Do it all

When I was a kid, I had a very high opinion of myself. Truly, I believed I could do anything and be good at everything. I swallowed the line "you can be anything you want to be" like a hungry fish swallowing one of Jeff's fancy lures--without hesitation or second thought.

And it was a bit of a rude awakening as I got older and realized that a lot of people can do things I can't do. And a lot of people can do the same things I CAN do, only they can do it better. It was hard for me to accept that not everyone was going to like me, and certainly not everyone was going to think I was all that great. A brutal life lesson.

As an adult, I still think I harbor a little of that belief that I can do anything, and I can do it well. I watch design shows on tv and think, I could do that, when the reality is I could NEVER do that. And sometimes I get myself in trouble when I try to do things that seem so easy, yet turn out to be much more difficult.

The perfect example was at the beginning of the summer when the kids wanted to start riding their bikes. Because of all the thorns that litter our neighborhood, there wasn't a working tire on any of their bikes and I decided to remedy that. I could have waited for Jeff to get home from work and do things the right way, but there were those hours after school when the kids could be riding and I could be sitting on the couch enjoying a glass of lemonade the way you can only when there are no children in the house. So I went to the store, bought new tubes for the bikes, as well as the green globby stuff that claims to fix holes in tires, and went at it. I followed the directions, making sure to keep myself in a well-ventilated area, as I was (as always) pregnant and not anxious to expose my tender fetus to harmful chemicals. All was going smoothly, until it was time to put the tubes back on the bikes. That is where I ran into problems. And in trying to "fix" the broken bikes, I actually compounded the problem. The screwdriver I was using to try to pry the tires back into place punctured my new tubes, and no green globby stuff can seal holes the size of pennies.

Jeff rolled his eyes when he got home, and told me, in effect, that I need to stop doing things I can't actually do and let him handle it. Apparently, I never fully accepted the fact that I can't do everything. Brutal lesson repeated.

I kept all this in mind last week when I decided I needed to use the 101 tomatoes we have ripening in our basement, the remnants of our mildly successful garden this year, and can salsa. But instead of asking someone with any experience for help, I was confident that I could manage. I mean, I had spent several minutes researching on the internet. How hard could it be?

Contrary to where you think this story is headed, things actually went very well. Maybe that's because canning really isn't as scary as it seems, and maybe everyone can do it without problem. But with the help of good-looking assistants like this one... (his job was to clean anything that fell on the floor. He's good at this job)

...I was able to take the tomatoes from this stage...(tomatoes all peeled after a quick bath in boiling water and a soak in ice water)

...to this without much difficulty at all.

The hard part was just the amount of work it took to can 8 pints of salsa. But the results were well worth it and I'm sure I will be repeating this process soon with the other 101 tomatoes still ripening in the basement.

It's probably experiences like these that keep me from learning the brutal lessons, and keep me trying things that I may or may not be successful doing. These small successes fuel the fire, and keep me believing that I CAN do anything I set my mind to...

...and then there is the rest of the time. The last week or so has been a major reality check for me, and probably not for the better. We have been dealing with one sickness after another (nothing major, just alternating stomach viruses with cold viruses) and no one has been 100% in our home. It's amazing how much a little sickness (multiplied by 4 or 5) can really add to the normal stress I experience all the time. Add to that the two incidents this week where I failed to do something I had committed to, thus letting down people I really care about, and I have really started feeling discouraged.

I mean, I have been able to convince myself that I'll be able to handle 5 kids, two of which will be, essentially, still babies. But after this week, I have been having serious doubts. I have started really noticing all the things I just can't seem to do--I can't keep up with the messes, I don't have the energy to do everything I want to do with the kids, and yet I'm supposed to believe that I'll be able to do it when we have one more? I don't see how.

Deep down, I know that everything is going to be alright. Things will work out. The people I have let down will forgive me and we'll move on. The kids are going to get what they need and the messes will, eventually, get cleaned up. But in the short term, it's hard not to feel discouraged. I am wishing I was more like my 10-year old self, because I'm pretty sure she would still feel like she can do it. She felt like she could do anything.