Balancing Act…

Of all the things in this world, my mind is the thing I miss the most.

It’s an old saying, one that tends to be incredibly apropos to me most days. If its not struggling with an anxiety issue, it’s balancing my school load. At the moment, I am taking 2 classes per each 6 week summer semester. Spanish happens to be one of those two classes and learning a foreign language in a span that short… well, I’m sure you can guess what a watermelon looks like after you shove it through a whole the size of a lemon. It’s kind of the same concept, but instead of a watermelon, it’s language. Lot’s and lot’s of language.

If it’s not that, it’s making sure that I am spending quality time with my wife. That tends to be difficult. Maybe not how you think, but… let me explain. No, that will take too long, let me summarize*.

I work Monday through Friday. She works during the week, but also every Saturday and some Sunday’s. I have college I attend classes for, she is doing her’s online. She is an early bird, I am a night owl. So, about the time I am getting home during the week, she is shutting down for the night. When she is getting up in the morning, I am usually just falling asleep (ok, seriously, that’s almost not a lie). We tend to be much like Navarre and Isabeau* in our nature. Somehow, we make it work though, even if it is only in the glimpses of dawn or dusk.

Then, there are my children as I can’t forget the son and daughter, even though I spend less quality time with the son due to his living 2 hours away… but still got to try (apparently they get sensitive about that if you leave them out). My daughter and I will go to lunch sometimes, albeit I feel it is more like she wants a free lunch then to actually spend time with me. Or, I’m just super sensitive about that. It’s probably that. Yeah. It’s that, right? Right? My son has had his share of garbage in his life as of recently, so my role as ‘dad’ has come into much greater play, and although I am sorry he is going through so much, I’m happy about how our relationship has gotten better than it was when he was 15 and I was always wrong. Yeah.

Then there are the cat’s. One can not forget the “Supreme Leader’s of the Domicile”, lest they begin to put their power play for world domination into effect by starting with your murder. Whether that death be due to a ‘underfoot tripping’, a ‘accidental smothering’ in the middle of the night as they use your face for a pillow, or they just cause your head to explode from the sheer cuteness that they exude, the results will be the same, you will be dead and they will not be phased. To that end, my cat’s have needs. One needs to be played with because she still thinks she is a kitten, a fact that annoys the older of the two cats. The other needs her butt scratched, and I’m pretty sure she has a butt-scratch addiction, because it’s never enough. Either that or it’s because she is a woman. Yeah, I said it.

Somewhere in all that, I try to fit in my writing or reading or video game playing or catching up on the television shows or movies I want to watch. It’s a tight schedule and requires an amount of energy to schedule that, quite frankly, I just don’t have, so I do the next best thing. I wing it. Yep. All this awesomeness is by pure chance. BOOM!

Ok, it’s not. Awesome or by chance, that is. There are stories that will never write themselves (however, someone else might, as I have found out several times… *grumble*), there are games that I have bought that I have yet to even load up, there are books that have so much dust piled on them I can’t even read the names anymore, and the tv/movie thing, I just watched a movie I got from Netflix over a month ago. I really got to get better at this.

Sometimes, I can combine a few of those activities together, but it doesn’t happen that often. Last night happened to be one of those rare moments where I get to watch a show I want to watch and spend time with my daughter. Sure, there are people out there who don’t think that’s spending quality time with your kid, however, you don’t understand how the two of us watch tv together. It’s more like MT3K* than anything else. We usually pick stupid movies or shows to watch and just… well, it’s our thing, so it’s kind of hard to explain. Plus, she is way too much like me and my personal humour level tends to run on the courser side of the spectrum, so we pretty much just bash the snot out of whatever it is we watch.

There it is. My life. One giant balancing act that is sorely out of alignment.

Funny part is, I kind of like it  like that. There is, sometimes, just something really enjoyable about going Mach 2 with your hair on fire*. Other times, it’s just a total crash and burn.

But, as any good pilot will tell you, and crash you can walk away from was a darn good landing.

*plus 10 points if you got that reference.

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "On the Edge."