I think not being in control of my time is one of the hardest things about having a newborn in the house.  He goes down for a short nap in the a.m. and I think ok, what do I do with this time?  The other day the choices were , 1) I could put my eldest son in a time out for sounding like a belligerent a-hole,  2) I could take a shower or  3) I could pump so someone else can feed my child while I go out and do something fun.  And I definitely can’t do them all – so how to decide?

They all benefit me -  having fun away from the house, having a squeaky clean bod, having a well-behaved child are all good things that make me happy.   I don’t remember what I picked, I’m sure it was great.

But it made me think more about what’s good for me because I get caught in the shoulds all the time and have been working more on trying to hear what my gut has to say.

My friend and I talked about this.  She works long hours so on her day off it’s her opportunity to get to a yoga class and she feels great when she does.  It was her day off yesterday and we were talking and she said, “but you know I”m cleaning my house today instead.”  And she felt like that was a very non-nurturing thing to do on her day off when she could, or *should* be, Ujjayi-ing in Childs Pose. 

But the fact is she’s going to have a house guest visit today and stay.  And sometimes she feels a bit on edge with this person, and if her house is clean she will feel more relaxed and grounded.  So really, as drudgerous as it sounds, house cleaning is exactly what she needed to do. 

I had an insight along those lines myself this week.  It was a tough week, my house had three kids under 5 in it all day, everyday and it was fine except for the times when I wanted to run away screaming and was too tired to do so.  But we had great weather.  And sometime during the week I thought, the summer is almost over, we haven’t had a picnic we should definitely try to do that.  Notice the *should* :-)   That *should* have been my red flag.

So the “perfect” day was later in the week and we were exhausted and I realized that to source the food and get ourselves to the damn picnic would have been more stressful than chilling on the deck with a chilly beverage before eating at home.  So what’s the point?  

The point of something like a picnic is to reduce stress not add a pile of it in the hope that I can reduce it later.  You know how that works out.  If life happens, the car breaks down on the way, or someone gets stung by a bee and screams non-stop for an hour, it’ll be remembered as the most stressful event of the summer. 

No thanks.  I’ll wait for the day when prepping for a picnic feels doable and “easy” and then it’ll be the perfect thing to do.  It *should* happen while the weather is nice, but it might be December.