Camp Do-Too-Much

Up at 5, write 'til 9; then food-shopping for twelve people. Home for 3 hours making and serving food to gracious lady never before met. Then three more hours preparing pork roast, meat loaf, two salads, French bread and rice, not just for the 11 people set to arrive for supper but also for 89-year-old uncle, all of whose meals I provide. At 6pm an hour-and-a-half spent going to get him and bring him out for a spell, stopping real quick for the night’s beer and wine. Drop him off and quick home to greet not just the hungry 11 but the two little grandsons invited to sleep over earlier in the week, pant, pant.They do sleep over as party roars on only whoops, the little one sounds off like a cuckoo clock every two hours all night. Hurry to his crib, take him up, walk him, whisper into his little head etc. until 5am when he gets up for good. His brother up at 6. Three blurry hours involving bacon, cocoa, eggs, French toast, banana smoothies, etc.  Dave leaves for work. Still no coffee even for me but that’s OK tt quick let’s go out to the yard! Inspect the dirt, inspect the bugs, inspect the garageful of musty things from the 1940s. Little boys drag out garden hose, water grass, water shrubs, water each other by mistake. Back inside, sneakers squishing. Pop everything in dryer, pick up house which looks like a Connect Four/Mouse Trap/ Lego bomb has gone off in it, sit them down to read two nice musty garage books. Then Dave reappears, we pack the clothes-the-kids-the-food, drive a hundred miles to the place where their parents will meet us and I will no longer be in charge, whew!All this took place Thursday-Friday this past week which is why I didn’t write on Friday. I really am starting to see now that whenever I fail to sit and write I feel like a vacuum cleaner with something caught in its throat: Just that jammed up. Just that weak and wheezy.  I don't know but after 40 years of over-functioning I think I really have to stop with the crazy overbooking, before the crazy overbooking stops me.