Tulips and daffodils are popping out of the ground, summer plants are beginning to bud and this is a season that marks another busy time for me. I always look forward to yet dread this time of year; watching everything come out of hibernation, but knowing there is a lot for me to do.

Easter is like any other major holiday in my family, there’s a lot to coordinate and figure out. And with it also being one of my husband’s favorite times of year because it’s swap meet season, I can’t depend on him to help much. For him a swap meet is his opportunity to find car parts he didn’t know he needed.

I have to plan and shop for Easter dinner, coordinate rides for the grandmas, try to maintain our tradition of coloring Easter eggs and figure out the annual trip for my youngest and her friends to the anime convention in Seattle, which is always on Easter weekend. However, after last year I decided not to book a hotel in Seattle or hang out with them.

Adding to it is a spring-break trip the week after Easter with my husband and youngest daughter to check out a college in California. To top it all off, my oldest will be moving out of student housing into her own apartment at the end of the month. Thankfully, that will happen when all the above is said and done.

On my walk one morning, as I was quashing the feeling of a full blown panic on everything I had to do, I realized my husband and youngest daughter have very similar hobbies.

Not that my youngest is into cars or my husband is into cosplay (grown-up dress-up), but that the events for both their interests are during the same times of the year when I’m the most busy. I’m not sure if this is by design from the parties that schedule these types of things; a kind of “get out of holiday work” card, but it’s inconvenient for me.

My daughter’s seasons for cosplay conventions are early spring and early fall and my husband’s seasons for swap meets are early spring and early fall; aka the time of year when school starts, Thanksgiving needs to be planned and coordinated and Christmas doings start happening (which we all know are getting earlier and earlier for some reason).

So I can’t really depend on any significant help from them, because even though the events are maybe one or two days long, their brains are fogged by preparations and they are rendered unhelpful to me. Then once swap meet season in the fall is finished, the overtime at work kicks in for my husband (again I maintain they take a poll as to who wants to avoid the holiday frenzy). For my daughter, after wearing her costume once, she’s already determined what upgrades need to be done to that costume and what her next costume will be.

So as I finished my walk that day, I realized I needed a breakdown of exactly every minute detail of things to come. Thanks to AAA, who planned our trip to California to the last element and the Light Rail which will deliver my daughter and her friends to Seattle, I realized besides dinner, drop offs and pick ups, there was not much I actually needed to do.

However, I’m not sure if making a list really calmed me. I think a big part of my anxiety comes because the passing of major holidays brings the realization that my youngest daughter is growing up and doesn’t need me as much anymore.

The busyness keeps my mind off realizations such as that. I think I need more to do.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.