Cycles

Thank you all for your sweet comments on my last post. I try not to dive into despair too often, but every so often it just seems like all the small things of everyday life are piling up into one GIANT thing that is slowly burying me alive. What is that one saying? "The problem with life is that it is so very daily." That's exactly what it is. It's that the same dishes you wash and put away today are going to be waiting in your sink for you tomorrow. It's that the routine of laundry- pick up from the floor/basket/hamper, sort, wash, dry, fold, put away- seem ridiculously excessive, and I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't all just dress and undress right in the laundry room to cut out a few steps.

There's this Jim Gaffigan bit where he complains that the weird, cyclic continuum of shopping- we buy the box of trash bags, we take it home in a plastic bag, we open it up and put a clean trash bag in the can, we throw away the plastic bag IN the trash bag- makes him feel like he's being punked. I sometimes feel that way re: the daily grind. Am I being punked? THIS is what my life is? To wipe the same spots off the stove top twenty thousand times? To empty the diaper pail every single day? It's not that I'm unhappy, it's just that... that it often feels that there isn't any discernible PROGRESS being made; I'm just madly spinning my wheels trying to keep our household afloat, and all my efforts add up to a house that is still in a state of general untidiness, stickiness, and odor, and kids that are still shrieking and bopping each other with toy cars and changing clothes ten times a day.

But. I do know that it won't always be this way. "It's just a stage!" as everyone always tries to reassure me about every parenting problem. But I believe it, actually. And I know that there will also be a stage when everything isn't sticky, and when I have time not only to manage my own life but to help other women manage theirs so they feel a little less overwhelmed. I know this because I see it happening in my mom and mother in law's lives, so I have hope. Also? Gratitude. Happy belated Mother's Day, you guys. Thanks for taking care of us!






P.S. Kids, I know genuine, un-forced smiles are a little too much to ask for, but at least try to look in the same direction next time we do pictures, m'kay? And not look deranged?