September 12, 2020

Overwhelmed - Just One of Those Days

I don't have a photo for today's post, so here is a funny one of Joey, Chick, and Duck!


As expected, I am extremely sore today! All the pulling out bushes and weeds and plants from the landscaping has my upper body feeling like I was hit by a truck. Even my hips hurt this morning when I went for walk.

Today hasn't been a good day (mentally). I feel drained and still so overwhelmed. The kids' schooling is at the top of the stress list, but I am also worried about getting the porch done before the weather gets too cold. A lot of stores are sold out of the lumber I need, and even if I DO find it, I don't have a way to get it home. This is when I really wish we had a truck.

I'd also promised Noah that as soon as the garage was ready, we would build his corner desk. Again, I don't have a way to get the supplies home from the store.

Like I wrote yesterday, the landscaping is a mess. I have to thoroughly rake through all of it, getting out all of the roots, rocks, mulch, etc, as well as kill all of the grass, in order to get it prepared for new plants. 

This all sounds so silly if you look at it individually, but each item on my "to-do" list adds up and I get so overwhelmed that I don't even know where to start. I know I need to focus on one thing at a time, but it's nearly impossible with the amount of things that need to be done in a timely manner (like the kids' school work and the porch).

On top of this, I want to refinance our car. Since COVID, the interest rates have gone WAY down, so I want to refinance as soon as possible. I've never done anything like this before, so I'm not sure what I'm doing, but the savings will be totally worth it.

This morning, I had a bit of a breakdown. I had all of the porch and desk plans typed up and ready to print on my computer, along with a list of supplies that I'd need to buy. When I clicked on "print", nothing happened. My printer kept showing errors and I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong. I've tried everything! 

After an hour of messing around with it, I just started crying out of frustration. The kids need the printer for school, and I do a lot of printing myself. I did all of the troubleshooting tips and I still can't get it to work.

Despite getting upset today, I managed not to turn to food to escape reality for a moment. My walks have actually been a nice respite to break up my day. 

(I honestly don't mean for this post to sound whiny. I was feeling so stress-free for a while and then all of these seemed to happen at once and I feel so much pressure to get it all done.)

Speaking of walks, I've been trying to come up with a Cookies Fall Challenge (like the Cookies Summer Challenge) and was wondering if anyone has ideas. I could do another checklist, but I think doing a mileage/distance challenge might be fun. Just something to keep us motivated to walk or run through the season. 

I'm thinking of splitting people into teams of about 10-12 people and having them combine their mileage (competing against the other teams). This way, if someone doesn't want to do their walking or running, they would be letting their team down in a way. Nobody wants that, so I think that would be a good push to keep going.

Or another idea would be to combine the mileage to "travel" from one place to another--say, New York City to Chicago--simply based on miles. It could be a race between teams. We could use a map to draw lines each week to see who is in the lead.

So anyway, those are just a couple of ideas. If any of you are interested and have input, please let me know. I really need to get it posted by next week, because fall is coming up so quickly!

6 comments:

  1. Refinancing your car is pretty easy. The vast majority of banks and credit unions have their rates posted. If you belong to a credit union, we usually find them more user friendly and they have better rates with less fees. Check your local credit unions for their rates. If you want to refinance with them, you just have to become a member, which just means opening a savings account. Most places now have online loan applications where you just fill out all the info there. You will have to get a payoff letter from your current institution. Usually you can do that online as well. Don't get the payoff letter until you are ready to apply because they will give you a ten day payoff with the amount of the loan with ten day's interest added to give time for the payoff to get there. You will also have to call your insurance company and change the lender with them since they have a lien on the vehicle. Some banks will require a letter from the insurance company showing this info. It's pretty routine so the insurance company will know what you need. That's about it. The payoff goes straight from the bank to your previous lender. All done. :)

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    1. My head is spinning just reading that! Hahahaha, thank you for laying it out. I'm going to have to just breathe and take it one step at a time. I do already use a credit union, so hopefully that will help!

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  2. How are you killing the grass? I seem to remember you live near some water, and so you probably can't use chemicals to remove it.

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    1. Just using Round-Up... we don't live nearly close enough to the water to cause any problems :)

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  3. I sell doors and windows at a lumberyard, and all building materials are very hard to come by right now. Our yard is usually stacked high with lumber and it looks bare. I have never seen it like this in my 19 year career. People getting ready to start to build houses are out of their minds. Prices are also WAY up. The situation was already bad due to COVID, and now there are hurricanes and wildfires making demand go up even more. Hopefully you can get what you need. On the deck boards...that shortage started at the beginning of the quarantine. People were home, and got stimulus money, so people started building decks and fences. Crazy, right?

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  4. I'm a little delayed in reading but I can ping you on IM if you want some ideas? There's a few map-based ones I can show you that my run club has used for virtual events and they're amazing! Check runsignup for one, I'm using that at the moment for an "around the world" virtual event that's going to take our team ITIL december 2021 to complete! But talk about motivation :)

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