Just One of Those Days

I hope every family has those days where not everything seems to go perfect. It somehow begins with a late start. Then things you thought were ready or finished were found undone. There are loose ends for another project. You struggle to get out the door and find yourself at your destination with more undone and unanticipated delays.

In my line of everyday work, half or more of the work related delays are due to human nature. The patients also have sleepless nights, additional or unexpected pain, late meals and are waiting on the over worked and under appreciated busy staff member struggling to go from door to door to meet the needs of everyone she is assigned to. Add administrative duties and paperwork- the well planned day can go awry in the literal blink of an eye and somehow grow to a 12-hour nightmare with overflow into the next one or even two days.

The trick here is to live on what I call "Plan B thinking". Always have an alternative idea to make things work better. The business world calls this "thinking out of the box". The mother and household manager of any size family can tell you substitution is the solution to most problems.

I work with cognition or ways of thinking - our buzz word is "re-framing and problem solving". My professors thought they were part of a new and upcoming innovative field of thought for the management of lost thinking abilities. In reality, they projected common sense and "Plan B thinking" as the most innovative solution to re-learning thought recall and problem solving. Most of them should have talked with mothers of large families. We accept missing information and needed resources which are absent as everyday simple occurrences. We look at the end goal and make due with what we have. Normally and without apparent distress, we make things look easy.

Sometimes we do that all on our own power. Other times we recruit the strength and time of our spouse or children to accomplish the needed goals. I will put in print and deny my belief, that the fact one or more of the teenagers in our family now drive and can transport to many locations and appointments, has provided me with a level of freedom that nearly approximates having a nanny again. They even help remember sports equipment, fees, homework and permission slips! Plus they are known to volunteer just to be able to drive. Wow what a help and what an occasional worry as they still are young drivers.

But even with all the help and shared responsibilities of the older children and my husband, the "one of those days" pattern can show up at any given time. It is always worse when it involves money and lack thereof. When you thought things were covered and discover that somehow you missed something. It is magnified by sick children and upcoming deadlines.

Mothers of large families seem to take this to heart as their ultimate failure and weakness. We don't need reminded that we are behind with less critical payments, we already know. We suffer great amounts of guilt when we discover the shoes of a child rub blisters, or their pants don't accommodate a five inch growth spurt. We suffer when we see the look of disappointment when the new dress does not meet the wow factor of the tween child.

It goes without saying some days that the necessary paperwork does not always make it in by the deadline and the piles of reading and information sent to the house nearly stops the sun from entering a bedroom window when stacked for a week or two because you couldn't sort it all.

It is not a money issue, it is not really a time issue. More likely it is an overall resource issue. A sign of our busy and complicated lives. The live demonstration of not being able to remember and juggle every minute of the day and every detail of the moment. We become numb to the outside influences and even become staggered by the inside situations when we are tired and overwhelmed by every aspect of our lives. Once we hit the wall of overwhelmed - the plan B thinking we are known for seems to fade and leave us without our handful of re-framing tools and opportunities.

No longer can we call our difficulties challenges and put a positive spin on them. We have little or nothing to use as a means to provide a workable solution. We feel like failures. Our greatest error of thought is to believe our own fears. We are capable. We do manage. Most of all, we can find the right solution given time to think and ponder the alternatives.

So stepping back, taking a deep breath and looking away from the problem can be the best answer now. Resting and coming back to the issue with wise counsel can allow the solution to develop. Trusting our abilities and our choices generally lets the problem solve itself. Let's hear it for Plan B thinking!!! It puts the "One of those Days" pattern back into perspective so that it stays only One of those days.