Hitting the wall

Hey everyone — first of all, thank you so much for all of the good thoughts after my last post, whether written or not. I keep meaning to respond to the comments, but I haven’t had it in me.

Mostly because, slow learner that I am, I let myself not only hit the wall, but crash and burn these past couple of weeks. What I have learned about myself fairly recently is that I get a lot done by sheer force of will, and if someone is in my way, I just do their portion too and cross the whole ordeal off my list.

Delegation, my friends, is a skill I need to acquire.

I probably shouldn’t be too hard on myself, though, because sometimes life just tosses a lot at us and all we can do is try to keep up.

Last Friday night, a snowstorm — or one of many — hit our section of Oregon. I was a genius and went shopping with 5,000 of my friends at the grocery store ahead of the storm … but was not a genius in the fact that I was mostly thinking weekend survival, not weekly groceries. Things were pretty bare around here starting about Tuesday.

(Which is mostly fine. I want to clean out the standing freezer so it can be defrosted this summer anyway. Good opportunity to see what’s even in there. But Johanna was not impressed.)

After a fairly decent weekend of being snowbound inside the house, I went to work Monday via Eric and his truck. This is one of those times when working across the street from your husband really comes in handy, especially since my little Carola was stuck in the garage because her undercarriage clearance was too low to get out of the driveway.

The storm was bad enough that I was the only one in my department who was able to make it to work on Monday … and because of the storm, our publisher wanted our Wednesday newspaper out the door Monday end of day. We use a printing press that is two hours away, and getting papers back in time for delivery can be a problem, especially when the highway gets shut down because semi trucks are spinning out and crashing into medians.

So I put out a two-section newspaper with some help via email from coworkers (thank heavens I didn’t have to write all of the stories to be included, we’re talking getting the puzzle that is each paper put together). I worked a nine hour day without a lunch break, but we got it done. I kind of enjoyed it, actually. I like a challenge.

On Tuesday, one of my coworkers was able to make it in, so we did a bit of triage for the looming weekend edition. When everything is closed and canceled, that does make it a bit harder to fill a newspaper, FYI. I asked readers via Facebook to send us their snow photos, figuring that would, if nothing else, fill some space. Spoiler alert: It worked.

Wednesday it was just me again — the highway was closed all around us, mostly due to wrecks — but Thursday I had two join me, at least for part of the day. We got our weekend edition out the door by 5 p.m., a necessary evil to get it in the hands of the post office by Friday afternoon, which ensures (supposedly; they were a little lackadaisical with our Wednesday edition) Saturday delivery. Boring, boring details.

Also Wednesday, Eric and I hit the store after work. It wasn’t as crowded as I expected. There were several empty shelves, which wasn’t surprising, giving the state of the highway. We still emerged victorious.

Thursday night, I went to bed at 8 p.m. It had all stopped being a fun challenge — it was just challenging. The walls were closing in. My eyes hurt. And my legs were so sore from all that walking in the snow.

Yesterday, I was dragging even with all that sleep and was thrilled to realize my 40 hours at work were almost up; overtime is discouraged in my office. Eric dug the car out of the garage, and I was able to drive for the first time in seven days. But I wasted the opportunity to be free, since I ditched the office early and came home and took a nap with the kittens. I met Johanna at the door when she got home from school — Friday was the only day schools were running all week — and then went back to sleep.

This morning I’m still dragging, but I’m up. I’m looking outside and it’s snowing AGAIN and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to make it to my aunt’s celebration of life on Tuesday. I’ve decided not to worry about that just yet. Supposedly the snow will turn to rain over the course of this weekend.

I’m hoping that, if I hide all weekend, I will be able to face next week, whatever it brings … snow, funerals, early editions, no school, low groceries, crazy kittens and the like. That I will be able to back up from the wall and get myself together.

Oh, I can and I will. But I appreciate the opportunity to vent all the same.