Why do I feel like I am pushing a boulder up a mountain?

I just feel so overwhelmed and frustrated. I try to do my job but I am distracted by the overload of things that I just can't manage. I try to take care of all the people I am responsible for but I just keeping thinking about all the things undone. I have dropped so many eggs (metaphorically speaking, folks) at this point that I could have made a dozen soufflés.

I just keep trying to move forward - and I'm fine with the client sitting in front of me - I can still listen and empathize and care what happens to them and know that that comes through and reassures them. But in the meantime, I have forgotten to look up therapeutic activities I intended to use with another client, and I have forgotten to find the resources that I told 2 co-workers I would find for them, and my paperwork is so far behind that I might die before I catch up, and while one student/client fails to show up for whatever reason, some other student/client shows up in their place so I don't have time to track down and deal with the first one & whatever issues they're having.
And I may have made 4 doctors appointments for my mother which I will have to accompany her to & which will require many hours of my time and so I may feel like this is an accomplishment to have figured out how to make these happen, but there is no one who can take her to see my father, because no one provides that kind of service, and it's taken me many phone calls and false starts and bad information to get to that point, and that feels very deflating (doubly so because it has been 4 weeks since I could find time to go see him - and she hasn't been to see him for a couple months - I can only have nightmares about how much worse he has gotten). And I still have to make an appointment for a consultation about which Medicare D plan is best for her, but it can only happen on Wednesday morning because that's the only time they can do it (and then it's only every other week) so I have to arrange to take the morning off work (c'est la vie?) ... but I can't see paying $500 for a prescription which is what her current plan relegates her to until she pays for $4000 worth out of pocket... ("in the gap")... And the appointment has to happen soon because there is only a small time window during which you can change plans, and everyone acts as if you should be grateful for whatever little scrap they offer you...
And I have to teach a class to students who are overwhelmed in their naivete about life and graduate school, and I have to reassure them, when all I really want is for someone to reassure me!
It's been a long bad day... one of many lately.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Day!
I give thanks for my boys, and my partner, and my parents and my home.
Pen says his brother, his mom, his dad, and his cousins.
JT says his life, his family & math, soccer and animals (?!?!)

Hoping yours is filled with many blessings to be thankful for. We stuffed ourselves with all the usual suspects and are now heading for dessert!

oh just put me out of my misery

I give up.

Ok, I give up

So I am getting nasty emails from students upset with me about my class now. The icing on the cake - assuming that the icing consists of fecal matter and the cake is rotten. I wonder if I can just give up and take my ball and go home?

Ok... what am I doing wrong?

Ok. Obviously the universe is sending me some directions which I am getting wrong. I continue to feel like I am banging my head on the wall or trying to overcome roadblock after roadblock - and that's just a little too frustrating. Not that life is supposed to be coasting, but I don't think it's supposed to feel this.

My mother is so confused and all I try to do to get her organized so she can maintain and not have to go to a nursing home just doesn't seem to work. At least she isn't wandering the way my father did. And at least she doesn't try to turn on the stove and burn her apartment down accidentally. But she calls me in a panic and leaves messages at my home that sometimes I don't get and she can't remember to call me at work during the week - I'm lucky she can remember to call a number connected to me - although I do have all the information posted in large print signs on her walls to try to orient her. But her clocks stop and she doesn't read the reminders and I am just so frustrated and overwhelmed at the moment I could cry. And I know it's very scary for her. And maybe my friends are right and I should send her to a nursing home - but that's a one-way street. You don't come back from nursing homes - as evidenced by this recent stay she had - I cannot put into words how much ground she lost. And I am so angry at the hospital for causing this - and the nursing home for exacerbating it - and the fact that I keep getting bills from them that I have to pay makes me want to call them and tell them off or threaten to sue them. It is just too totally insane - I have to pay you for problems that you caused? That is like Alice in Wonderland. (or the Bush regime).

Sandwich generation

Is that what I am? A sandwich? Hopefully not ham.

My mother has been really sick and is now having some real cognitive problems as a result. So I definitely feel like I am sandwiched between everyone else's needs. And what a sandwich - triple decker I think. Maybe more?

And the mustard on the sandwich - tangy & biting - is that I have been stepping on another person's toes and not even realizing it. Like I put this additional layer in my sandwich while sleep walking and spread it thick with spicy horseradish mustard and wondered why it was so overwhelming - not even realizing what I had done. And the person whose toes I was stepping on didn't tell me I was stepping on toes. Probably didn't want to offend me. Yet I clearly trampled them. Finally someone told me off. (so of course that feels like sh#* because I think how could I be so stupid?!).

You'd think that as you get older you'd get wiser but I have my doubts at the moment.