The juggling act

This weekend I began to feel as if I was losing the juggling act. You know, that act where your career, kids, housework and fun all balance themselves beautifully, each getting enough attention on its own to keep all the balls in the air.

But this weekend after two days away, I had only one day home on Sunday to catch-up. And boy, there was a LOT to catch up on!

I asked Wayne to do a few things with the girls outside the house so I could tackle some projects that just don't get tackled when they're around...like sifting through their drawers, putting away the summer clothes, putting the clothes that don't fit Lindsey into Marissa's drawers, and just plain organizing.

So throughout the day on Sunday I managed to do 7 loads of laundry AND got them all folded and put back in drawers. Usually at least one basket of laundry sits in our bedroom in the basket all week, waiting to be folded but alas, just sitting there wrinkling quietly. I also got Lindsey's clothes drawers organized (finally!) which also means that Marissa, by default, got some more clothes.

I also scrubbed out the kitchen sink with a toothbrush. Okay, that sounds a bit ridiculous I know, but do you know how many germs LIVE in the drain in your sink?? Enough to have them leap out and get on your food. If you don't do this every now and then, whatever you do, don't drop food in your sink, rinse it off and give it to your kids to eat. There's a written guarantee somewhere that they will get some horrible bacterial infection if you do. Just watch Dateline, trust me. Besides, the drains were starting to turn colors they were so disgusting. Don't get me started on the garbage disposal. YUCK!! (BTW, baking soda and vinegar make a lovely foam that cleans the garbage disposal beautifully without wrecking your pipes. And your kids love to help pour the vinegar in. Just a tip.)

I was feeling just a little bit better about the state of the house until I was going to bed that night and saw the spider webs stretching their way from the base of our ceiling fan to the walls in our upstairs hallway. 'Tis the season when spiders want to come indoors to weather the winter. I started looking around: we had a little spider nest egg at the top of one of our picture frames. And earlier in the day when I went to open a window to get some fresh air in (it was all of 63 degrees that day, not that I spent any of it outside), I had to wrench free the spider webs in both corners of the window. Our ceiling fan blades are so caked in dust and dirt from being run all summer long that they look like they were meant to be modern black and white blades instead of a contemporary white blade.

So while I got a lot done, it was barely a dent. Sigh...

Thus...that night I had the following dream.

I dreamt that my mom and stepdad were at my house for a visit. They are the kind of visitors that you want to clean up for because their house is so immaculate, but you know that if you don't it's okay, they didn't really come to see your house. I love visitors like that.

In my dream my mom saw the state of our house and knew that it wasn't how we'd like to have our house, so she agreed to tackle a few projects; namely, sweeping the ceilings of cobwebs. I begged her not to because, even though she really doesn't care, the ceilings were in horrible HORRIBLE condition. In my dream I am standing there in our upstairs hallway willing my mom not to look up, because the cobwebs are so bad that we haven't been able to turn the ceiling fan on; the blades are held in place with spider webs. And the webs are so thick that there are pickle jars and kitchen utensils like spatulas and so forth hanging from the ceiling.

Thus my frustration at our cobwebby hallway AND the germs in my kitchen sink collide in my subconscious, and voila, there you have my dream.

Thank goodness I have dreams, or all that weirdness would come out in other ways. Whew!