It's November. Mid-November. How did this happen? Time used to be something that crawled on its lips at a skin scraping pace that could frustrate a snail. Today is practically yesterday before I am half way through my to-do list.
We got back from an eight day holiday on the west coast last Sunday and by the time I got to bed my husband and I had unpacked, sorted and completed half the laundry, I made a birthday cake and homemade stew and he'd finished constructing the shed he started before we left. The next morning I finished the laundry, took the truck in for an oil change, shopped for an upcoming birthday party my daughter is attending, mounted a full-scale grocery expedition and wrote two articles that due to H1N1 and holiday are way overdue to my new editor. And ballet and supper still waited in the wings.
I wasn't this busy when I was working outside my home.
But I realized something as I was thinking about all the things I've accomplished, and all those things yet to be completed this week, I am living. In spite of the fact that time seems as if it is being carried off by stealthy gnomes who horde it in some parallel dimension, this rush of activity that blurs as it whirls around me is my life, and I am so engaged in it that the only way to stop its swift passage would be to step out of it.
I have lived the unengaged existence at different points. Those times of being able to watch the paint dry on the walls around me have seemed slower but it was just as illusory as the feeling that I am caught up like Auntie Em's house in a tornado. Time is just time, and it runs at the same pace whether I am paying attention, running to catch up or wishing it away.
So this week, I am celebrating the rush and the too many things for one ordinary woman to possibly accomplish in the span of time alloted her. Time is contributing to the on-going cause of life. A worthy cause indeed.
This is an original 50 Something Moms post by Ann Bibby of anniegirl1138 and Care2.com.
