Well I was going to get serious about my marathon training this week, I really was I swear, but then something happened to throw a bit of a monkey wrench in those most earnest of plans. And it's called, I sprained my ankle. As in twisted the darn thing while I was skipping, skipping down the street with all my children by my side. It hurt in the "I'm going to have to yell out a jumbled yet still decipherable stream of profanity right about now" kind of way.
"Mom, don't you mean, 'FUDGE'.......?", Maija asked. Ummmm, sorry honey, but no I don't. And I didn't, because it hurt way more than fudge. Fudge would have never sufficed in that moment of dreadful ligament tearing.
Thankfully I've had tons of help over the last few days and have been able to R.I.C.E it (rest, ice, compress and elevate) but it's been a real eye opener as to how much I take for granted in the ordinary routine of daily life, and how hard it is to not be able to complete simple every day tasks let alone week one of marathon training. The guide I'm following is Hal Higdon's Novice 2 which is 18 weeks long, so luckily I have until March 27th (at the VERY latest) to heal this cranky ankle.
Unfortunately the rest of my life can't wait until March. I emerged from the mom cave this morning and limped through the ruins of our once seemingly tidy house. The mess is everywhere.
Where did these juice boxes even come from? Our kids rarely drink the stuff....
The kitchen is reaching the breaking point. Why oh why is there a box of baking soda on more than one counter? Hmmmm?
Here's the thing: Our house gets messy pretty much everyday. As in really really messy. The amount of clutter that can accumulate when there are 10 people under one roof is impressive. I mean just run the numbers, breakfast dishes for 10? Remember the clean kitchen you saw last night after everyone was in bed? One breakfast around here and you can kiss that clean room goodbye. As soon as you get one thing organized there is another area bursting at the seams. Which is fine, I'm used to it by now and I'm even sort of lazy about it if we're going to be honest here. There are plenty of times when the kitchen looks like this and I ignore it for a while and it doesn't bother me. I'm learning to accept that there won't be enough of me to go around if I drive myself crazy trying to have the perfect everything all the time. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a clean kitchen than a messy one, but I'm learning to accept that maybe my kitchen will never really be clean, certainly not for any extended period of time anyways, and there are countless other areas that need my attention right now.
And I'm not just talking about the living room, although it does seem to have fallen by the wayside as well, and what's really infuriating about all of this is that I can't do anything about it even though today I actually want to. Sure, some days the house looks like this and it doesn't bother me and so I just decide "hey, what the heck, who cares anyways?", but today I care. And I want to blast some music and get at least 20 minutes in of the frenzied speedy quick power cleaning I am famous for, but I can't and it is driving me INSANE.
Plus, it has come to my attention that we simply have too much stuff. Yep, WAY too much stuff around here. I can feel a fairly substantial Goodwill run coming up in the near future. Just as soon as I can hobble well enough to load up the van with the boxes of stuff we no longer need to share our home with. How many toys is too many? If you're running out of places to put them, buying yet another basket to stow them in, or realizing that you can no longer vacuum or even see your rugs, I'd say that falls in the too many category, don't you?
Oscar spent a decent amount of time with me yesterday spelling out names and counting letters. Interestingly enough, most of our kids have 5 letter names, pretty cool especially to a three year old.
And since I felt pretty helpless about getting anything accomplished today, I tackled the one thing I knew I'd be able to get done fairly easily and so we now have three clean kids in a not so clean house, but at least I can say I did something today.
We've been seeing a lot of Saoirse lately, huh? I really am going to make more of an effort to showcase all the kids because I don't want you to think that I'm in any way playing favorites. This blog is but a sliver, a sliver of our life, there is so much more that goes on here than just this, but I do want to get better at showing more of it.
And while I have a long list of reasons and excuses (if you think photographing a toddler is hard, try shooting a camera shy teenager) for why I haven't shown more of the older kids, the most obvious being that I could never in a million years show you pictures of them in the bathtub, I think what it really boils down to is privacy. I could be wrong, and I'm sure I'll mull it over and come back to redefine it again and again, but this idea has sort of been floating around in my head the last few days. In my mind, the older kids want and deserve a certain level of privacy, they don't want the details of their lives broadcast over the Internet, they're old enough now to have a say in it, to have secrets, and not the bad kind of secrets but stuff that is just theirs. Oh geez, that makes me tear up a little bit, the fact that these kids are moving into the less transparent stage of development. They have been for a while now, I'm just always in denial about these things.
Why can't life stay as simple as bath time?
The twins are at school right now, the baby is napping and I have a date with the couch and an ice pack. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery, oh and a cleaning fairy wouldn't hurt either.....just sayin'.
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