Marriage is amazing. My husband and I have been together a little more than 11 years, married for six, and there are a lot of days when we do everything together all in fluid motions. It's like a ballet of housework and yard work and parenting. Or we hardly see one another and I'm stuck dancing alone through the daily grind. Or I punk out entirely and don't go do things on my own because I'm a giant chickenshit and want to phone a friend in the game of Life, and he's the one I call. What do you mean I'm an adult? Psh.
June 21, 2008: Oh hey, we got hitched.
Since we are individuals and, despite my sometimes neurotic tendencies, I like being an individual, there are some things I don't share with my husband, at least not always in their entirety. Not Earth shattering "I'm hiding bodies in the woods" kinds of secrets, but little tricks of the momming trade that help me get through the money/emotionally overwhelmed/too much going on struggle that I deal with constantly.
Like the fact I haven't used laundry detergent in any of the wash loads for three days. I wash a lot of laundry. Instead I've been tearing through the box of baking soda that I also use for cookies and on occasion in the kids' bath. Our clothes smell like cotton and the washer doesn't stink. I think that counts as a win. Unless he reads this, he's not going to have a clue!
My thoughts this evening have gone something like, "Jesus wouldn't really care too much if my kids went to church stinky tomorrow, right?" "Honestly, the son of God didn't have running water, so I'm sure he didn't always smell fresh as a daisy." "Clean hair is really overrated." "I could just put perfume on them. They'd feel super special."
Between some late nights I've had, Charlie having a cough and sinus issues, the Boy sneezing and pinching or pulling something in his neck and back this morning and now me with something funky happening with my left eye, I'm just not really in the mood to deal with a bath time fight.
I don't know if I could stand for them to not bathe, though. And a thorough wash up isn't going to cut it because my kids use their hair as napkins - I think there are tomato seeds, ice cream and chocolate milk in Charlotte's hair right now.
I'm going to do this. Just like two years ago when I was, for all intents and purposes, scary close to a nervous breakdown, this needs to be done.
A mommy friend posted the link to the blog "White House Black Shutters" on Facebook and I read the post and went "Huh. Interesting." I was in between yelling at one kid and pleading with another when I read the entry. Bad behavior ran amuck today. I let them eat the remaining 18 or so packs of fruit snacks from a box we bought Monday and promised to wake Charlie up if she fell asleep in the chair watching TV and then promised I was going to get my ass pre-birthday drunk because, damn it, I deserve all those drinks.
So. Today royally sucked.
And then, mid-tantrum (mine, not theirs), I looked at the living room, glanced at the front room and hit the roof when I looked at the kitchen counters.
Out came the notebook and pen:
Pen, meet notebook ... and glass and laptop.
And a list was born because, let's face it, my life is never organized enough and when I don't have a list everything is chaotic. My life. My kids. My house. My brain. Hell, even my hair doesn't know what to do when I let go and stop making lists.
Here's the list. It's time for my first ever #40bagsin40days challenge. The clutter will be overcome. I have my list. I won't lose my ambition. I may clean and declutter under the influence once in a while because this is Lent and God himself knows I won't give up my alcohol. I'll give up the mess and the chaos, but leave your holy hands off my wine.
Now that I've started I should forewarn my loved ones. It's happening. Boy, I'm sorry. I said I would hold onto your jeans from college and right after college because you were going to use our gym membership and fit into them again ... but you don't use our membership. You ran up and down the two flights of stairs in our house tonight and were thoroughly winded. We'll work on that. But first, I'm tired of cleaning around that box in the closet. The box I moved here last fall. The box I moved around in the closet at the old house. It's time to let it go.
Really, just ...
College Me, I know how much you LOVE some of those ratty T-shirts you just can't seem to part with. You're going to try for real this time. An honest to goodness try, Past Me. You may even get as far as putting them in a bag this time instead of just piling them up and eventually moving them to a different drawer. But it's OK to let them go. Really. I promise.
Mommy Me ... no we aren't getting rid of the baby clothes yet so you can stop that train right here.
I did start this challenge today and that's the biggest step. That's one thing all the parts of me can be certain of. I made that list and I looked at my house and cried because I'm tired - but more than the exhaustion of trying to keep up, staying up too late to get it all done and the being mentally worn out because of not being able to be Super Mom (we've talked about how much I am NOT her in the past), I'm tired of using those excuses to not fold up the blankets the kids have thrown on the floor again. I'm kind of tired of telling myself I'll get to something later and later coming MONTHS later. That's bullshit and I'm only psychologically bringing myself closer to another round of "Am I crazy or is that really a ghost standing in my living room." (Answer: It's usually a ghost. I'm very much not crazy in the traditional sense.)
Let me give you a glimpse into what I've been looking at for weeks, what's been eating away at the very center of my soul. Some of my friends would believe this is a totally normal condition or state for my home to be in, but in my head it's not. It can't be and I won't let it be.
Here, your glimpse:
No office yet, so this is a dinner table/office/desk/bill-pay area. *barf*
Holy fuck. To a lot of people this isn't bad. But remember it's only one small counter top in the kitchen. I had four other areas that were (to me) just as cluttered. This picture gives me anxiety.
This one, however, makes me calm:
So.Much.Better.
The pile on the left is my husband's pile of random shit he needs to go through and then move the hell off my counter. The pile on the right is actually the first part of a manuscript I'm editing, a stack of CDs I need to put in the car and Tara Sivec's "Watch Over Me," which I just started reading the other night. Tomorrow, that pile will disappear and travel with me to my mom and dad's very organized house where I will once again feel at peace with my shattered soul (because I'm not Super Mom).
I posted all my before and after photos from today on my Facebook page (personal, I don't have one associated with the blog ... but if there's demand for one, I'd do it) and between the first set of photos and the second, my attitude changed right along with the amount of shit cluttering my space. There's something truly uplifting about getting rid of things I don't need. At this point it's just been getting rid of recyclables and trash items that built up and took over my counters. In the next 39 days, I'll be giving bags of clothes (there's already one ready to go) and quite possibly toys to the Rescue Mission. Stuff will be taken to church (yeah, despite my cursing and imbibing I do in fact attend a real church) for the annual rummage sale. I'll be organizing this house like I've been wanting to since we decided to move here.
Honestly, I may even break my new "no credit card unless for gas" rule in order to really get a handle on things like the girls' play area(s) and the crafty/fabric stuff.
Now, since I already made this kitchen look gawd damn amazing, I'm just going to go put my feet up, drink this wine and celebrate the beginning of Lent and ... yay Jesus!
You know you want to say it, too. Go on. Say it. Yay Jesus!
If it had been a telemarketer, I likely would have let loose some naughty words. But when the telephone rings at 7:30 a.m. and it's the guy who's going to come fix your chimney?
Here, let me wipe the sleep out of my eyes and refrain from yawning while I verbally kiss the ground beneath your feet.
And I totally would have if it weren't for the fact he then said, "And you might want to bump the heat up and let it run for a while, 'cause the guys are gonna have to shut the furnace down."
Third week into the new year and I'm already falling behind on this writing thing. What is your problem, Miranda!?
Overload. Complete and total overload.
It really started back before Thanksgiving with a pie fundraiser I helped with at our church, and then rolled right into Christmas and trying to settle into 2014 without resolutions I knew I wouldn't keep. Oh, and I tied into some hardcore menu planning and budgeting strategy - things I have only mildly attempted in the past.
All of that combined with the thought and energy that went into my last post kind of left me empty. And the weather has been shitty so I haven't done anything extraordinary with the kids, who are usually the fodder for this space on the Interwebs.
There are a lot of things I didn't do before packing up and moving.
That giant box of old papers I wanted to go through? Sitting in the front room.
Clothes that should have been sorted and sent to the Rescue Mission? Scattered throughout three rooms.
Old computer monitors/printers/cables I wanted him to find new homes for? Currently surrounding me in the basement office area.
The Popular Science mags I begged him to sort and toss 16 months ago? Still in the same box they sat in at the other house, only now at this house. And still pissing me off.
The filing cabinet that holds next to no important papers because they're all in the box upstairs in the front room? Still haven't sorted through the junk we're keeping in there.
Sometimes, as a homeowner, you just feel like an idiot.
I think that's actually part of the deed process - you need to sign over your rights to common sense and logic until you've lived at the deeded property for a while.
Heating, cooling, what light switch goes with which outlet, etc. These things can leave you in a daze of new homeowner WTFs.
For instance, today I present to you a lesson in heating your home.
Please don't say call Poison Control. Please don't say call Poison Control.
Shit. I knew someone would suggest it. Oh well. She hasn't thrown up and she told me she didn't swallow any. Not to mention, I'm fairly certain Charlie learned a valuable lesson here: soap doesn't taste as good as it smells.
We've been living in the new house for a little more than a week and it's been an adjustment. The kids have been fine going from sharing a room to having their separate corners to fight from. My husband has been fine coming back to the home he spent his adolescence in. I'm the one still trying to adjust, despite calling this house home.
It's me. It's always me.
But this time I know what's holding me back and it's the clutter.
Trying to stay organized while gradually moving into one house and out of another while also trying to keep the house we're moving out of in some sort of livable fashion and the new house from melting into a puddle of chaos is challenging.
You follow that? We're talking full-on shaking with frustration over everything kind of challenge over here in Naked Baby Land.
But maybe that frustration is a sign of making headway? Or I'm just an asshole who wants everyone to check my list before they touch/move/breathe on anything in their personal space.
I've been kind of secretive about plans to move. Or at least, after some careful thought and a strategically made Facebook post, that's the way it may appear to some.
Truthfully, I just haven't turned to social media with all my joy/panic moments over the decision because we (Boy Wonder and I) never sat down and did a serious house hunt.
But here it is — after almost five years in this house, we're moving on. It's happening slowly, because if I make a big move and do it too quickly I'll fall apart, and I can't afford to do that all over again. Moving into our current home was almost too much to bear and the clutter utterly consumed me. A lot of days it still does, but that's primarily because we don't have enough space for the amount of things we have. I've been making great strides to cut back on the material things here that are just pure crap we don't need to hold onto, but I can only do so much when we only get 24 hours each day to accomplish what's on my list. And that list is long.
Did you know there's something called referring spam? I don't understand the whole of it, but from my experience so far it makes it look like you have a ton of pageviews when really NO ONE is looking at it. My ego burst when I realized that, no, it's very unlikely that so many people in Russia and Germany would give a shit what I'm writing about and all these "pageviews" I was suddenly getting were probably due to this random website that kept showing up as a traffic source.
Fuck you referring spam. Instead of 600-plus pageviews, I probably have something closer to like 300. I'm guessing. I hope it's more than that, but truly have no idea because there are rarely comments and I have a grand total of three public followers.
I'm done letting something as ridiculous as pageviews get me down, because that's exactly what happened. Considering my livelihood once came from a byline, I have a tendency to thrive on and feed off of the knowledge someone is reading what I write.
Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I feel better.
I took a break — from here, from the gym, from feeling like a useful member of society.
In all honesty, I needed it. The morning after my last entry, I packed the kids in the car and took off for my parents house about two hours away. We only stayed a couple days, but it was enough to make me realize things weren't going as planned around here. I was truly beginning to feel overwhelmed again. If you've been keeping up with me and my stories, you know this feeling started a while ago and I've been trying to get back on track. Bad weather and bad attitudes (mine and Josie's, which has likely been caused by mine) have been blamed.
So has the furniture, the dog, the car, the money ... You get the picture.
I decided earlier this week to nip it in the bud. We've been talking about what we need to do to fix the house up and potentially sell it and that has put me in full on "show ready" homeowner mode. I sent an unused television stand home with my parents on a recent visit and then took the baker's rack down — we used it to hold bath towels and toiletries in the bathroom — and repurposed a basket already in the bathroom for the newly homeless towels.
