Yesterday was just one of those days.
I spent the morning trying to straighten up the house – did
a big load of laundry and even put it away for the kids. I managed to get the upstairs vacuumed
and several rooms picked up. Katie
was super helpful upstairs but when it came to putting away the clean dishes
from the dishwasher – she refused.
all. day. long. So she
didn’t get privileges – all. day.
long. She complained that she
couldn’t stand. She complained she
couldn’t do it. She just
complained. She can be stubborn,
but her mama can be even more so.
Finally after hours and hours missing out on snacks, playing outside,
etc… she finally did her job with a promise to do it the first time she’s asked
in the future. Yay, we’ll see
about that.
Abigail texted me during lunch and asked if she could bring
a friend home from school. We’d
talked about it the previous day and I was honestly fine with it, but usually
something ends up irritating me when friends are over so I’m not one of those
moms that encourage frequent playdates – or whatever you call those types of
arrangements for teens and tweens.
We have early release on Fridays so the two of them walked in the door
at 1pm. Pretty sure I immediately
tensed up. I could tell Abigail
was trying to keep their volume down low so they wouldn’t wake Drew up from his
nap, but really how many kids are accustom to having nappers at home – um,
very, very few.
My not-so-chipper mood may have been slightly influenced by
the fact that Justin had decided to take the day off of work and accept an
invitation by some random company to attend the NCAA tournaments in
Seattle. So while I was cleaning,
folding, and managing a busy household and five children he was planning to
spend the next 12 hours in a suite watching basketball while eating and
drinking to his hearts content.
Thinking about it now, it really isn’t a big deal, but there are
certainly days I wish I could just take an entire day to myself without a care
in the world. I’m struggling to
even find myself a few hours in the next week to run an errand. I love, love, love my job and wouldn’t
want to do ANYTHING else or be surrounded by ANYONE besides my kiddos, but it
can be stressful, demanding, and often thankless. My to-do list is endless.
My carpet installer was supposed to come by “around noon” to
fix our tack strip issue. At 1pm I
got a phone call that he’d wrapped up a job late and could be here in 45 minutes. An hour later, a phone call that he had
only moved about 2 miles in the last half hour, but would continue making his
way if that was ok. He arrived at
about 2:45pm, spent 5 minutes hammering down the tacks at the entrance to the
room and was done. Say what? That’s it? He just spent over 2 hours making his way to my house to
spend 5 minutes doing something I could have done. I felt a tad bit guilty, but he was great about it. Said he’s been in the business for 30
years because he does what he says he will. And get this… he’s probably the most famous carpet installer
in the world. Really. He’s been in all the hootie tootie
homes in the NW including Bill Gates.
He was flown out to Chicago to do a job for Oprah. This guy is no joke. His resume was unbelievable. And he spent half his day just to
hammer down a few nails in MY house.
After driving the activity day carpool later that afternoon I
came home to pick up Jason for baseball practice. We were 5 minutes late – which is not how I like to
roll. During practice I spent a
quiet hour in the car going through emails on my phone and even started a new book. Abigail texted me and asked if she and
her friend could make cookies.
Fresh cookies sure sounded good, but I made sure she understood that she
was to do all the dishes and was to clean up all the mess. Of course she agreed. And of course the kitchen was still a
mess when I got home. And of
course she dragged her feet about cleaning it up.
By now it was 7pm – no one had eaten dinner. I heated up leftover spinach artichoke
dip from a RS dinner the previous evening. There were a few bowls of cereal eaten. And a few cookies - Drew helped
himself.
This is him shaking his head “no” at me when I asked him to
get down off the counter.
The three youngest were in bed by 7:30pm and the girls were
banished to their bedroom for the remainder of the night so I could have a
quiet evening. Abigail asked if
they could not have a bedtime, and promised they wouldn’t stay up too late. She still thinks 9:30 or 10 is a privilege
so in an effort to be nice I agreed, with a warning that if I hear them it’s
immediate lights out. They did
awesome til around 9:43pm, as I type this, when Carly’s rummaging in the
laundry room lit my fuse – which upset Abigail – which irritated Carly – which
cause them to point fingers, which made me spout off punishments, which
basically sealed the day with a nasty little bow and I stopped typing and sent
myself to bed.
