Burnt

I cannot believe it's the end of May. For the past 3 weeks, I've been in a full sprint with teaching, creating content, and editing, all while juggling distance learning for Maddy and Teddy. Despite the end in sight for this madness (last week of school and I only have a few more days of training), I'm exhausted. Knowing that I still have a mountain of work to complete doesn't make this a good exhaustion.

Which led to Grey finding me outside in the backyard this morning, staring at these guys.

Bit of a back story, these doves moved into the back patio last summer and began building a nest. Given all the information on the internet about how difficult it is to host doves, we tried being quiet the first couple of days so that they could build their nest.

This also meant trying to keep Jaxson and Daisy inside. Given what I've previously written about Daisy, one can begin to imagine how well that one went over.

Over the next few days, despite me being very nice, I learned what crappy guests doves are. Though supposedly loving parents, they are terrible nest builders and frequently left debris scattered all over the backyard. Additionally, though I was trying to give them space, they didn't reciprocate and kept invading mine. The final straw was discovering Daisy had gotten outside and was in full hunting mode, to which the doves responded by flying to the ground within inches of her face. What should have been a blood-bath was actually her pouncing on the bird only to decide that clocking it over the head was more fun. I figured after that incident the doves would be long gone.

They were back the next morning, waking up the house.

The rest of the summer was spent either cleaning up after these birds or trying to get them to relocate. But the more we tried to discourage them, the more they insisted on returning. My kids beat their birthday pinata in front of this pair, which only seemed to amuse them. The cats regularly batted them around, only to have them show up with more material for their failed nest. And they started landing close to me, something that just left me confused. By autumn, they were gone, only having managed to put together a few twigs and (thankfully) no eggs, but it left me wondering how this species was successful given this pair's propensity to ignore danger, if not openly mock it.

So finding these two today, with both cats looking up at them with expressions of disinterest (been there, done that), all I could do was sit down and stare in defeat. And reflect how this situation mirrored so much of what was happening in my life at the moment.

To be clear, though I'm insanely busy, I am excited about the work I'm doing. There's a lot going on that is having a positive impact and I'm well aware that I'm the driving force. But part of being that driving force is also realizing that being nice doesn't get me anywhere other than frustrated and exhausted. All of which is second nature to me. What's not second-nature is saying "No" or "Not now" as I feel guilt for not doing better. And yet when I do, suddenly there's a level of respect I'm given that was previously missing. Like the doves, my superiors seem to show more interest when I'm not breaking myself.

I don't have any clue what I'm going to do about the doves. Other than to record Jaxson and Daisy interact with them for anyone who wants to scream at me about how cats are destroying the local bird population (I swear they all are scheming against me). But I do know what I have to do, which is figure out how to structure in a break after I'm done teaching next week. Otherwise, I won't be able to make my deadlines as I'll be burnt to a crisp.