November is December on steroids

With less than a week left of October, I’m putting it out there: I hate November. It has become the new December, where life’s usual frenzied pace is dialled up a whole new notch to helter skelter on steroids.

November is the month where weariness from nearly a year’s worth of the day job collides head on with the kids’ malaise over school, a flurry of school break-up concerts and award ceremonies and a disturbing increasing in the number of work-related Christmas parties because everybody thinks December is too busy!

What concerns me is that I don’t think our family has much of a margin to go any faster. We’re already living at break-neck speed. Last week, hubby and I had to arrange a drive-by near the kids’ high school so he could spring me $40 because I didn’t have time to divert to an ATM. We literally slowed as we drove past each other and did a “boyz-in-the-hood” type exchange out our windows. All that was missing was my hoodie and doof-doof.

Mothers seem to feel this early onset of the silly season more than fathers. Perhaps because we’re at the coalface of the school notes about classroom parties and end-of-year drama performances, while also negotiating with the various family off-shoots about whose turn it is to host Christmas and – as in the case of our blended-family – who will have the kids and when. The co-ordination needs its own gant chart and spreadsheet.  Heck, it needs its own project office!

Meanwhile, most of the men I know are browsing circa 1970 magazines to see which style of facial hair they’ll be sprouting for Movember. While I applaud the fact proceeds go towards research for prostate cancer and depression – and I’ll be sponsoring friends and family this year – I can’t help but think husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are the only ones with sufficient time and headspace to consider fundraising at this time of year.

Perhaps I’ll start my own charity, Moanvember, and ask people to donate to send worn-out working mothers on a month-long holiday to a tropical paradise.  You can all sponsor my under-arm growth because, heavens knows, there’s no time to take care of that right now!