal-retentive (euphemism), run a business, have a husband, an old house, two young kids, two big sloppy dogs, and a young cat that thinks he’s a big sloppy dog. That’s not counting the trials and tribulations of extended family, and believe-you-me, you don’t want me to even start on that.

So, I make these epic lists, because they at once calm me down and freak me out, and I must like that duality of it all. Things seem so neat and tidy all written down just so (until they hit the double digit pages). When I start to “prioritize,” I think I can tackle so much more than I can. So, I try, and I don’t. Rinse, repeat. Remember, I said I’m a slow learner; this has been going on forever. Ask my best friend from high school.

Where was I? Yes, and so I sign on for too much, and bail on half, and generally wind myself into a tornado until something like THIS happens:

It was in the afternoon, not too long ago, as I was working on “my list” (eat better, lose weight, run every day, serve the kids less processed foods, try new things, remember to turn music on, call so-and-so, write so-and-so, have a playdate with so-and-so, read a new book, pay more attention to the animals, don’t snap at my husband, start sorting receipts for taxes, find some more work, clean the litter box, pray I win the lottery to pay all those bills, and on and on).

So, there I am in the kitchen, in workout gear only appropriate (in polite circles) for the basement treadmill, because I hoped to run while the kids were napping – if they napped. They’re sitting at table in the kitchen, half-served lunch (Mommmeeeee, can I have some jooooss), while I field a client phone call on my day off, trip over the cat (not fed yet), and start slicing strawberries (organic, thank you). I hang up with the phone call exasperated, pour milk (sorry no more juice today honey), yell at the dog for licking food off the floor (not fed yet either), pick up the Swiffer to swat around the dog hair, and eye the kids’ veggie chips, which I had recently learned were potato chips diabolically disguised as healthfood with a dash of veggie powder for color. Evil has no boundaries.

“No calories left in the day for chips!” my newly righteous, nutritionally fit self bulldozes over my (much more likeable) ring-ding loving self. So I head for the pantry and begin to forage for something crunchy to curb the chip mania, that had, by now, firmly taken hold. Because, to complete the triumvirate of hunger, I had not been fed yet either.

Mmmmm. Wasabi peas. Good enough.

So, I stuff a few into my piehole right there, half in the pantry. The phone rings, I dust off my hand on my running shorts (yes, gross) and lunge for the phone as the next chorus of “More of This, None of That” commences from the progeny. Five (or ten, or fifteen) minutes later I hang up with that same client. And the day would have progressed as per usual if not for the eyelash that had thrown its lemming-like self into the pit of my eye.

Halfway into rubbing it out, I realized that being a) hurried and b) half unsanitary would have its price.

MY EYE.

Oh, the burn. The kids rallied in support. “Momma, do you need a band aid?” Big hugs around the legs. Can’t get to the sink with kids strapped to my legs. . .help. . .My son tries to fight me for the sink. “Me first! Me first!” Ahhh, the allure of handwashing for an almost-three-year-old. I hip check him, gently, and commence flushing my eye.

After the fire subsides, I look up and around our powder room, a space the size of a small broom closet. All three of us are crammed in there. I take a deep breath and look in the mirror. My right eye is red and swollen. To my left and right, two little cherubs are looking up at me, worried, expectant. I am somewhere in that strange place between laughing my head off and crying my heart out. I have a parental epiphany. A mental elbow from The Captain.

I need to FOCUS.

As in on the here and now. I mean, I made the tough decision to freelance and work part-time, take a pay and benefits cut, and straddle that no-woman’s land between working and stay-at-home mom, because I wanted to really savor these early years with my family. I wanted to find a better balance for myself. And what was I doing?

Engaging in insanity, that’s what.

I’ve been given wonderful choices, I realize. And I’m not really making them. I’m playing chicken with the big ones, hoping for a blink. I’m starting to learn, maybe a lot later than I’d have hoped, what being truly empowered means. It does not mean “being able to do it all.” Because, screw it, I can’t. For me, it means picking a couple things and going for it. It means not giving a rat’s ass whether other people think I’m good or talented or have what it takes. It means, you there, get to the back of the line and stay there. I’m sorry your feelings are hurt and I forgot to call you back. It means get off my list. Get out of my brain. It means I will decide not to go there, and I will not regret it.

So today I will start a little letting go. So I can have a whole lot more of what I really want and need. The recipe for my success will be simple: divine intervention, conscious living, and wasabi in my eye.