This has been my phrase of late. I don’t know where I got it, really, but it applies. Perhaps you know the expression? It’s the sort of thing you say when you think that maybe you have too much on your plate, or that maybe, this time, this one latest addition to that plate has finally determined that it’s over-full.
Kind of like that fatal straw that breaks the camel’s back, but not as negative.
Yes, I use the phrase a lot lately.
Maybe it’s because doubling my courseload at school feels like a lot this semester. Or maybe it’s the Master’s thesis, that Really and Truly occupies All My Free Time– that is, After I’ve made dinner or cleaned it up, After I’ve done the laundry, After I’ve helped children with their homework or tucked them into bed. You know. That kind of thing.
Maybe it’s going away for three days and two nights with my students, backpacking with a load upwards of 60 pounds strapped to my body, climbing to the top of Mt. Mitchell.
No, that was fun. Exhausting, but fun.
Maybe it’s Other Things– things I won’t be putting on this blog, because it’s Not That Kind Of Blog. Or maybe it’s Still Other Things– things I don’t even know myself but that are always there, quietly enervating me, persistent, tiresome, exhausting.
Maybe it’s just a sense of perpetual fatigue, one that’s been going on for Far Too Long, and that shows No Sign of Letting Up.
Or maybe it’s Minnie, our cat of fifteen years, who went out sometime on Saturday afternoon and has failed to return. We’ve put an ad in the paper; we’ve checked the animal shelter; she wears a tag around her neck with her name and our phone number on it, but we haven’t heard a thing.
She’s just a cat, right? But we’ve had her for a Really Really Long Time, and now we Don’t.
Yes, I think that’s it.
