Where can I get some balance? Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, that's funny.

Today, I had a student give a speech on generalized anxiety disorder. At some point, it was tough to critique her speech and delivery and not get sucked into the content. Because every one of the symptoms she used, I have. And really, we got into a fairly good discussion because I posed the question: Aren't those all the symptoms of a parent?

The student had the audacity to suggest I seek medical attention. She also has the audacity to be childless.

Is it me, or do all the other mommies out there "suffer" from the following from psychcentral.com:
* Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge
* Being easily fatigued
* Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
* Irritability
* Muscle tension
* Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless unsatisfying sleep)

Because since having kids, I've never slept that well, and I'm usually on edge about something. What else? Oh, yes, difficulty concentrating or mind going blank.

Sigh.
Irritability. Insert more hysterical and a bit uncontrollable laughter here.

Muscle tension. I was in yoga the other day and she had us do some reverse relaxation gig where you tighten up your muscles and then release. I have to do that to relax always.

And then sleep disturbance. If by that you mean, I wake up in the middle of the night and can't stop my mind from racing about all the potentially worry-things about my family so I have to turn on the Cosby Show because that's the only non-conflicting show? That's sleep disturbance and therefore leading back to being easily fatigued right?

Okay, well, here's the part she missed: The anxiety, worry, or physical symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. *psychcentral.com

Ahh, okay, I'm good. Because my social and everything else functioning is solely based with fellow parents. I roll with other mommies. We laugh in the face of words like anxiety and disorder. We trump those words with words like poopy pants, projectile vomiting, residule laundry, and school parking lot rage. We call it motherhood.

So, the next day, you can imagine my surprise when it was windy out, I couldn't figure out when it was snowing and when it was just blowing old snow, I was walking from building to building tracking down speeches in all kinds of crazy ways. My feet hurt, someone sent in the wrong kind of tape, I finally get to someone who can play the darn tape for me. It better be a good speech. I'm just sayin. And I get a bonafide super well-supported and kick ass speech, simply persuading me to get this: Laugh more.

Ahhh, the yin and yang of teaching, learning and life.

That's how I roll.