I am overwhelmed with the things I must accomplish this week and I am just chipping away at the surface. Which causes me to freeze and just end up curled in my bed watching cat videos on Instagram. I have so many things to pack and dismantle. My workstation is one of those that I dread dismantling because it’s just complicated. Too many wires and I must remember which goes where.

I have to attend a stockholders meeting of an F&B company tomorrow so I really can’t pack up my decent clothes yet. And I have to dismantle my bed so I can have the joints welded to lessen the creaking. I only had one side of it welded and I completely forgot to have the other side done. Now I am running out of time to do that other half.

I am running out of time for everything.

I’m meeting friends on Fri for a last drink here in the wine bar/craft beer place near my apartment. They were surprised that it’s already time for me to leave Quezon City. “It’s that soon?! Time flies by so fast!” We were just talking about this move in theory a year ago and now it has become a reality.

I’m also worrying about how I will transport my cats without them freaking out so much. The farthest they’ve been away from the house was when I brought them to PAWS to have them spayed. That was just a 30-minute car ride. On Tuesday it will be at least 2 hours (because we’re leaving at 9 am so traffic may be heavy) and I hope they won’t get traumatized by this. A vet high school classmate of mine told me to buy Feliway (pheromones) spray online to calm them down. The problem was I was too preoccupied with my prep for my Singapore trip and conferences a few weeks ago and I was so busy while I was there so I totally forgot to place my order. Local orders of Feliway need 10 days lead time because it’s on a pre-order basis. If I buy from overseas vendors, the items would arrive by 18 May, which is too late.

So I will just grin and bear my cats hisses and growling and hope that they won’t try to escape.

My classmate-vet told me to cover the cat carrier with towels to lessen stimulation from the outside environment. That’s one of the reasons why my cats freak out when I bring them to the vet—they get stimulated too much with the strange environment and the smells. My cats have become too sheltered that they simply refuse to explore the world outside, which is good in a way because we live right along a busy street and it will totally break me if they get run over by cars.

I’ve got too many things on my mind (work is also killing me) that I simply do not have enough headspace for other things. Blogging about this somehow helps me calm down as I am able to write down the things I must do in a logical manner. Without writing them down, all the things that I must do get jumbled in my head and leave me overwhelmed, causing me high levels of anxiety, which leads me to freeze.

My housemaid can only do so much since she’s pregnant but she’s trying to be useful. My kids packed their stuff but I really can’t rely on them much on other things like timing the defrosting of the fridge, disconnecting my gas stove from the LPG tank and making sure there are no leaks. Figuring out a way how to transport my plants.

Because I am a solo parent. I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. By myself. I have no one else to turn to for help. It’s overwhelming.