what I was going to blog about...

...Was the Christmas tree we chopped down the other day. And how it was not much different from picking one out at a tree lot. Meaning I loved the first one we saw, went all over creation to double check there wasn't one better only to trudge back to the first one and tie it to the roof of the car. I had pictures and everything.

But my camera is locked in my car.

In my garage.

With my keys.

Which leads me to blog about cortisol levels and how mine are off the chart high in the morning.

See I know this because I have been getting a bunch of hormone tests done as a result of feeling like crap for the better part of the 4 years Olivia has been alive. After several doctors in Utah told me I was just getting older and "it is because you are a Mom," I found a women's center here that does everything but babies. So no offense to all the preggers out there, but it is nice not to have to be scheduled around you. And it being not preggers, and therefore not the cash crop that babies are to a women's center, I am not waiting 3 months in between appointments.

So long story short, I have hypothyroidism and to be thorough I got a work up on all sorts of other hormones. This was done with an attractive saliva test. Ever done one of those?

Me either.

You get to fill (yes, I said FILL. I will wait a minute while you gag at that image. I gagged when I saw it for real) a test tube with your own spit 4 times on day 19, 20 or 21 of your cycle (so this was done about 3 weeks ago), mail it at the UPS store and they get all sorts of info from that. Who knew there was that much to spit?

Turns out one of the things they read is your cortisol levels. And mine are through the roof at 6:30 in the morning.

I reviewed these results yesterday with my nice doctor lady, and she monologued about saying no, not doing too much for the PTA, getting enough sleep, and exercise and eating right. Blah blah blah. The irony of this is that since we moved, I have said no to the PTA, I do eat right and exercise, and since I cut off the Diet Pepsi at 3 in the afternoon and get up before 6 most mornings, I sleep great so what the heck could be stressing me to the point of needing a whole new bar graph to track my cortisol levels from 7 AM to noon every day?

I came up with 2 answers.

First: I am LDS. We are a busy people. We have many obligations to our faith and the organization of the congregations we belong to. Not only do we attend a block of 3 hours worth of meetings every Sunday, we have Tuesday night youth activities that JaDee has always been a leader in and now Carter is old enough tot attend. There is also choir, and cub scouts and Relief Society activities and cleaning the building, feeding the missionaries, and other miscellaneous activities like chili cook-offs that come around once every so often but there is usually at least 1 or 2 "miscellaneous" things a month if not once a week on top of the usual.

But aside from that, the second set of stresses I came up with was this:

Dealing with ages 12, 8 and 4 provide a wide variety of needs.

All day I am inundated with all the things like just now, for example as I sit here typing the last line: "Mom, how come you always get silverware for wedding presents." "Mom, I want you to play ponies." "Mom, can I play Wii before my homework just this once? Please, I promise I will do it tomorrow!"

How can one person's brain cope with questions like that all day long! Blooms Taxonomy would put things like this at a level 5 or 6. In other words, high level thinking and like being under fire in the intellectual/emotional kind of way.

Not to mention the sheer effort it takes to coordinate all of this/them.

Here is a typical Thursday:

6-6:30wake up get the boys out of bed say prayers with JaDee before he leaves for work
make lunches, get the boys through the shower.
7:25 leave to take Carter to jazz band leaving 8 year old Ethan "in charge" for 15 minutes.
7:40 come home get changed out of pajamas. Get Olivia up and dressed, get Ethan finished up.
8:30 take Ethan to school
9-10:30 go to the gym, run to the store/bank/post office
11:00- 12:45 eat, shower, quick chores, phone calls, whatever
12:45 take Olivia and friend to pre school
1-3:15 I take this opportunity to run to Costco, fold laundry, get dinner started, make a doctor appointment, work on cub scout stuff, blog, Overall it is amazing how much you can NOT do in 2 hours without any children.
3:30-5:30 pick up Ethan, get both boys through homework (A note about homework: kids cannot do it alone. I could, I guess because I was smart. My kids are apparently not. I spend a hellish 2 hours a day helping kids with homework). then dinner, lament the breakfast dishes that are still out from this morning, tell Olivia I will play later, etc.

Then the usual after dinner rat race. But only on Tuesdays are we really busy after dinner with scouts, youth activities and piano.

So as I wake up every morning and run through my day in half hour blocks and try to fit in "take your vitamins" and "switch the laundry" I realized that I am constantly working out a schedule in my head. I think in terms of "First I have to..." and "Before I do this..."

It starts the minute my feet hit the floor, apparently as my double bar graph of spit results so aptly shows.

And then today I get to the car to run Carter to school and the keys are locked in it.

Of course it takes an extra graph to chart my cortisol levels.

Of course it does.