Where did the time go?

Welcome to the post that I started writing 4 days ago.

In the time since I started working on posting, I:

1. Celebrated Valentine's Day with a dear girlfriend. Matt and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day for each other. We do breakfast with the kids, then celebrate our anniversary of the day we met on February 15. Yes, we're pukey cute that way.
2. Had date night with Matt for our pukey-cute Night We Met anniversary.
3. Herded cats kids.
4. Spent the day with Matt, my cousin, and another great girlfriend, running a 5k and enjoying the post-race music, food, drink, and company. I used to pretend I love running. Now I pretend to tolerate it. The truth is it's a great reason for me to hang out with friends who also pretend to tolerate running.
5. Taught a Sunday barre fitness class. (Shameless plug alert: If you live in the East Valley of the Phoenix-metro area, come check us out! www.karvestudiogilbert.com)
6. Herded cats. No, really. Coco the Cat got out, and she is too prissy and pretty for the outside world.
7. Went to a picnic with friends and their kids. I'm not Arizona weather's biggest fan, but the weather for # 4 and # 7 was pretty spectacular.
8. Hosted a sleepover for Sam and Jack's BFFs. Pizza, smores, and Nerf battles for four. I hid in my room with Coco, who decided that the world has gone mad and wouldn't leave my side.

And as I speak, I'm still refereeing fights between the younger two boys over Minecraft and the older two boys over some video game that I'm too much of a girl to know/care about. It's taken me almost 40 minutes to post what I've posted so far. Oy.

I'm one of those people who (feels like she) does better when I'm busy. However there's a fine line between "busy" and "overwhelmed", and an even finer line between "overwhelmed" and "OMG I'm going crazy and I'm about to lose my shit!" (For the sake of time, let's call this last one "FML mode").

When I'm in FML Mode, as I'm so dangerously close to now, Matt gets snippy, I am dangerously short on patience, and the boys are on edge. It's chaos. I'm not a good mom or wife. And that feeling feels like a whirlpool that seems impossible to get out of. In that moment, though, I get how Sam feels out of control and how difficult it is to rein in the panic and unsettled emotions. If I, as a responsible (?) adult, can't control these yucky feelings, how is my 7-year old kid expected to pull it together right away? The fact that many times in the past week he's been able to do so, tells me that he's more advanced than I am.

And because we're so close to FML Mode, I need to keep this brief and will be back later this evening with something much more Zen. Hopefully.