cin - der - ella!

There hasn't been a post for quite a while...and I have a very good excuse. My excuse is - I have no life outside of work lately. Except the weekends. The past couple of weekends I've spent with K painting our house. By the end of this painting stint - almost the entire house will be painted. The latest project has been the biggest - the main floor with lots of cathedral ceilings and high peaks, skinny partial walls and hours spent on the ladder. Ugh. But wow - it looks great. So, well - clean! Next project is the kids' bathroom but I don't think I'll start that tonight. I tend to do a really bad job when I get tired. I'm beginning to learn that lesson - after having spent many hours fixing my mess-ups.

And it feels like all I do lately is work. I've spent the past couple of weeks working full time hours and the next three will be the same. I know there are millions of people out there who work full time and upon reading that sentence might be inclined to email me nasty things like 'suck it up princess'. But I don't work full time at work. I have always worked - but I have split my time equally between home and work and in doing so, barely kept my head above water when it comes to housework and mom stuff.

Because mom stuff - is ovewhelming.

Keeping a house clean with four children and various friends is exhausting and somewhat impossible. Paying bills - well, I hate it and its even worse when the damn internet banking won't work...like tonight. Yard work hasn't even begun but its starting to eat at my mind. My flower beds could be cleared of the fall debris so that when/if it gets warm enough, the bits and pieces poking out of the soil don't also have to poke through dried leaves and rubbish. Laundry. Oiy - don't even start me on laundry. I can't keep up with it. Its this pandora box of dirty underwear and stained shirts and jeans with holes in the knees - damn my children are hard on jeans. And towels! omg - what is with my children that they refuse to ever hang a towel up or use a towel more than once? Of course, they do the same thing with clothes they wear for moments. A sweater they don't particularly like? Oh - its gets tried on for two minutes and then tossed into the laundry hamper. Ditto to the clothes that fall off their closet shelves. If it hits the ground - it ends up in the laundry hamper. NEVER folded and replaced.

I'm trying to teach them that they can walk down a set of stairs by holding the (omgosh!) railing and not trailing their greasy little fingerprints on the wall. No food in the bedroom needs to be repeated, well, repeatedly. Flush the toilet. Put your dishes in the dishwasher. Garbage belongs in a garbage can. No - you may not traipse from the back door to the front door with your mud-caked rubber boots.

So - working full time is a struggle but I know that my stint at it has a finite end. It will not go on indefinitely. When the new computer system is up and running and everyone's questions have been answered - I can go back to my part time life. I am aware my house probably won't be any cleaner then, but maybe I'll have time to think. And write. And stamp. And scrapbook. And go out for coffee. And bake. And pay the damn bills.