I've been mulling over this since I read it yesterday, because I apparently have a different reaction to this than everyone else.
I come from a family where the women are all Planners - it's just what we do. We need to have a Plan to function, this Plan has about 837 steps and spans 15 days into the future. If I'm having friends over Sunday, I will start freaking out on Tuesday about all of the things I need to do on Saturday. I get ahead of myself and start to panic, thinking that I'm falling behind because I haven't done the final run of the vacuum yet. My mother and two of my sisters are the same way.
My father is much better at staying in the present. When my mom starts stressing on December 15 about everything she needs to do on Christmas Eve, he says "Relax - it will all get done." This doesn't mean that he thinks it's magically going to happen; it means that after 37 years he knows how my mother thinks and knows that she needs to be reminded to stay in the present every once in a while.
" I have offered to get a cleaning service or a part-time nanny to help her" - yes, he could mean that he offered to hire someone to help her with "her" household duties. But he could also mean that he offered to hire someone because then she would know that those tasks were assigned and being taken care of on a regular basis and that she wouldn't need to keep them in her running to-do list anymore.
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I come from a family where the women are all Planners - it's just what we do. We need to have a Plan to function, this Plan has about 837 steps and spans 15 days into the future. If I'm having friends over Sunday, I will start freaking out on Tuesday about all of the things I need to do on Saturday. I get ahead of myself and start to panic, thinking that I'm falling behind because I haven't done the final run of the vacuum yet. My mother and two of my sisters are the same way.
My father is much better at staying in the present. When my mom starts stressing on December 15 about everything she needs to do on Christmas Eve, he says "Relax - it will all get done." This doesn't mean that he thinks it's magically going to happen; it means that after 37 years he knows how my mother thinks and knows that she needs to be reminded to stay in the present every once in a while.
" I have offered to get a cleaning service or a part-time nanny to help her" - yes, he could mean that he offered to hire someone to help her with "her" household duties. But he could also mean that he offered to hire someone because then she would know that those tasks were assigned and being taken care of on a regular basis and that she wouldn't need to keep them in her running to-do list anymore.