No Wonder I Feel Dizzy

I get so overwhelmed sometimes just by the sheer number and weight of the things I think about all day long. My head is a crowded place. Here are some of its occupants:

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1. Is our culture really sustainable, or are we going the way of the Roman Empire? How can a society that is chock full of strip malls, Girls Gone Wild videos, chain food stores, and hydrogenated oils really last?

2. What is Oppostional Defiance Disorder, and does one of my children have it?

3. How am I going to get my kids to be better eaters and how am I going to cook locally grown, organic food that everyone in my family will eat and that will minimize the carbon footprint of my household without breaking the bank? How can I get Michael Pollan to be my personal eating and cooking coach without paying him anything?

4. Who is going to do all of this freakin' laundry?

5. How do I get my refrigerator to stop leaking? Actually, this one is more like this: Will my refrigerator stop leaking if I wish really hard, or do I actually have to DO something about it? Keep in mind that I already had my dryer fixed this week, need to do something about the leaky kitchen faucet, need to call about our broken garage door, and should probably try to figure out why the light in our hallway won't work. There oughta be a law of physics or something that so many home repairs cancel each other out and somehow fix themselves without human intervention...

6. What's the best way to teach a child how to ride a bicycle: training wheels or no? (This one will be answered today...)

7. What combination of stores, time, gasoline, and cash will yield the maximum amount of groceries for the minimum amount of money? This particular question could easily take up my entire week. What I am looking for here is a mathematical algorithm into which I could plug the location of the potential grocery stores, the price of gas per gallon, my weekly menu, and my capacity for stress, and out would pop a nice tidy list of where to buy what for how much in order to feed my family healthy, sustainable meals for one week, with enough left over for a valium vodka spiked latte from Starbucks.

8. Hillary? Or Barack?

9. Will my 3.5 year old potty train herself, or do I actually have to get involved? And if I've done this three times already, why do I have no idea how to proceed?

10. What new trick can I invent to get the kids to clean up without complaining? I've tried everything. My current method is to do it all myself. That's not working so well for me.

11. How and when will I make my great contribution to the world? Aside from giving the world five incredibly intelligent and gifted children, because I have a sneaking suspicion that will not be enough for me.

12. How are we going to get me a working computer? Mine crashed in January, and I've been borrowing this one for a couple of months. It goes back in about a week and half...and I'll have to take action.

And guess what? There's more. This is a sampling of the things I think about on an average Tuesday morning.

Time to go back to bed. Ah, but I can't. Must teach Lola to ride a bicycle...