Crazy-assed, Cyclical Whirlings of My Brain

How can I feel so blah, so (dare I say it?) depressed?

Spring is here - school is almost over - family life has been on a fairly even keel for a while now - I even have a Girls' Weekend coming up.

What the hell is my problem?

I think I worry too much (Oh, and thanks for that legacy, Dad!)We've planned a few vacations for the summer, and the planning of them makes me anxious.

*Note - Please don't offer me platitudes - I'm a Solution Person - I always find a way to fix the situation, but sometimes it has to stew first.

The first vacation - a trip up to PA has actually been resolved, so I can stop worrying about it. The whole not having a reservation and/or a paper trail to show for our down payment was making me squirrelly, but the renters have finally gotten their fecal matter together and now I can just obsess on what to pack.

Again - don't try to make me feel better - have you read the title of this blog recently? That would be me, the tapdancer. Its all part of my stage act, see?

The second vacation - OY! Let's just say that my mother is the one who thinks she planning that trip, and that should sum it up. I love her - I really do - but she can't plan for shit, child, and god help the fool who tries to tell her that. No, no - "these things must be done delicately". The plus side of this trip is that my sister is also going on it, so together we can handle her, I'm sure. We were talking about it the other day and we confessed to each other our sense of dread, our secret thoughts of "is it too late to cancel?", which strangely, made me feel better. I think its just a knee jerk reaction to taking a trip with Mom-zilla, but we are mighty in our solidarity, right? Right?

See, now would be a good time for the soothing platitude! Oh, wait, I said not to, didn't I?

The third vacation is my very own fault and I can't blame anyone else for the insanity of it. I'm supposed to take a trip up to NY with my mom later this summer. I signed up for it in a moment of weakness (I think a shipment of NY rye bread was involved), and as much as I have tried to find ways to weasel out of it, I think I'm going to have to do it. I have a sneaking suspicion that all is not well with my mother. She won't tell us anything, she won't go see a doctor for any of the myriad issues she's been having, and she's taken up smoking again with a vengeance. Maybe I'm just over the top paranoid - I would really like for it to be just that - but I have this terrible feeling there's something wrong. So maybe this trip up to NY has to be this year - maybe there won't be another chance to have a quality moment with my mother. Maybe its all in my head and she'll be here for another 20 years, driving us all to the brink of insanity. Either way, I think this is one of those Carpe Diem things I have to do, so that when I'm standing by her deathbed I can say goodbye with as little conflict or regret as possible.

Hey! I never said I wasn't toting a dufflebag of batsa! I freely admit my logic may not hold up under another's scrutiny, but ultimately, we have to do what we think is the right thing, don't we?

And really, once I stop to think about it - life IS good!