Not so frazzled after all

My 12-year-old had invited ten friends over for a pre-vacation Christmas party that she had planned herself. It sounded like such an empowering idea at the time – she’s almost a teenager; if she wants to have a party, leave the planning up to her.

And yet there I was, putting the gifts the girls were handing me at the door into a basket for their gift exchange, baking one last batch of snowflake-shaped cookies, mixing up white frosting for decorating the cookies, sweeping a drift of flour off the kitchen floor, moving a pile of boots and shoes from the front doorway to the mudroom as fast as the girls could take them off, and assuring Holly that yes, the hot chocolate would definitely be made by the time she was ready to serve refreshments -- even though I hadn’t started making it yet. Holly was rushing around trying to light candles as her guests shrieked and hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other in six months rather than the four hours it had actually been since school let out.

In short, I was frazzled. And not just everyday-frazzled, but holiday-frazzled, which seems to come with a sticky powdered sugar glaze covering every possible surface.

And then the doorbell rang and another young guest arrived, walking in along with her mother, Elizabeth.

“Everything looks so cozy and Christmas-y!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “And the cookies smell so good! I haven’t even started holiday preparations yet.”

Like slipping on ice – or, perhaps more relevantly, on spilled flour – her words jolted me into a different perspective. Through her eyes, and because of her words, I noticed not the spills on the floor and the dishes in the sink but the smell of cookies baking and candles burning. Not the pile of boots the girls had left in the entrance but their joyful voices as they exchanged gifts and guessed who had given each one. Not the sound of the dishwasher beeping to signal it was ready to be unloaded – again! – but the Christmas carols Holly had pulled up on her iPod before the guests arrived.

This, I now understand, is what Christmas season is like. Not perfect and magical, but not solely chaotic and stressful either. It’s both, because that’s what it means to be an adult during the holidays, at least to be an adult responsible for children’s or other people’s holiday fun. Yes, it’s true that I don’t remember any stress whatsoever during the Christmases of my childhood, but that’s because I was just that, a child. Someone else was in charge. I remember thick snowdrifts, a hot fire, a tall decorated Christmas tree, the smell of a delicious dinner cooking. But I didn’t have to shovel the snow, or refill the firewood, or arrange for the arrival of the Christmas tree, or check the temperature of the roast.

Now it’s my turn to re-create this kind of carefree holiday for my children. Holly will remember this party for the cookie-decorating, the snow-globe-making, the general hilarity of ten girls who are just a few days from being on Christmas vacation. They won’t notice that the hot chocolate wasn’t ready until hour two of the party.

Elizabeth’s words were simple but eye-opening. Walk into someone else’s house, and you don’t see mess or frazzle; you see a lovely holiday ambience. I would probably feel the same way if I went to her house at this moment.

But I’m at my house, and so I should just enjoy the aroma of my own cookies baking. There will always be more dishes to wash, but Christmas week won’t last long at all. Best to enjoy every moment of it while it’s here.

When you're too busy to go running...go running anyway

I was too busy to run yesterday. So I did the best thing to do when you’re too busy to run. Avid runners will know exactly what I’m talking about. What’s the best thing to do when you’re too busy to go running? No, not use the treadmill. Not take the day off and double your workout the next day. Not even concede gracefully to the reality that there are days into which a run just might not fit and refuse to dwell on the fact that you didn’t go.

No. At least speaking for myself, the best thing to do when I’m too busy to run is…go running.

I may seem like the wrong person to talk about making a choice to run. As a USRSA-registered streak runner, I’ve committed to run a mile or more every day. In another month, if all goes well, my running streak with be one thousand days long. But yesterday was one of those days when it was so tempting to tell myself, “Okay, but just a mile today. You can spare ten minutes, but that’s it. You have way too much to do to fit in a good run. Just do that mile and get back to your desk…your kitchen…your telephone…your errands list.”

But I didn’t. I’d spent the first 90 minutes of the day up at the elementary school attending Holly’s class’s Iditarod presentation. And while I love being invited into the classroom, starting my work day 90 minutes late is never something that feels great to me, devotee of routine that I am. I was feeling frazzled by waiting to hear from two different sources for two different articles whose input I urgently needed in order to complete and file my stories. When I got back from the classroom event, I had three e-mails saying that school library volunteers had to reschedule their shifts, which is my responsibility as library volunteer coordinator. I wasn’t at all sure that my older child had finished a big homework assignment due later this week, and I hadn’t even started the brainstorming part of an essay I promised an editor I’d draft in the early part of this week.

That was just the deskwork part. On the domestic front, I had committed to make two batches of oatmeal cookies for events taking place that afternoon, and we’d invited a guest to dinner. Though I had a general idea of the menu, I hadn’t done any of the cooking yet. I hadn’t even checked very carefully to ensure we had the ingredients I needed.

And, of course, as a streak-runner, I knew I had to fit in my run at some point. Even if it was only ten minutes long.

Instead, I took a leap of faith. I said to myself, “Deadlines, dinner menus, kids’ homework, housework…no. Just go running. So you don’t have time to run. Just Go Anyway.”

So I set off on my favorite weekday loop. But instead of getting more frazzled as the time away from my desk and home unspooled, I found that the opposite was happening. As I ran, I thought about the dinner menu and what I’d need to prepare when, in order to be ready when our guest arrived. I remembered that I hadn’t bought any salad ingredients but I did have some leftover steamed broccoli, which I could sauté with tomatoes and corn in place of a salad. I mulled over ideas for the essay I’d promised my editor. I reassured myself that the two story sources I urgently needed to hear from would probably call later in the day. I reminded myself that now Tim is in fifth grade, he almost always gets his assignments done without asking for a lot of help or making a big deal of it, and this was probably one of those times.

Seasoned runners will be able to anticipate how this ended: when I returned home after the run, even though I’d squandered a half-hour that I really didn’t have to spare, I felt better about all of it. I was all set to start dinner preparations, having planned out in my mind what needed to be done. With my brain rejuvenated, I felt that I could call the tardy story sources and ask them for the information I was waiting on, and I could at least start jotting down ideas for the essay even if I didn’t start drafting it yet.

So, once again, the best thing to do when I was too frazzled to fit in a run was to fit in that run. After that, time seemed to shift and work its way into my hands again, where I felt capable of organizing it the way I needed to. I’d run the frazzle goblins right into the ground. Literally. Mentally refreshed, my afternoon no longer seemed quite so overbooked. I felt great. And not even all that busy after all.