On Thursday I lost my keys and with them I almost lost my sanity.  I lose misplace things often and am constantly reminded that if I only put things back where they belong I won’t lose them.  Easy to say but when I am coming home loaded with backpacks, lunchboxes, gear, two tired and hungry boys who are not making it easier to get out of the car I tend to forget my keys should be placed in their proper place.

Add to this our constantly overbooked schedule and you have a recipe for problems.  I don’t mean to overbook, but in my mind if it can be done, why not do it?  I am not humble in my ability to organize and multitask.  So when my mom asked if she could bring brownies to soccer practice on Valentine’s Day it didn’t seem like such a big deal.  I would have to rush a bit to make it happen but my mom and the boys would love it so I thought it would be well worth the effort.

All was working out meticulously until it was time to leave.  I went to look for my keys and they were nowhere to be found.  “Again,” I thought as I began my search.  I usually leave them in one of several places but they weren’t in any of these. I hassled the kids, and yelled at them to help me.  When they started asking me questions about my keys I yelled for them to stop talking.  I eventually yelled at them to just be quiet and wait.  They were befuddled as nothing they did seemed to help their mami.  My mom called from the field, the team was there but we were not.  I asked her to come and pick up the boys because I couldn’t seem to find my keys.  As they left, I told her I would be there as soon as I found them.

I knew for a fact, without a shadow of a doubt, that I opened the door to my house otherwise I would not be inside it.  So where the heck were those keys? I looked EVERYWHERE and I panicked.  About three weeks ago my purse got stolen (you can read about that here), and in my panic I began to consider that maybe my purse wasn’t stolen, maybe I lost it. Was I going crazy? Could I have left the keys dangling on the door and someone took them? Must I call the locksmith again?

By now, soccer class is half done.  I take a breath and comb my house, again.  No sign of the keys.  I pray to any God that would listen; I promise to give up chocolate, cake and who knows what else.  I negotiate with the universe a second chance and come out empty handed.  Each minute I grew more anxious, less efficient, and my sanity seemed to dangle by a thread.  I realize I need a break, leave the house open and head to have valentine brownies at soccer practice with the boys. My mom returns home with me.

We both look for the keys all over the house, and neither of us find anything.  I come up with my game plan of when to call the locksmith and how to arrange my day on Friday.  I stop taking it out on the boys.  It’s not their fault their mother is absent minded.  We read a book, they go to sleep and I head to kitchen to gather what I need for the field day I am planning the next day.  I open the tupperware drawer and wouldn’t you know what I find?

 Yep. It’s them alright.  I head back to the room since the boys were still not asleep.  I inform them I found the keys, tell them I wouldn’t be mad but want to know if one of them hid my keys and then forgot about it.  They both solemnly swear they didn’t.  I have no choice but to believe them, and my best guess is that they fell into the drawer as I searched for the water bottles on the cabinet just above. 

My lesson here is not about the process of finding something lost.  My lesson is that I cannot do everything I want.  I want to be a wife, mom, teacher, triathlete, cycling advocate, and writer.  I want to be a good friend, sister and daughter.  But if I put the superwoman cape on, eventually it gets to heavy and I collapse under the pressure.  I multitask to the nth degree, and I don’t pay attention to the details of my life.  Sure, I am successful for a limited amount of time but it catches up to me and I end up wasting four hours looking for my keys and playing Russian roulette with my mental health.   I need to stop, take a breath, and reassess.

It’s very humbling to realize I can’t do everything I want to do.  “If only people just did what they were supposed to do, then I could handle all of it,” is something I would’ve thought in the past.  Today I don’t.  Today I accept I have limitations, and that even if everyone is on my side, which they are, I still can’t handle all the things I want to. 

This doesn’t mean I have to give up on anything; I just need to relax my expectations and put less pressure on myself.  In my triathlon training there are always rest days, and so in life, there must be rest days too.  I need to pause every once in a while. It’s a fine line between being driven and being overdrawn. Deadlines will just have to be extended, facebook might have to wait, a call may go unanswered for some time but that is the price I must pay if I am open for business. That is what needs to happen so I can simply exist.

The world won’t end if I don’t post my intended three blog posts a week or if I am late for soccer.  But my life as I know it, my life as I love it, will if I lose my sanity.