This summer has been a whirlwind. I have been here, there, and everywhere, which has resulted in me living life on the surface. Now that I'm back from my travels, I'm oscillating between catching up/putting out fires/hurrying here or there and being so exhausted that I have to go to bed early, wake up later and take a nap. Which basically means I have not done much useful in the last month and a half, though I've made some great memories that I wouldn't trade. So I guess that is good.
But anyways, here I sit. It is Sunday evening. I got the kids out the door at 5:30 this morning to take Michael to the airport for his conference in San Diego. Which means I did Sunday all by myself today, plus having kids that woke up at 5:30. It didn't go badly, at least probably not as badly as it should have, which makes it feel like it went pretty well. But I am exhausted. I tried so hard today to be a good mom. I wanted to make my kids a delicious breakfast. I wanted to have a happy morning and be cheerful together. I wanted to not get frustrated and yell. But I'm sorry to say that despite my intentions, none of those things happened. It was a hard day. Although somehow easier to know there was no help to be found and get through than to have unmet expectations of help I was hoping to receive. That sounds harsh, but it's how I felt today.
At any rate, here I sit. The house is a disaster. Like a literal disaster. Our kitchen in "in the process of being remodeled" except the problem is that it's being remodeled by us, and we have done pretty much almost nothing on it in a couple of weeks. So instead, it sits an unusable, unmoppable, gigantic mess to add to the rest of the gigantic mess of our house. I've had tears running down my face for the last hour and I can't tell if it's sheer exhaustion or me feeling like I did a bad job today or my shame for eating most of the peanut butter banana cream pie that used to be in my fridge or the fact that I pretty much lost it at bed time when I discovered that Calvin and Sophie had dumped hamster food for the 100th time all over their bedroom floor, this time with an added bonus of a bottle of water splashed around the room. It's probably all of it combined. I don't know.
I guess the point is, I feel crummy. And it mostly feels crummy because even if I did jump up this minute and clean every inch of this house and read some uplifting scriptures and baked 100 loaves of delicious homemade bread and fed the poor and made that delicious pancake breakfast I meant to do this morning, nothing would really change. I would still sit here tomorrow night frustrated that my house is once again a mess, and once again I hollered at my kids for something, and once again I ate a bunch of junk to compensate for not having had a good day. It feels crummy because I can't really imagine what the solution could be. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
I guess I should wrap up with some good parts of the day, just so I'm not a total downer. Hannah napped early, and the kids watched Milo and Otis and then played well, which meant I got a 2 hour nap this morning. I spent some extra time making sure my kids felt like they looked nice and that their mother was willing to help them get ready. I lent Sophie a necklace and put pink sparkle dust all over her and fixed Ryan's favorite bowtie and helped Calvin get ready when he was too sleepy after his nap. And instead of rolling my eyes and hollering at Calvin to buckle up after he bonked his head on the roof of the car when we were already late, I climbed back there to kiss and hug him and buckle him in and scold the car. These meant we were 15 minutes late to church, but I still feel like it was a good call. I had a fun and snarky texting session with my parents, sister and brother in law that made me forget my frustrations and have a good laugh. Hannah happily bopped around the room in primary while I taught singing time. I liked my haircut today with my new headband in it. I played with Hannah before bed, just the two of us singing songs and laughing on Ryan's bed. I got a phone call from Michael that cheered me up.
So, there were some great parts of today, too. I just am feeling down in the dumps tonight. But I suppose it's time to square my shoulders and get to work around here and see if I can change my destiny tomorrow :)
