torrential

I must start posting, I must start posting. I really hate these gaps in getting something on this blog. I used to do that when I kept journals, and then every few months there would be a post summarizing the elapsed time. Which just kind of sucks. Especially now that I'm trying to chronicle a baby, who is literally growing and changing EVERY day.

The problem is time (isn't that always the problem?). Before, time felt like it was going fast, like a swift river. Like, if you had the right boat, you could catch it and ride it (not that I did that very effectively). But now it's a 200-foot waterfall and I'm sort of just tumbling around in the rocks. The weekdays, especially, run together in a kind of (controlled?) chaotic blur. It's kind of good for me, not being able to worry and obsess about things. But it's mostly bad because I feel like I'm missing everything and not doing anything except working and dishes and baths and blechchch. Like all the stuff I have to be doing, and none of the stuff I'd like to be doing. Especially with Ainsley. I kind of had a vision of our family doing fun things together - taking trips, making things, learning things, having adventures, living rich lives. I know she's still a little young, but at this rate I feel like we'll never be able to do those things. And that makes me feel like I've failed already. Is this how everyone feels? I'm not sure - Mike and I both come from families of teachers. Trust me, it's not that I don't think teachers work hard - they do. But at least there were summers. Even though my parents always did other work in the summer, I still remember running around fairs and art festivals while my parents worked in the Corn Crib, our family cotton-candy-snowcones-popcorn concession stand that we towed around Black Hills all summer. I remember helping my mom plant a garden every year. I don't know if I'll ever be able to teach that to Ainsley, because who has time to plant a freakin' garden? It breaks my heart.

I don't know what the answer is. I think I've learned that I don't want to be at home full time, not that we could afford it anyway. I mean, a 5-hour-a-day job would be ideal, but we all know that doesn't really exist. So I don't want to not work, but I just want MORE TIME. Maybe that's the existential dilemma. Maybe years of grasping at time is what makes all of our parents crazier and crazier as they age. And maybe, inevitably, that is the direction we will go in as well, no matter how hard we fight.