Doing and Not Reflecting.

I'm not exactly sure why I seem to have stopped writing for this long of a stretch. It probably has to do with the usual reasons of not having much time by myself, just me and my thoughts. I get that mostly in the shower.

Being the sort of person who is a "doer" is a value of mine but then I seem to not be able to find the balance in sitting quietly and thinking.

In the evenings, I've been doing my "homework" of getting through the second season of Downton Abbey before it's pulled from streaming on PBS. This is very important work. I only have another hour to go.

During the day, we sometimes have a revolving door of kids coming to our house to play, friends coming for dinner because they don't cook and their former-chef husbands are out of town for stretches, neighbors popping over to talk because it's not frigid outside anymore. I also love to share my afternoon tea with whomever happens to be around.

Then there are the grown-up duties of registering our little one for kindergarten in the fall, applying for a transfer into the school we love (the one our big kid is currently enrolled in), getting up-to-date on immunizations, keeping on top of homework and clutter and daily dinners. Scouring Pinterest for cooking inspiration has become a new favorite activity of mine.

There's the jobs outside of home. For Ted, teaching and sometimes auditioning and coaching sessions. For me, the varied assortment of duties from networking to advocating for a senior in public transit court, to collecting money for another senior whose daughter (my age) just passed away in Addis Ababa to tacking new paintings up in the community room and distributing lunches and bus tickets.

I don't think of our lives as being any busier than anyone else's. Sometimes I just miss the stretches of quiet, the time to think. How to be a "doer" in this life while being sure to find time to reflect on all the "doings?"

I don't know. Downton Abbey and Pinterest and recording the goings-on with Instagram are certainly not helping with this.