Among other things this morning, I had a minor meltdown while I was in the shower. You see, I realized the other day that the heater in the living room wasn’t turned all the way off. It had been turned almost all the way, which meant that once the heat was turned up for the building, we were back to sweltering. Yeah.
That, of course, reminded me that I had not yet hung the insulating drapes in the bedroom. Which caused me to look over at the 2 drying racks overfull of diapers that needed put away before the curtains could be hung. Which reminded me that I had laundry to do, and then hang. Which reminded me that I wasn’t writing down the number of dryer loads I had this week, nor the number of washer loads on hot to prep the new prefolds. Oh, and I forgot to wash the TC last night so I was out of that, and right, I never washed the sheet to cut up to make TC for Lucy.
Shit, Lucy. Stocking stuffers for Lucy. Shit, Chico. We can’t skip presents for Chico this year because of Santa. Stocking stuffers for Chico. Have I been keeping track of spending? I haven’t even set up my tracking chart for the month. Hell, I haven’t run my numbers for November yet. What am I doing?
The thing about having a 6 week old while Rioting is that every time I try to cut myself some slack as far as the reductions go, I realize that I can’t if I want to have serious results. And I’ll be honest–I’m bummed out about it, and even a bit overwhelmed. Which led to something I need to confess:
I took a half-hour long shower this morning. Granted, it’s my first in, well, longer than I want the internet to know. But it was a freaking long shower, which I try not to do because it seems terribly dishonest in light of not paying for water (or how that water is heated). And while I was in the shower, I thought about quitting the Riot. I whined to myself about how hard it was, and I told myself that I had already ensured that I wouldn’t make a 90% reduction. I even went so far as to do a bit of stomping with clenched fists over how unfair it was that I couldn’t just be satisfied with green power and recycling and CFLs like so many people.
So what does this all mean? I really don’t know. The thought of quitting doesn’t feel right, but I can’t deny that I’ve gotten to the point where it’s hard to reduce. I’m finding it frustrating. My electric isn’t going down, I have a ton of numbers to refigure (both switching transit from gas measurement to electric and also making sure that car trips reflect the right amount of gas instead of how much 3 of us would use traveling separately), and as we all know, consumer spending is insane for the year. Trash is more than it should be despite Lucy being out of pull-ups and using cloth dipes because of packaging (Takeout.) My strawberry plants are on their last legs and the basil and parsley gave out a few weeks ago, which means that I’ll have to start over fresh in the spring. And I still have a new baby and a messy house and holidays and and and…
I’m trying. I really am. I know I need to have more realistic expectations of how quickly slowly things should be going. I know I don’t want to give up, and that I’ve really accomplished a lot this year even if it doesn’t seem that way all the time. I just wish I could sit back and enjoy what I’ve done. I guess that’s part of the problem–I know the time has passed for resting on laurels. Hell, I really shouldn’t be looking for back-patting in the first place.
Are you as sick of reading these ‘poor me’ posts as I am of writing them? I feel like I’ve regressed to damn high school sometimes. Ugh.
All I have to say is that you have a newborn.
I don’t know why, but this time around I can’t seem to accept that having a new baby is tough. It’s freaking killing me.