Change a'coming

One the biggest challenges for me in this new life of mine - the one where I'm a wife and mother and how the heck did that happen? - is learning an entirely new set of coping skills.

It used to be that when the world outside got too much for me, I would shut the door, pour a glass of wine, move all my furniture around, run a bath, or settle in with a good book. Or, if the world inside got too much for me, I would open the door and head out to find a party.

Now, in this new life, which includes renovations and two separate houses to maintain, the doors that still close don't actually have frames, so there's not much point. The wine still gets drunk, but with significant restraint and a good dose of guilt. The bath, when it's had, includes a small child who may or may not have peed in the water. And the book is read in one page increments while brushing teeth. And the party? Well, I imagine it's out there, somewhere, and I bet it's fun, but it's way past my bedtime.

So, how do I cope now? Well, that's the thing of it. While my old strategies are long gone, the new ones are slow in developing. Where Before, I would have stayed up all night to get this disaster of a house in some kind of order, I Now turn the lights off in rooms I don't want to look at. This is not a long term plan. So today I have decided that something needs to change. I'm not entirely sure what (although I have some ideas), and I'll have to consult my husband, since he lives here too and all, and I might need a little childcare to make it happen, but something, something is going to change.