Of road trips, blueberries and laundry.

I just went to the back room to fish my cell phone out of my lunch bag in the refrigerator.

And now that I'm back at my desk I don't remember what I needed my cell phone for in the first place. Which is a little bit alarming.

One of my grandmothers has dementia (caused by hardening of the arteries) and I'm fairly convinced my mother is on the verge of early onset Alzheimer's, although not from hardening of the arteries. Alzheimer's is really not the way to go, so I'm hoping that today's brain fart - not the first one I've had today either, I think – is more about brain overload than the beginnings of cottage cheese brain.

I haven't written in what feels like forever. This is partly because it's summer and I tend to hurry through stuff at work to get home and do something more fun. It's also because work has been screamingly busy. And it's also because I've been on brain overload. Here's what I've been up to in the last, say.... three weeks.

• One daytrip to Riley Hospital (three hours one way) to get Anne's g-tube replaced after it fell out of her belly while my stepmom was feeding her. Putting it back in took approximately 2.5 minutes and then back in the car for another three hours.

• One trip to Tampa to make a new business presentation that included a lovely few hours of lying by the pool, reading a magazine UNINTERRUPTED.

• Two trips to the high school to get B signed up for this fall.

• One impromptu pool party that included the largest marshmallows in the known universe

• One baby shower for two moms.

• A trip to the blueberry patch with all three girls and no sunscreen (duh)

• Another pool party that was originally scheduled for a completely different day.

• One really fun White Sox game that kept me up waaaay too late for the second new business meeting I've had this month that was the following day.

• Umpteen trips back and forth between daycare, my sister's house, the office, the place that repairs our car, the grocery store, the beach, my own laundry room.....

I don't know.... looking back, we've been having a blast. Lots of time with friends, lots of beautiful beach days. But too often it all seems to happen in a rush. Too often it seems like one thing gets pushed to the back in favor of another, whether it's keeping up with the laundry, reading bedtime stories too instead of just singing a goodnight song, getting that ongoing web content project actually done, cooking a real meal with real food, spending time just hanging out with my husband who is really fun to hang out with or cleaning the desk drawer that is starting to look an awful lot like my phone drawer - not good.

It's hard to admit it, especially to myself, but I am NOT superwoman. So I'm working on tackling one thing at a time. Paying real attention to that thing. It's amazing how much less pressured I feel when I make a list and do one. thing. at. a. time. It's also amazingly liberating to realize that no one is judging me more harshly than myself. So I've been working on talking to myself in my head the way I would talk to my friends, which is with kindness and a for-god's-sake-give-yourself-a-break good humor.

I think I'm finished here. Time to move on to my next task - scouting a garage door to see if it will make a good shooting location for an upcoming project. Then I have to come back and locate an actor who can juggle while wearing a mail carrier's uniform. Maybe he'll have some tips for me on keeping all these balls up in the air.