I’m incredibly wired.

If you’ve met me you know this isn’t unusual. But I mean, I’m incredibly wired even FOR ME.

It’s just sunk in that i have one week before vacation, and at least three weeks worth of things to do; mom to take care of (my mother’s having some health issues and is needing a little help but mostly a whole lot of emotional support, and being the only surviving relative it’s been me and only me for a couple months now); work, which means all the things no one else (literally, no one else in the whole company, i’m one of THOSE people) knows how to do have to be written down in my wiki so that people have a chance of being able to get through a week without calling me. I have to gather up my scuba gear – unused for two fucking years if you can belive that, i havn’t been underwater since fiji in August of ’04 – and make sure everything’s working, replace what needs replacing. I have to pack that up (more gear than it used to be, now that my daughter’s diving), i have to take care of my in-laws computer melt-down (which, typically, happens at the worst possible time).

And of course i have that time-compression moment where the mental list of things to do feels bigger than it really is, and the time feels less, in inverse proportion.

What this all does it put me in a near-fugue state where I’m vibrating so fast I’m still; i can’t get anything done for task switching. I’m about to split in two and fire off in different directions.

One more week i keep thinking. Soon that will be good. Right now I just feel the stress and can’t see past it.

It’s been two years since i’ve had a real vacation; and in a lot of ways that two years seems like a lifetime, fire and destruction and re-construction, and i can barely remember a time when I was able to take off twice a year for stress-reducing tropical holidays. I took it for granted then; when i had all the vacation time i wanted, and the incredible luxury of dotcom money.

Now, i’m all too aware of my own luck in being able to travel at all, but today all i feel is – i just heard someone say ‘pinball’ as I was typing this and that’s how i feel, like the big ball-bearing in a pinball game, whack-whack-whack-whack-clunk-ping-thunk, lights flashing, and around in a circle I go.

One more. week. Sigh.