Our home is not large.  Rain is pouring outside.   My daughter has a friend over and she has decided she would like to play in the front living-dining-media-play-room part of the apartment.  So I am relegated to the back bedroom half of the apartment which is fine with me.  I’m listening NPR and writing this blog post in which I hope to unwind all the anxiety I have built up over the past few days.

Last night, we had a production meeting for Clown Axioms which I had been looking forward to because if I do too much stay-at-home-mommy-camp without a break I start to go a little nuts.  In addition we’re going to travel West tomorrow to see all of My Kid’s grandparents and cousins and there is the stress involved in that, cleaning the apartment, packing the clothes, which involves multiple trips to the laundromat both to drop off stuff to have washed (towels, socks, jeans…) and to wash clothes myself using my own detergent and pulling half the stuff out of the dryer while it is still damp (black clothes, brightly colored clothes, clothing containing spandex) additionally my husband has his shirts done and of course the wool suits are dry cleaned.  I grew up in Montana where maybe dress coats are dry cleaned in the spring but that’s about it.  My mother and her peers all had laundry rooms!  We washed jackets with tennis balls to fluff up the down.  Special t-shirts were routinely tumbled in the dryer to get the wrinkles out and then hung to dry.  Other things went on drying wracks or ironed on a board set up in front of the television.  When I was growing up during the last great period of economic downturn and environmental awareness my mother eschewed paper towels and used wash clothes that she threw down the basement stairs to end up in the laundry room.  I can comfortably handle only 1 or 2 wash clothes in the bathroom and at the kitchen sink and one hand towel in each place.  I have no laundry room, mud room, or back porch to hang wet anything.  I can’t seem to manage haul laundry down the two flights of stairs two blocks to the laundromat more than once a week.  I am always behind.

As a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t stay home I have had a great deal of difficulty getting a handle on the housework over the years.  I am experimenting with hiring a cleaning lady which friends of mine do without thinking and which I have a great deal of angst about,  possibly because I am descended from Nebraska farm wives and why shouldn’t I be able to get my work done by myself.  OK. So yesterday, the cleaning lady cleaned while I went up and down the stairs and down the street with six bags of laundry.  At the same time as I was saying good-bye to the cleaning lady I was telling My Kid to put on her shoes and get ready for her tennis class.  As soon as her tennis class was over I was telling her how we were going to take the train to Penn Station so I could go to a production meeting and The Husband would take her out to dinner in the city.

And so I found myself sitting around a conference table with the other clown women excited to see them and to get going on our next project.  At the same time all the talk about all the things that need to be done to take our company to the next level began to fill me with anxiety.  There was much discussion of fundraising and data bases and donor spread sheets and mailing lists.  I found myself feeling guilty for hesitating to “step up to the plate” at the same time knowing that I am already counting down the hours and things that need to be done before we check in at the airport tomorrow.  (Phone, Nintendo DS, and lap charges have to be collected and packed.  Windows have to be closed.  Electronics that must be turned off.  Suitcases that need to be packed.  If the flight is at 7 should I feed My Kid before we leave or pack food to eat on the road or buy something at the airport.  If we leave NYC at 7 and get to Seattle at 10 how many hours will we really be on the plane?)  I really couldn’t bend my mind around exporting the “vertical response CSV files” by the end of the week people were talking about.  I just felt vaguely guilty and incompetent.  When the multitude of tasks were being assigned I felt so much anxiety it crossed my mind that maybe it would be so much work that the performances at La Mama that I have been looking forward to for some time might not be worth it.  I held back and was careful with my volunteer choices.  Press kits.  That involves hand carrying original documents to Kinko’s and printing a set number of copies and arranging them colored folders in a particular order.  I can do that.  It’s immediate, tactile and physical.  Other jobs were so technical or so vague I knew they would leave my head as soon as I crossed the threshold of the conference room.  Then I would come back from my trip Seattle and Montana, finish up My Kid’s summer activities and get her settled into her new class and grade only to realize I’ve completely forgotten to do some clerical task for the clown troupe the dereliction of which will cause everyone in the company to hate me.

And then there was the doctor appointment I had this morning which was just a check-up but in the context of my anxiety over packing for a cross country trip to see the in-laws and the parents and the publicity and fundraising tasks of the growing theatrical company I was ready to throw in the towel and not even go when the voice mail from the doctor’s receptionist reminded me that the doctor runs on time and a tardiness of more than 10 minutes could cause the appointment to be rescheduled and or cancelled.  Since I had a different appointment in Brooklyn Heights at 9 am and then had to take My Kid back to Fort Greene to hook up with her friend for an outing to the Scholastic Store in Manhattan and get back to Brooklyn Heights in time for the appointment.  I had to be talked down from my fear of failure by someone who pointed out that it would not be the end of the world if the particular combination of car service and subway rides that I put together failed to get me to the doctor’s office by my check-up had to be rescheduled and the doctor I’ve never met probably would not have time to be upset with me if all the pieces of my life puzzle did not fit together at  exactly 11:15 am in a particular office in a particular building in a particular part of New York City.  

I don’t know who these people are that they have been talking about on the news who use way to much medical intervention.  (They must be hanging out with those “Welfare Moms” who go through pregnancy and childbirth not to mention living with a baby/toddler/preschooler/kid just for a few additional dollars per month.)  After I’ve been weighed and measured, had my blood drawn,  peed in a cup and wired for an ECG. It was just an office visit, completely anticlimactic given my fear of  cancer/heard disease/unknown.  I’m done!  Significant numbers of calendar pages will turn before I seek additional medical care.