It takes all the running you can do . . .

Surge!!!!!

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

– Through the Looking Glass

 

I do believe I live in Alice Country.  I am a working mother with two children –  I’m always tired.  There is getting them to school, and me to work, and staying awake at work and accomplishing, or seeming to accomplish, something, and then going home, hoping my dear husband fixes a supper that doesn’t completely clog my arteries as I am too exhausted to pop the chicken nuggets, supper of champions, into the oven and checking the children’s backpacks for mysterious notes from teachers, permission and detention slips I must sign, money I must send, homework I must proof, and finally trying to get them bathed, read to, and into bed

 

At the end of it all, I am fortunate to have enough energy to bathe myself and flop into bed.  Except then I have the elusive free time, which I can use to keep myself up longer and thus make the next day even harder.  I am always running, it seems, just to stay in place.  Often I think that I don’t really do anything, as the house is in constant disorder, and I’m always forgetting stuff like appointments, library books, and the location of my glasses.  But then I get sick – as I am now – and I realize that I do stuff.  I stay in place.  When I’m sick, I fall a few steps back, and I see that the house can look worse as it edges toward getting us a guest spot on “Hoarders”.  Oh, my husband helps, but it takes two, especially when one also has things to do, like play with tools.  So I am hoping that the doctor, after relieving me of that burdensome 30 dollars, will cure me so that I can once again stay in place.  And maybe, just maybe, I can run twice as fast one day, and get somewhere else.

I wonder what that place might be?