Take a deep breath...

Breathe, Sarah.

Life gets busy. Sometimes there is absolutely too much going on. There are so many balls in the air.

I tend to see all that we have going on, and I get overwhelmed. Many times, that feeling paralyzes me. I get stressed, cranky, ineffective, inefficient. I wallow in that feeling for a little bit, and then I have to push myself to get past it. I dive in, tackle something on my list (anything, really), and that helps get my momentum going again.

Saturday night and Sunday morning were like that. Dave and I had big plans for this weekend. We were going to get some things done on our "To do" list. He was going to work on installing the basement ceiling...I was going to work on laundry, catch up on paperwork and paint the bathroom. We were going to fit that in amongst a fun fair, school projects, friends' birthday parties, and a scout meeting, and a girls' night out for me. Saturday after the birthday parties and the scout meeting, Dave took a closer look at a discolored spot in the bathroom I was going to paint. He was worried that there was a water issue there, with maybe some mold growth.

So he took his hammer and knocked through some of the drywall. He called Henry in to watch him because he thought it would be fun for him to see. And yup, he found MOLD.

Black mold. Woo-hoo.


There wasn't a lot of it, but I've watched enough HOLMES ON HOMES to know that mold can sometimes be a very serious issue, that people can get very sick from it. So I persuaded (strongly :) )Dave and Henry (our child with allergies) to get out of the bathroom. Dave turned on the vent fan, closed the door, and we did a little research online.

It turns out that we can take care of our mold issue ourselves, and Dave has figured out a plan. Unfortunately that plan involves a lot of work. He has to take down the affected drywall, the shower surround, vacuum and clean everything out, and patch everything back up again.

That was one of the things that set me off Saturday night and Sunday morning. We already had so many balls in the air. Did we really need one more? REALLY?

After I wallowed in self-pity a bit on Saturday evening, I went out with some girlfriends on Saturday night. I was the designated driver, and picked up 3 of my friends so that we could go hear a band in a local bar. We stayed out until 2. That's crazy. I never do that anymore. It was fun, but I was exhausted on Sunday morning.

I think that the combination of being tired and overwhelmed led to my little meltdown on Sunday morning.

It wasn't bad or scary, but I did shed some tears and vented to my husband. We had a slow breakfast, missed church, and then because there was no more time to wallow, we dove in.

We kept our noses to the grindstone all day, and did accomplish many things. We still have a lot more to do (understatement), but at least we've got some momentum going again. Hopefully we can keep it up this week.

Take a deep breath, Sarah. Don't even let your mind go to the fact that Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner. Don't EVEN go there.