Taking a moment . . .

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.--Wernher von Braun

I don't know whether to scream, pass out, or just start working . . . or a combination of all three. I'm having flashbacks of college all-nighters. Mom, you may stop reading now. You know . . . the ones with filled with panic, Vault energy drink, highlighters, notebooks, and a blank computer screen? So many nights, a paper would be due in my 9 AM class, my clock said 3 AM, and of the 12 required pages of a detailed analysis were at zero. Once I didn't start a paper until the day it was due. I just couldn't get my brain to work. I had the ideas, I had the theme, I had the quotes . . . but I couldn't vomit anything intelligible onto that Word document. I wrote it in three hours and dropped it off in the office at midnight. Mom, you did not just read this paragraph . . . I got an A on that paper though. Whew. So yes, the panic, the sweat, the shortness of breath, the wandering mind, the headache . . . it's all coming back to me.

Parent orientation is this Wednesday. Meaning I have three hours to sit down with women who could probably be my mothers and tell them everything I will pour into their precious child's mind and how I'm going to do it. Oh my. Mothers are terrifying creatures. Beautiful, wonderful, but absolutely terrifying. Next tuesday, they dump their little angels into my arms and hope I don't drop them. I'm only hoping the kids don't run away kicking and screaming.
On top of that, I have had three full days of information being stuffed into my brain like an overcooked overstuffed mushroom. Delicious, lovely, but oh so overstuffed. Teacher orientation kills. It's great stuff, but it's loooooooong and it's a lot.

I'm really beginning to realize that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
I've trained, I've prepped, I've thought out, I've imagined . . . but I really have no clue. If parenthood is anything at all like this, I don't know if I will ever be cut out for the job.

People keep telling me I'll do fine, so I'm trying to believe them. Trying really, really hard. Let's hope they're right.
God put me in this position for a reason; it could just be for humbling ;)

When I get worked up like this, I tend to have nightmares. I can feel them coming on. Mutant mothers with first grade math homework . . . oi vey . . .