Half Full IS Half Empty

Guys.

I haven’t posted in a while, and now I’m posting twice in one day… like when I use sheer WILL POWER to stop eating sugar and then I spend one day wallowing in Little Debbie Snacks and molasses.
It’s like that.

You would not believe my day.
I need to vent it out -and I realize that the fact that I’m complaining about such trivial nonsense is just flat-out amazing. I am SO blessed to live the life I do. I’m SO SATISFIED with it. I love my life and my kids and I even love my bigger-than-ever body.

But even the guy who works his dream job has days where he’s like, “I want to pull what’s left of my hair out.”

Today, I was going to clean my house.
I woke up on my own at 6 in the morning. Everyone else was fast asleep. It was glorious.
I spent some alone time on the computer, and then I did yoga.
The yoga I do is less the “feel your abs TIGHTEN” kind of yoga and more the, “breathe in light… exhale stress” kind of yoga.  And the instructor on my video has a heavy foreign accent which I’m pretty sure makes the yoga 48% more effective. And I should also say that I like to say that I do “yo-gerr” which is more country western and proves that yoga is still effective even if you white-trash the poses out.
“Bend down, press your head to your knees… breathe…”
And there’s Alicia with her hands on her calves, all red in the face and forcing herself to RELAX DAMMIT!
*pardon the swear*

After yo-gerr, I knelt to say my prayers and was shaken -literally -out of them by a six year old girl who had barreled out of bed just SURE she had missed the bus.
“Mom! It just went by and it didn’t even STOP!”
“Lacy, your bus comes after lunch.”
“But I SAW IT!”
“Lacy. No… don’t worry about it. Go make a mother’s day card for Grammy.”

I hopped in the shower-and was wrenched therefrom by the sound of my baby screaming in pain.
“I thought she might catch the book,” my shaking daughter said to me.
Because six year olds don’t realize that four-month olds don’t play catch.

“Didn’t I tell you to make a Mother’s Day card? You need to obey!”
Tears.
Naked Mom.
Hot water running out.
Screaming baby.

Namaste.

I began cleaning the house only to be met with the meanest little six year old I’ve ever had. She was throwing down gift offerings from the four year old, doing whatever she could to make him cry, and constantly begging for attention in every negative way.

So I left the dishes stacked and the Comet sprinkled in the sink and I tended to my daughter. I wrote about that in my post below. There was soft music and candles and french braids, and I did my best to have mother perspective. And it actually WORKED. Were it not for:

I had a meeting to host at my house, and I didn’t have time for hair or make-up or even cleaning up the Comet in the sink. But oh well. I put my child first, and that was something to be proud of, wasn’t it? I wasn’t uncomfortable in my skin, and the meeting went along fine right up until my son came waltzing out of the hallway wearing a guilty face and what I swear was half a bottle of what I quickly recognized as my favorite body spray.
The fancy kind.
From Bath & Body.

Bath & Body is pretty much LUXURY line for us country folk.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
This “I’m sorry,” folks, is EXACTLY THE SAME “I’m sorry” he used last week when he threw a piece of the blinds on top of the roof and dropped a LIT match on our year-old mattress.
Yes, there was a small fire.
Yes, I put it out.
Yes, the baby has been sick.
No, I’m not sleeping at night.
Yes, in the past two weeks I’ve aged considerably.

Namaste.

“What happened?” I asked.
“I will show you,” he said.

He walked me to the bathroom and presented me with a toilet bowl full of my favorite body spray.
I believe my Dad would call it “Plush flush.”
My once-full bottle was in the trash can.
“Why?” I asked, not raising my voice in the least thanks to my morning yo-gerr.
“Because I didn’t like it, Mom.”

Brilliant.

I spanked per prior agreement (when the mattress fire struck he told him if he came into our room and got into stuff he would be spanked in the future).
And then I fed the baby, who -by the by, had been cranking up a storm the likes of which reminded me of Lacy’s colic days.

I fed her.
I tossed my hair up and applied some make-up and put jeans on just in time for my piano lessons to come over.
That was when I found baby powder all over my piano pedals.

“It was me,” the six year old raised her hand.
“Thank you for being honest. You are grounded from the piano for seven days.”
(We have grounded her from the piano before on the grounds of disrespect.)
And then I proceeded to actually SAY it, “Baby powder does NOT GO on pianos.”
“I know…”

Then WHY? It’s the eternal, unanswered question.
At this point, while the sun was starting to go down… I finally scrubbed the Comet out of the sink. Remember the Comet? yeah. me either.

I filled the freshly-scrubbed sink with soap and began to wash dishes.
“Can I help, Mom?” my daughter asked. My son was standing nearby.
He was hungry.
She was bored.
The baby wanted attention.
And for ninety-million time since I birthed The Third One, I wondered WHY the church did away with polygamy. I need a Sister Wife.

Namaste.

When my husband got home, he watched over the flock while I took a long walk by myself.
“Can I come?” my daughter asked.
“Mom needs some time alone because if she doesn’t get alone time, she goes…”
“loco,” the kids answered in unison.

I train them in the little things.

I left the dishes in the soapy water and took a walk at sundown. I stopped to pick up trash and take pictures of a new calf. I wrote a little cowboy poetry in my head, and somehow got the song, “Sunrise, Sunset” stuck in my head from Fiddler on the Roof.
I wondered why I don’t watch musicals more often, especially since I own so many great ones (not dumb ones) (you know the ones I mean).

I came home to find that my six year old had DONE the dishes and wiped the counters and sink down.
Amazing!

The rest of the night, the house fell apart. A visitor stopped by RIGHT exactly when I took off my sweater (undies only underneath, of course) and my husband yelled full-voice at the kids.
And yes, the front door was wide-open because the house was hot.
So yes, the neighbor girl that stopped by SAW it all.
The Deets Family -in all their wonderful, real GLORY!

Namaste.

I thought it would be nice to put on an hour-long comedy show.
But that’s when my son threw his cape, his llama, and a sheet of newspaper (respectively) in my face and then cried when I took the newspaper away.
And that’s when my daughter wanted attention too.
And my baby cried for attention.

At this very moment, my kids are sitting together.
Quietly reading a book together.
My husband is working out.
The baby is asleep.
And me? I just managed to burn the last batch of cookies while I sat down to type.

Namaste.

Comments

  1. This is my favorite post ever. Sorry you had such a s***ty day to inspire it.

  2. Also: your sister wife comment had me busting a gut. WHOOOOOO

  3. I agree with Laurie (which happens a lot, especially in relation to how I feel about your blog posts), and I’m sorry times have been rough. If my kids weren’t snotty and coughing and contagious, I’d drive over there right now, kidnap your kids for a couple of hours, and let you sleep. Or clean. Or blog. Or do whatever-the-heck you want.
    But since that’s not possible just at this moment (although I could definitely see it happening in the forseeable future), know that I’m empathizing with you and praying for you. Hope crud gets better soon–all around.

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