A time-stamped look inside my brain: grateful, anxious, guilt-ridden

I am grateful. I am so incredibly grateful. If I receive one comment about how I should be grateful, my grateful head may explode off my grateful body. But my grateful head is not incapable of feeling multiple emotions at once so while I'm grateful I'm also other things that may seem to contradict my gratefulness.

You see, while I'm beyond grateful that I am taking an amazing trip to California with my healthy family to stay at a home that is owned by a relative and therefore free of charge, I'm also anxious.

Packing for 3.5 people is not the easiest feat of all time. I say 3.5 because my husband will pack most of his belongings but that doesn't mean I won't also dwell on what he is or is not packing, therefore his packing stress still contributes toward mine.

The other night my anxious and grateful-self almost erupted. Well, if tears flowing out of my eyes constitute an eruption then there was a bit of a fissure. As I was making my fifth list about what needed to be done my husband took it upon himself to critique my list-making system. Oh, hell no, that was not the right time or way to disrupt the trip-planning beast. He learned quickly as I explained to him that I did not need list-making mansplained to me, and if he had a problem with my system, he could most certainly jump in and pack for one of the small beings in our lives. He thanked me for my contributions to the packing process.

I know the trip will be fun regardless of what I do or don't bring, I know I will likely pack things I never use and think of things I would've used. It's not my first rodeo, but it's still stressful.

Today while I was trying to make a new list (don't you dare criticize the system) I got a little short with my son. I explained to him that sometimes we have to spend a little extra time doing things we don't want to do in order to prepare for a trip. It came out of my mouth and then I realized I wasn't sure that's the message I wanted to pass along.

Doh. Now I'm guilt-ridden too. But don't get me wrong, I'm grateful.

Photo from last time we flew as a family of four

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