In less than a week, our brand new air conditioner and heat pump will be repaired. Handy that it will be repaired Friday, four days after today: the coldest day of the season. Even the air conditioning company recognized the irony; they’re splitting the cost of labor on the installation of the new and under-warranty part.

In less than a month, we’ll know exactly when we’ll be moving. I think, too, that we’ll know by then whether my mother has achieved remission of her cancer. (I have already decided that she will in fact achieve remission.)

In less than two months, our house will be up for sale. And our cars. We’ll squeeze in visits to family in the Midwest and New England. We’ll have a garage sale. We’ll get physicals, dental appointments, and other things like that out of the way. I’ll make a short trip to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday. My husband will take a week-long trip to Asia for work. We’ll buy things that we know will be less expensive here than there. A moving company will come to pack most of our things and ship them off.

In less than three months, my husband will start his new job. Our children will start their week in a new school. And I’ll be figuring out what to make for dinner… while unpacking.

It’s a little dizzying. For the first time, I had a hard time sitting down to read. I simply could not focus on the words on the page. There’s just so much to do that can’t yet be started, thanks to corporate procedures.

It’s a little maddening.

So, I planned the heck out of our daughter’s seventh birthday party. (She turns seven tomorrow.) She asked yesterday, “what will we do for my party?” (She’s never asked for a big party before.) We narrowed her party down to five girls from school, who, with our daughter and her younger brother, will sit down a week from Sunday to paint some pottery and eat some cake. I made some invitations yesterday and will deliver them tomorrow, and got some cute erasers and pencils to hand out to all her classmates in honor of her actual birthday. (She doesn’t want anybody to sing to her… must remember to tell her teacher that…. She also reminded me to get her little brother a little something, “just so he doesn’t feel left out on my birthday.” She’s a good girl.) I just need to ask her whether she wants a garden fairy or mermaid cake…

Things are a little less maddening when I can focus on the children.

A little.