This multitasking is killing me! (Maybe literally!)

I have something to confess. Something that probably even some of my closest friends don't know about me. Perhaps my family does, but I'm not sure they even know. I am a serial multitasker. I do laundry while I make dinner. I talk on the phone while I bake cookies. I check email while I watch my soap opera and open mail. I fold laundry while I bathe my kids. I dust furniture and Swiffer the floor at the same time. I put my makeup on at stop lights. I paint my toenails while I play cards with my son. I change a diaper and put my shirt on at the same time, while talking on the phone with my mother. I beat eggs, toast toast and make pancakes simultaneously. I read books in the bathtub. I mean, God gave us two hands for a reason, right? The other day, I was opening mail, in the bathroom, while doing my business, when I thought: "What on earth am I doing?! Have I lost my mind? Can I no longer even answer the call of nature without doing something else? This has gone too far!" I know other women are like me- women who are wives and mothers, and like it or not, multitaskers. We have to be, or we would never be able to accomplish all that we do. I notice that my husband does not seem to have the same compulsion to do multiple tasks at once. Except, perhaps, for watching television and scratching himself at the same time. To be fair, he definitely multitasks at work, and he's darn good at it. However, when he hits the threshold of our home, that comes to an immediate end. For us women, that is not an option. Whether we work outside the home or not, we are expected to go 100 miles per hour doing multiple things at once all day long. And, come to think of it, often into the night. Motor on until it all gets done. The problem with this is, it becomes so engrained in us that we don't know how to relax. We don't know how to stop multitasking. We are always thinking of new ways to accomplish more- we even check our email and catch up on our reading while we're having a "relaxing" day at the spa. (Which we squeeze in between our lunch meeting and our son's baseball practice.)  We have all seen stories in the news about the rise of stress related illnesses in women. High blood pressure. Migraines. Irritable bowel syndrome. Ulcers. Diseases that for years were mostly the problem of the males of our species. I don't know about you, but this is one arena that I am not interested in equality. Stop the ride, I want to get off! I, for one, am going to start slowing down, enjoying what I'm doing without thinking about what I have to do next, and DEFINITELY not doing tasks while on the toilet! Now, I have to go, because I have laundry to fold and cookies to get out of the oven before I put the kids to bed.

GIRL POWER!