Do you like what I’ve done with the place? Why yes that is a Santa figurine on the far left. It’s only the end of April, after all.
Holy dark week on the blog, Batman.
Is it crazy that my life is so finely calibrated that any extra thing is enough to derail an entire month? I’ll be paying for this past week, for example, until well into June.
We’ll start with an incredibly fun Jack and Jill shower I helped throw for my sister-in-law last Thursday. I was happy to do it. It was a great night. It wasn’t even that much work in the grand scheme of things. But there was a couple hours of running around and buying supplies, an afternoon of food prep, the actual party itself and then the recovery the next morning. (It went late, I needed aspirin.)
That rolled us right into a four-day Easter weekend. Yay! Long weekend! I don’t have to go to work! What’s that? I’m self-employed and am already barely scraping by with the two-hours a day of childcare I can barely even afford? Well, shit. That’s okay, though, I’ll just work over the weekend; find the time between the grocery shopping, laundry, Easter Bunny duties, t-ball practice, insane amounts of house work and an entire day spent with various off shoots of extended family. It’ll be all good. What’s that? My husband has the same brilliant idea? Crap.
I really just need to accept that weekends are for family and housework and stop pretending I’m going to get anything else done ever.
Monday started with a bang when Ed left to go to work and I realized that it was a school holiday but not a work holiday for most people … and thus the assignment that I thought about as being due “after the weekend,” was actually due that morning. The TV has serious babysitting limitations, by the way. Which cable package will moderate fights, make snacks and wipe little poopy bums? Because I WILL ORDER IT.
Tuesday featured a sick toddler who came downstairs and promptly lay down on the couch with a blanket rather than eating breakfast. She perked up as soon as I turned on the laptop and proceeded to climb into my lap all morning to “help me with the buttons.” I had a doctor’s appointment Wednesday afternoon and then Thursday morning I had to report for freaking jury duty. (The case was settled out of court that morning, thank goodness. So I’ve banked my civic duty for another three years.) By last night, though, the chest cold I’ve been fighting and the late night I’d had getting a post to a client had totally caught up and I lay down at kiddie bedtime and didn’t get up until this morning.
I feel like a million bucks, the small mountain of used tissue to my left notwithstanding. But now I need to tackle the piles of clutter, toys and “random but likely important so I have to look at each piece carefully” papers that are heaped on every surface of this house. I should also probably clean the fridge and wash the floors because tomorrow Colum is receiving his First Communion and we are doubling up the celebration to include his upcoming 8th birthday and will have a houseful of people. And I suppose people will want to use the bathrooms, so I’d better do those too.
There’s a list of things I urgently wanted/needed to get done, like, two weeks ago that I just haven’t been able to get to. And I don’t even know what I’ve been doing, really, except that it takes up all my time.
Is this normal? Is this just the way it is when you have young children? Because, to tell you the truth, I see you guys baking and gardening and plowing through novels and keeping up on all the tv programs and still your kids are fed and bathed and your homes are cleaned and you’re holding down jobs and I’d probably feel like a failure if I had time to think about it.
I’m not talking about some Pinterest-worthy level of perfection. I know that’s not reality for most people. I just mean basically being able to hold it all together and function on some respectable humane level.
Because I’m looking around this house now, and this shit is not held together. Not even close.
14 replies on “Am I the only one losing it here?”
Just ’cause I post a food photo taken on the only 8 square inches of clean counter left doesn’t mean that there’s a hurricane force mess in my house. I wore the same pants three days running ’cause it was easier than opening my drawers, I put together left overs for a week. Last night we had sandwiches for dinner. I moved the stack of studying material off of the dining room table into three shopping bags on the floor. It’s all about perspective. Everyone in my home is healthy, there’s food on the table, clothes in the drawers and hugs and kisses abound. In the end the hugs and kisses count most.
This really does make me feel better — especially the shopping bags full of studying material ;) But health, food and kisses; I need to remember that.
I love this post, not because I’m glad you’re feeling stressed obviously, but because it helps me and at least a dozen (thousand) other moms feel totally normal. The cat fur dust bunnies are starting to swirl around my ankles as I walk through my house, my ONLY child (Jesus, how do you moms of more than one do it?) told me this morning that she’s wearing underwear 2 sizes too small because that’s all that’s left in her drawer due to undone laundry, and I washed my hair yesterday for the first time in a week (judge as you see fit, I was a little grossed out myself, to be honest.) Social media lies, Rebecca – nobody has their shit together as much as their pics and posts want to make you believe they do. Your kids won’t remember clean toilets, so keep making them your priority. Hope your weekend festivities go well. : )
See, I’m so far gone I put YOUR name instead of mine in that last response, my apologies!
Definitely not alone. My house falls apart on a regular basis. I keep reminding myself that everyone is fed and clothed (though sometimes the clothes go through visual inspection and sniff tests after being pulled out of the hamper) and happy.
Perfect example: I spent Good Friday tidying up (folding the four baskets of laundry that had been sitting for two weeks, picking up the toys, vaccuming. That’s it. Tidying) and my oldest came in and exclaimed “Mommy, the house is so CLEAN!” My husband proclaimed an Easter miracle.
I feel I have set their expectations sufficiently low. :)
Setting the bar low is probably the number one gift you can give to yourself as a parent. Well played.
Wow. You are a mess. My life is perfect. Why, wasn’t I just bragging to you that I was, one day, going to be SO rich, I could buy my entire family Beaver Tails at the Zoo, and not worry how it would cut into our grocery money? I am also not going to have to whisper JUST WATERS when we class it up, and all go to Swiss Chalet. Yes, that was the very same day my children went home ahead of me, and I sat in the park for an extra hour, alone, because I couldn’t face going home to clean my house. I am so pulled together, that instead of cleaning the ENTIRE house which I have put off cleaning all week, anticipating a big clean for Fletcher’s party tomorrow, I am going to eat poutine and have a nap. Why, you ask? Because I LOVE baking birthday cakes at midnight, and crying. It’s kind of my thing.
Why do I see a midnight cake-baking, cry-fest PARTY in my very near future?! Just kidding, Imma buy our cake.
Our house is usually a mess. The only two things that help keep it somewhat under control is that (a) all four of us are out of the house for at least 50 hours per week, so that cuts down in the available time to make mess and (b) my husband is a bit of a neat freak.
I bake (sometimes) and garden and watch TV, but I do that with the mess swarming around me.
When I do get the motivation to clean up though, I don’t strive for perfection. I usually pick a target (e.g. The bathroom counter, the stack of magazines, the junk pile on the dining room table) and spend 15 minutes tackling that. Doing everything would be impossible.
Totally sending this to my Mom who thinks everything should be perfect all the time. She’s always complaining about my sis (who just went through cancer treatment, has a store and juggles a million things like the rest of us) that her basement is a mess or her Tupperware drawer is out of hand… *sigh*
I never sit on my ass and watch TV (except Friday and Saturday maybe) I am at my desk after the kids go to bed Sun-Thursday between loads of laundry and luckily getting in a workout once in a while. My house is relatively tidy but only because that’s how I procrastinate… what? Need to do my taxes? Damn my sock draw needs a good cleaning. Maybe I should sew that button on that’s been missing on the kids coat for over a month. Oooh too late for taxes now! Better get on to that logo design!
I just ask people call before coming over. I get more cleaning done in the half hour before someone *drops by* than I have all month. (Unless my Mom is coming to visit then I clean for hours cause she is Judgy McJudgypants and I *wish* I didn’t care). Guess who’s coming on Friday? #fark
Hang in there, clearly you are not alone. (and a big hug for you!)
Rebecca, I know I shouldn’t even open the floodgates on this one, or I may not be able to keep this sensibly short, but I want you to know how much your posts mean to me. I also REALLY don’t have it together. And I spend a lot of time thinking everyone else has it more together than I do, and feeling bad about myself. I also work from home, I have an eight month old and a two year old, and everything you describe in your post is SO my life right now, (except that I have double duty diapers still) including I am also sick right now!! My eight month old still has yet to sleep through the night even once, I also work and cry at three in the morning alternated by trips up to the nursery to try to rock the baby to sleep and end up putting him in his bouncer at some ungodly hour so I can meet a deadline, and then finally fall asleep with the baby in our bed because I don’t have the energy to follow the baby books and “sleep train.” I constantly lament that I can’t just spend good quality time with my kids without always saying, “just wait a second.” It means so much to me that we can talk about these things instead of pretending to be happy mommies always bearing the burden in silence. You are amazing for doing all the things you do, and then finding the time to write about them too! And you have three kids! You rock, and don’t ever forget it!!!
Thank you for making me feel less alone in the chaos! :)
Oh my goodness. Thank you. I have been there. So many of us have been there. You’re still in the thick of it right now, but it does get better … and then worse again, but eventually it will stay better. (I have to believe it does!)
I see your Santa figurine and I raise you a 36″ Christmas tree that is STILL set up in our family room downstairs.
As always, you have described my life with amazing accuracy. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows around here either. (I also have a chronic “stacks of very important papers” problem…among other things.) Thank you for writing about this. I think that it is important to get the truth out there….
I bow to your April Christmas tree. You are the queen.