While watching a fishing show on TV:

6-year-old: “Watching this show makes me hungry for fish.”

3-year-old: “Watching this show makes me hungry for Sam’s chicken.”

So we just returned from a week-long leadership conference. Before that, I was packing to go on said week-long conference and before that, I was installing new budget software and trying to input all our recent financial information which proved to be a bit trickier than I had anticipated. In any case, that’s why I haven’t been around lately.

But as I said, we were just at a leadership conference and I came away with some good things.

First, I’m determined to be more encouraging in my relationships and in life. This will be a challenge as I’m more of “the glass is half empty” type and “the best way to make things better is to point out what’s wrong first” type. Not that those things are necessarily bad, but when “the glass is half empty” becomes “I don’t think there’s anything in that glass at all” and when “the best way to make things better is to point out what’s wrong first” becomes “there just isn’t anything that’s right here,” it gets pretty oppressive.

Second, I need to chill. Or to put it another way, I need to get my undies out of a bunch. About pretty much everything.

I’m seeing a whole new me in my future.

How encouraging.

My kids started swimming lessons today. I think the whole experience took a good 5 years off my life. Oh, they did great and had a blast, but there sat their stress-case mother on the side of the pool, biting her nails and teetering on the verge of cardiac arrest. It was one of the most draining 30 minutes of my life. And by the way, I don’t care how experienced those swimming instructors are, they just don’t pay enough attention as far as I’m concerned.

I am fully aware that something is desperately wrong with me. The fact that I cannot, under any circumstances, CHILL OUT, is a major problem. I wish I could tell you it’s something I’m “working on” but that would just be a bold-faced lie. I’m not “working on it” because I DON’T KNOW HOW to “work on it.” I try the self-talk approach (”Just relax Amy, everything’s fine. They’re fine. See? They’re fine. Really. Just fine.”) but it doesn’t seem to work. I just flat out ignore me.

I thought about handing over swimming lesson duty to my husband but I don’t think that’d work either because then I’d just worry that no one was worrying enough.

So, before me lies my destiny for the next 8 weeks: journey to the brink of death and back, all because I just can’t PULL MYSELF TOGETHER. What happens when they start driving? Maybe I should just check myself into that asylum now and make it easier on all of us.