It has been a long, crazy, drawn-out and borderline wish-I-could-skip-it-altogether kind of week. I have been stressed out, stretched thin, and basically no fun to be around at all for days at a time. I did some research on adult ADD, and I fit all the classic symptoms. Like, all of them. The reason I mention that is when you take a person with concentration problems and throw extra chaos into the mix, what do you think you get? Yep. That's been my week.
It all started last week. (For those of you that remember the show The Golden Girls you can throw a "picture it, Sicily . . ." in here lol). I was doing my normal plan-ahead-as-much-as-possible kind of thing. I checked my Etsy shop, checked my Paypal balance, checked my bank account balance, etc. . . when I noticed my bank account had a little extra money in it. Woohoo! Right? Well, I have been expecting a deposit (or rather hoping for), but I jumped over to check my account history, anyway, just to make sure. It wouldn't pull up. Note: this is normal. My internet access is pretty awful anyway, and I then made the first of a series of errors. I ASSUMED. Yep, I assumed the money was the deposit I was hoping for. We all know what happens next, right? I spent some of the money. It wasn't alot, but we needed some things. A few days later, as I am waiting on another deposit, I check my balance . . . -$60. Yuck. Apparently what happened was: I bought a new printer and some heat n bond on Amazon. For some reason, 6 days after I bought it they credited all the money back to my account (the day before I got it), and then almost a week later re-charged me for it. The why here is still a mystery. So . . . I get my deposit and now have half of what I had expected to have to work with. On Easter weekend. Luckily, I had planned ahead and had almost everything I needed. Luckily, I have a mother who loves my children and I and took pity on us. Luckily, my children have not been too terribly spoiled their entire lives and are happy with the little things. They had a blast.
It all started last week. (For those of you that remember the show The Golden Girls you can throw a "picture it, Sicily . . ." in here lol). I was doing my normal plan-ahead-as-much-as-possible kind of thing. I checked my Etsy shop, checked my Paypal balance, checked my bank account balance, etc. . . when I noticed my bank account had a little extra money in it. Woohoo! Right? Well, I have been expecting a deposit (or rather hoping for), but I jumped over to check my account history, anyway, just to make sure. It wouldn't pull up. Note: this is normal. My internet access is pretty awful anyway, and I then made the first of a series of errors. I ASSUMED. Yep, I assumed the money was the deposit I was hoping for. We all know what happens next, right? I spent some of the money. It wasn't alot, but we needed some things. A few days later, as I am waiting on another deposit, I check my balance . . . -$60. Yuck. Apparently what happened was: I bought a new printer and some heat n bond on Amazon. For some reason, 6 days after I bought it they credited all the money back to my account (the day before I got it), and then almost a week later re-charged me for it. The why here is still a mystery. So . . . I get my deposit and now have half of what I had expected to have to work with. On Easter weekend. Luckily, I had planned ahead and had almost everything I needed. Luckily, I have a mother who loves my children and I and took pity on us. Luckily, my children have not been too terribly spoiled their entire lives and are happy with the little things. They had a blast.
I am sure my mother loves the sight of her blue siding here in these pictures. She is buying this property, and is going crazy waiting for summer so she can get rid of all that blue! It is very color-appropriate for Easter, though, right? Plus she has this awesome covered front-deck and I am super-envious of her metal roof. Don't you just love the way the rain sounds on them?
Ok. So back to my story. Easter, then, is over. I have a giant whopping $5 in my bank account. My mother, of course, again to the rescue. We went shopping Tuesday. She goes to the grocery store twice a month, and I love to tag along, if for nothing else than the change of scenery. We are HUGE clearance, bargain, sale, and thrift shoppers, and our first stop at Walmart is always the baskets and shelves they line up at the doors. You would not believe what you sometimes find in there for $1! My mother got a stud-finder a couple of months back and it works perfectly. She paid one dollar and tax for it. Nice, right? So . . . she snags me a couple of things, which is always fun. I got two brand new 5-packs of cloth diapers (to make appliqued burp-rags) for $8, a window valance with a gorgeous material and pattern (not in a package, just lying there with no price on it) for $1, and a super-cute little girls play dress that I am going to turn into an apron for $1. Not a bad haul. The week is starting well.
Then Thursday comes. Just two days later things go south. Quickly. I tend to try to put on a brave face, which basically means that I bottle things up until I am so full of stress that I am going to pop. Well, I popped. It just hit me all at once. I looked around and I could see "mess" everywhere. The kids have a few habits that drive me absolutely batty-nuts. One is: I have a shoe bin (Its an old beautiful crate), and all of their shoes are supposed to stay inside. It sits inside the front entrance directly under a hanging-rack that holds their backpacks and jackets. The shoes, apparently, don't like to live in their crate, though, because almost every time I walk through they are pulled out helter-skelter and I end up tripping on one trying to get through. The other bad habit is similar. The dirty clothes basket. For some unknown reason, they go into the room where the dirty clothes get banished to, and they dump them out of the basket. Into the floor. Then, they walk away. Why, you might ask? I dunno. Answer that question and I will pay you the next $1,000,000 i'm never gonna earn. I have no answers except that I am starting to believe that it is not my children acting of their own accord. I think they get possessed by the ghosts of "Not me", and "I don't know", and those are the real culprits.
Friday hits and I am a hot mess. I keep trying to work, but everywhere I look there is mess. It drove me loony crazy, but I still held it in. Until. Yes . . . I meant that one word to be a sentence of it's own. I will say it again. Until. What happened next, in retrospect, is comical, but at the time I was so frustrated! I have been learning to knit. I am teaching myself, and for three days now I have been Googling videos to teach me to knit, purl, cable stitch, cast on, bind off, etc . . . I started working on a cabled bangle bracelet and keep having to pull out stitches and start over because me working=kids interrupting. It happens. C'est la vie. However, when I was sitting there, minding my own business, happily ignoring my stress and knitting away, there was trouble brewing and a few things happened all at once. Two of the kids started fighting. All I could hear from different directions was "Momma!" "Momma, tell him to . . .", "Tell her to. . ." "MOMMA!!!". I just kept working. I was almost done with that row. All I could think was "Please, please, just one more minute, let me finish this . . ." the thought remained incomplete, because next thing you know the needles were ripped out of my fingers. Needles, yarn, all my hard work, went flying through the air before crashing on the ground and getting trampled by little feet. Someone decided to walk in my three-feet of me-space that held my yarn ball. It caught on little toes. Those little toes just kept right on a-truckin. An hour of work just gone. I then did what any self-respecting mother of five would do.
I threw a tantrum. A two-year-old, stomp my feet, face red, full-fledged fit! Tinkerbell would have been proud. My hissy-fit took me to the back porch where I sat, in righteous indignation for about 1 minute. Then I sat for another 5 minutes in shame. I walked inside to scope out the damage my fit had caused and saw a wonderous sight. The children. Sitting. Quietly. I had shocked them, and they were all behaving. Wow. I would say that I should throw tantrums more often, but then they would just get used to it and it would cease to shock and amaze. I would love to say that I showed them how silly they look when they throw tantrums, but such is not the case. It was a novelty to them. They probably enjoyed it, the little heathens. I would also love to say that I learned my lesson and will never model another tantrum for them to emulate. Yes, well . . . that probably won't happen either. What did happen is that the shock wore off, and within two hours they were back at it. They bickered, they fought, they drove each other crazy, and in the end it was me that suffered. I stressed, I threatened, I took away the television for the entire day. I made them clean. I made them apologize and hold hands. I made them do nice things for each other. I contemplated the get-along shirt, but they just turn that into a big game and end up dragging each other maniacally through the house with it, so that was a no-go before the idea even fully formed. By the end of the day I was so emotionally wrecked and exhausted I went to bed at 8:45. My well-loved and very adult-ish niece was here and she graciously watched my 5 and 7-year-old's so I could just relax and reset to another day. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep instantly.
Ok. So back to my story. Easter, then, is over. I have a giant whopping $5 in my bank account. My mother, of course, again to the rescue. We went shopping Tuesday. She goes to the grocery store twice a month, and I love to tag along, if for nothing else than the change of scenery. We are HUGE clearance, bargain, sale, and thrift shoppers, and our first stop at Walmart is always the baskets and shelves they line up at the doors. You would not believe what you sometimes find in there for $1! My mother got a stud-finder a couple of months back and it works perfectly. She paid one dollar and tax for it. Nice, right? So . . . she snags me a couple of things, which is always fun. I got two brand new 5-packs of cloth diapers (to make appliqued burp-rags) for $8, a window valance with a gorgeous material and pattern (not in a package, just lying there with no price on it) for $1, and a super-cute little girls play dress that I am going to turn into an apron for $1. Not a bad haul. The week is starting well.
Then Thursday comes. Just two days later things go south. Quickly. I tend to try to put on a brave face, which basically means that I bottle things up until I am so full of stress that I am going to pop. Well, I popped. It just hit me all at once. I looked around and I could see "mess" everywhere. The kids have a few habits that drive me absolutely batty-nuts. One is: I have a shoe bin (Its an old beautiful crate), and all of their shoes are supposed to stay inside. It sits inside the front entrance directly under a hanging-rack that holds their backpacks and jackets. The shoes, apparently, don't like to live in their crate, though, because almost every time I walk through they are pulled out helter-skelter and I end up tripping on one trying to get through. The other bad habit is similar. The dirty clothes basket. For some unknown reason, they go into the room where the dirty clothes get banished to, and they dump them out of the basket. Into the floor. Then, they walk away. Why, you might ask? I dunno. Answer that question and I will pay you the next $1,000,000 i'm never gonna earn. I have no answers except that I am starting to believe that it is not my children acting of their own accord. I think they get possessed by the ghosts of "Not me", and "I don't know", and those are the real culprits.
Friday hits and I am a hot mess. I keep trying to work, but everywhere I look there is mess. It drove me loony crazy, but I still held it in. Until. Yes . . . I meant that one word to be a sentence of it's own. I will say it again. Until. What happened next, in retrospect, is comical, but at the time I was so frustrated! I have been learning to knit. I am teaching myself, and for three days now I have been Googling videos to teach me to knit, purl, cable stitch, cast on, bind off, etc . . . I started working on a cabled bangle bracelet and keep having to pull out stitches and start over because me working=kids interrupting. It happens. C'est la vie. However, when I was sitting there, minding my own business, happily ignoring my stress and knitting away, there was trouble brewing and a few things happened all at once. Two of the kids started fighting. All I could hear from different directions was "Momma!" "Momma, tell him to . . .", "Tell her to. . ." "MOMMA!!!". I just kept working. I was almost done with that row. All I could think was "Please, please, just one more minute, let me finish this . . ." the thought remained incomplete, because next thing you know the needles were ripped out of my fingers. Needles, yarn, all my hard work, went flying through the air before crashing on the ground and getting trampled by little feet. Someone decided to walk in my three-feet of me-space that held my yarn ball. It caught on little toes. Those little toes just kept right on a-truckin. An hour of work just gone. I then did what any self-respecting mother of five would do.
I threw a tantrum. A two-year-old, stomp my feet, face red, full-fledged fit! Tinkerbell would have been proud. My hissy-fit took me to the back porch where I sat, in righteous indignation for about 1 minute. Then I sat for another 5 minutes in shame. I walked inside to scope out the damage my fit had caused and saw a wonderous sight. The children. Sitting. Quietly. I had shocked them, and they were all behaving. Wow. I would say that I should throw tantrums more often, but then they would just get used to it and it would cease to shock and amaze. I would love to say that I showed them how silly they look when they throw tantrums, but such is not the case. It was a novelty to them. They probably enjoyed it, the little heathens. I would also love to say that I learned my lesson and will never model another tantrum for them to emulate. Yes, well . . . that probably won't happen either. What did happen is that the shock wore off, and within two hours they were back at it. They bickered, they fought, they drove each other crazy, and in the end it was me that suffered. I stressed, I threatened, I took away the television for the entire day. I made them clean. I made them apologize and hold hands. I made them do nice things for each other. I contemplated the get-along shirt, but they just turn that into a big game and end up dragging each other maniacally through the house with it, so that was a no-go before the idea even fully formed. By the end of the day I was so emotionally wrecked and exhausted I went to bed at 8:45. My well-loved and very adult-ish niece was here and she graciously watched my 5 and 7-year-old's so I could just relax and reset to another day. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep instantly.
I woke up to notes, placed through the house. The coffee-maker said "Just push start", the stove (sparkling and lovely) said "I cleaned the stove, Shy <3 and Lucien" and there were others. That darling girl. She shamed me with her sweetness. I spent so much time stressing this week that I forgot to look at all I have to be thankful for. In the end, I had a bad week because I let my stress take over. I let all my perceived "bad's" rule my life and I forgot to look at all the glory I have in my life. Kids are going to fight. That's how they learn to be adults. They are going to drive you crazy. That's how they find their boundaries. They are going to make mistakes. They are human too. So, in the end, it is all in how you look at it. You can dwell on all the things that drive you crazy. You can be miserable and unhappy because things don't go "right", and you can let it all make you a crazy-person, OR: you can stop. Stop the stressing, stop the worrying, stop the incessant battle in your mind and just look. Look at what you have instead of what you don't. I bet, if you do that, you will find you have so much more to be thankful for than what you ever would have guessed. I know I did.