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Written 12/19/15

Keeping house is not my jam. Housekeeping? Keeping the house clean? I'm not sure what the right verb for it is but I don't enjoy it and I don't feel good at it. Not being good at things is also not my jam.

How common is it for people to always be thinking about how they could be better? Does everyone do it? I mean, I wish I could either get better at cleaning my house or find a way to stop caring so much about it. It weighs on me. I want it to be pretty and soothing to be here, in this physical space. Instead I walk the length of my funny-shaped, windy house as though I am passing through a cluttered obstacle course. Shift your hips to slide between three hampers of clean laundry, bend to pick up the Jack-O-Lantern water cup, ignore the expired driver's license on the muffled wood floor beneath the drawer they can all reach and get into now. We need to empty that but neither of us ever does it. One child had a thumbtack in her mouth earlier today. Can't believer I'm recording that in the written, online annals of our family history.

A large part of the mess is always mine--I am not neat. I wonder if and how I can teach my children to be neat when it's not something I really know how to do. Know how. . .it's probably just a matter of picking things up as you go, of taking five or ten minutes to clean up the kitchen after the kids eat, to make sure to put things where they belong the first time.

Written 12/30/15

We are getting our asses handed to us in the parenting department lately. Every day when the kids are all finally quiet in their beds we just look at each other expressionless, souls crushed a little bit more. That sounds dramatic and probably is overly so. . .but I've lost all perspective to know what is what. What day is it? Who is awake? Where are the childrens? That "s" was a typo but it seems so apropos that I'm leaving it.

The older twins started climbing out of their cribs. . .last week? Earlier this week? It seems like forever ago. It has effed shit up for us and for them. Bedtime used to be a mostly delightful affair. Sure, there were sometimes tears from one or two of them for a few minutes but those rarely lasted long.  Two of our four love sleeping like their mama. One doesn't like going to bed but is damn cozy once she settles in and she has a hard time waking up sometimes. The fourth could take or leave sleep if given the choice--and mostly he would choose to leave it. Needless to say this child discovered a whole new world once he climbed out of the crib.