Sometimes the freedom of choice is EXHAUSTING.

It's a universal truth:  Choices are like bricks, drowning me in orange (or blue?) tables and school districts and furniture arrangements.  Well, that's the case in my universe, anyway, but I realize that we don't always revolve around the same sun, and it's endless expectations for housewivery, and mothering and general sainthood.  Some of you can actually manage to DECIDE things, without hoarding your choices in a lovely ocean of simple choices and never-ending projects and to-do lists.

Choices mean I don't make the same dinner in an eight-week period, and they keep me running to five different grocery stores a week to find the best produce at the cheapest prices. They sent me to Hobby Lobby, Target, Walmart AND TJ Maxx, searching for the *perfect* melamine plate this week.  Lately, I have been easily overwhelmed by choices in suburbs and school districts and proximity to community pools, and floor plans and full basements and third floor spaces with dormers.  Would I like a house with a large hearth room on a small lot, or a small and efficient house on a half an acre?  Will they be safer in a cul-de-sac than a corner lot?  The pressure to decide if my kids would be happier with a large yard or a great playroom is enough to violently drown me in the possibility of where, exactly, I will hang fabric buntings.  

That's the funny thing with getting what we want--the temptation to think it isn't enough.  Because too many choices manipulate us into believing there is something else, something more, something better, something that costs less.  

Today, I am struggling with the endless tide of choices.  Yes, the big ones are made--the house is *almost* ours, the plans are in beginning to fall into place to switch the kids to their new school, the PODS are being delivered, our boxes are being packed.  Today my choice is whether or not to send Little J to full-day kindergarten; a choice I've already made once.  The school we are moving into has just one, full-day class--and it tends to fill up on the day of registration--so I had always ASSUMED (fyi, every single assumption I had regarding this move has been WRONG) that he would be in a half-day class, and I've settled into that idea.  I've become used to having seven hours a day to get stuff done check facebook, and yet the idea of having him at home with me for part of the day is...appealing.  There's some stuff he could use work on, and I'd be able to help him and give him my full attention--even though, let's face it, I am romanticizing how this will play itself out.  At the end of the day, however, it's really my last chance to have a kid at home, with me.  Except!  He's in full-day now, and he likes it.  It would give him more hours to get used to his new school and make friends.  It will allow me to write (or unpack or check facebook, or run).  It will keep everybody on the same schedule.  


There are great arguments either way, so how do I KNOW?  I feel like I've made so many decisions--so many QUICK decisions--that I'm finding myself paralyzed with choices.  And it's all so freaking insignificant, and also so INCREDIBLY AMAZING that we even have options--and yet it feels like drowning.  Particularly as we play out these last couple of weeks at a school we love, and realize that we are CHOOSING to leave it, and it feels CRAZY and MANIC, even though we are only talking about moving two miles down the road, and not sailing a house boat in Arkansas.


Someone just tell me what to do.  And....GO.