The Pesky Trees

Lately, I haven't been able to see the forest for the trees.  All the little things begin to pile up, and then the feeling of being overwhelmed entrenches itself firmly, and then, finally, I go to pour another cup of coffee, but find the carafe is empty, and the thought of having one more thing to do, of having to do nothing more than make another pot of coffee, is enough to make me want to curl up in a ball and watch bad television.

And the fact that making more coffee will probably take only a minute or two is So Not The Point.  Because truly, since I became a parent, nothing gets done in the amount of time specified in the sense of normal reality.  I will have to stop what I am doing because the 2-year-old needs to use the potty and we all must run pell-mell towards the bathroom together so that the proper pomp and circumstance are paid to the occasion.  Most likely, even after that has been dealt with, there is a better than average chance that a fight could break out between the 2-year-old and her brother on the way back to the kitchen.  And if I open the coffee canister, almost certainly I will find that I need to grind more beans, which will involve opening up the dishwasher (which I have not yet emptied) to get out the grinder (which will still be wet and will need to be dried).  But of course the kitchen towel won't be where I left it, or it will be crumpled in a heap on the floor, sticky with an indeterminate substance, so I will take the dirty towel to the laundry room where I will promptly notice that I need to hang out to dry the load that is festering in the washing machine.  Before I can hang out that load though, I must bring in and fold the load that is already hanging outside, which is still wet because I forgot to bring it in before it rained...

And if I don't get another cup of coffee REALLY STINKING SOON, I might just lose it for good.

Then, as these sorts of things go,  it all starts to come together finally.  We finish The Boy Wonder's lessons for the day, the most urgent household tasks somehow get accomplished in a good enough fashion, dinner gets prepped, and the kids play quietly in another room while I sit, alone, with that blessed cup of coffee and a little blog reading.

It is there that I gain sight of the forest again.  On Beauty Everday, I see this quietly glorious photograph, and I smile, and consider it for a few moments.  Then I turn to look at that bouquet of zinnias from Farmer Boo that has begun to look rather dismal and which I had just been thinking of composting, and I stand on a chair and reach up high on top of the cabinets and pull down some of our vintage glass bottles, and I take apart the bouquet, and trim the stems of the flowers, and recreate the lovely image from my computer screen.

And all is again, indeed, quite well.