Overwhelmed

As you may have gathered from my lack of posts last week, I'm in a bit of a period of being overwhelmed.   It's funny, really, because my to do list has certainly been longer in the past (see: a two-month period in 2009 when I had a baby, moved to a new city and went back to work almost concurrently -- or so it seemed at the time -- with my sister's wedding and a two week period of between-houses homelessness thrown in for good measure), but even with that kind of perspective, I still find myself needing to catch my breath daily right now.  I feel a bit windswept, bamboozled, frazzled and turned around at the moment.  I keep forgetting things, leaving things places they don't belong, and generally being a bit batty.  The husband found the peanut butter in the freezer the other day, for example.  And this morning, I was driving downtown with the express purpose of running a specific errand, and realized a mere five minutes from my destination that the items I needed to accomplish the errand were still sitting on my dresser at home.  Yeah, it's been like that.

We have some major changes in motion and on the horizon: all good things, all exciting things, all things I'll share soon.  But major life changes are major life changes, and good or bad, those things will surely throw your brain and body for a loop.  I've been trying to keep things simple otherwise to compensate, and hence the lack of recipes lately: my current dinner favorites are soft scrambled eggs with havarti and multigrain toast or a heaping bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with fresh blueberries and almond milk (yes, I those would be dinner favorites).  I will say that the little guy and I whipped up that Blueberry Buttermilk Breakfast Cake last week and it was dreamy and is highly recommended, and that I intend to make this Tomato Basil Soup this week and serve it exactly as pictured, with the drippiest grilled cheeses possible.

Photo via Sacramento Street

Pro tip: I've been buying most of my cheese sliced from the deli counter these days.  I love doing this for two reasons:
1) You can try a bunch of different cheeses at a fraction of what you'd spend by buying them in whole blocks: just ask for a quarter pound or less of sliced cheese, and you're usually out just a buck or two, and have enough for several sandwiches or little piles of crackers.
2) There is no other way to get that perfectly thin, delicate slice (unless you happen to have a meat slicer in your kitchen, in which case, more power to you), which melts like perfection in panini or at the center of your little soft egg scramble that you are having for dinner for the third time in five days.
You heard it here first.

In any case, I need to be better about not tuning out and shutting down when I feel this overwhelmed, because I inevitably feel so much better once I've blogged or picked up the phone.  Sometimes, though, when you're feeling like you're at the center of a churning wave and just looking to swim up to the top for some air, its hard to remember to just grab that lifeline, as swimming around in circles seems the only thing to do.

It also always helps me to remember how small I am in the universe, and how passing and minuscule even the most daunting changes are in the big picture.

Festival of Lights, Thailand.  Photo via Beatrice Valenzuela.

This photo gave me that same feeling I get when I'm truly able to breathe deeply and gain some perspective... we're all just little lights on the horizon in the end...

ps - An SMJ post was featured on Momfilter last week!  

So exciting!  I love Momfilter! 

Check it out!