Hellzapoppin'

Some weeks are fast and swervy. This is one. I'm working all five days this week (managed to swing 2 on and 3 off without taking a holiday last week) with work, meetings and parents' night at the high school filling up most of my weeknight evenings. The kids are really back to school full force, and all of my volunteer commitments that slumbered over the summer have just awakened. I love roller coasters. I love ice cream. But too much racing and plunging and too many flavours to contemplate are not good. I know it's just the jolt that always comes at the end of summer, but yikes!

Some of the sights and sounds are exhilarating, though:

Dropped in to Burnaby Writers' Society's Poetry Contest Awards Night. My friend Irene Livingston won first prize for her spectacular poem, Satin Blue. I also got to hear her daughter, Lenore Angela, read her poem, Magnolia Hide, which won an Honourable Mention.

Before that I was at a meeting of the Vancouver Poetry House - a group that has been formed to promote and foster poetry in the Vancouver Area. We're planning the second Canadian Spoken Word Olympics for September 2005. To find out what that's all about, check out the website for the inaugural CSWO, that will take place in Ottawa this October.

I just realized I'm sticking in all of these links to point in any direction but at myself. So before I sign off, here goes...

Things that make me happy despite feeling overwhelmed by pace, volume and intensity of current days:

• Loving husband and children, awesome parents, sister and brother and their families (including my brother-in-law whose birthday I just missed but who I know still loves me and I'll phone him tomorrow because it's already one hour later in Cranbrook)
• Mush puppy and long brown cat
• 17 best friends (at last count)
  
• energy to stay on top of even the crazy days, even when I'm not crazy about them
• Everything is still funnier than it is annoying
• God

Things I will do in the next 24 hours to distract myself and catch some relief from way-too-much-plain-old-everyday:

• Wear pajamas until the last possible minute before I have to shower, dress and go to work, and wear pajamas as soon as I get home and can get away with it without husband and kids saying, "You're in your pajamas already?"
• Drink tea in the afternoon
• Hug everyone who will stand still to be hugged
• Read something funny and laugh laugh laugh without explaining to anyone who hears me why I am laughing (they're used to it already)
  
• Take some photographs
• Sing in the car

Wow. That feels better already.

Question: What do you do when the world is spinning like one of those gyrotron vomit rides?

mompoet - positively discombobulated but optimistic about the day after tomorrow