I'm at the pool for the older girls swimming lessons. I've decided to use the time to blog about the most boring of my thoughts: housework. Straightening, organizing, cleaning. It's all boring and mundane. The thing is, when I don't get it done on any sort of regular basis, it piles up pretty quickly and then one morning (like this morning) I walk downstairs and all the stress that's been building up slowly because of my environment just explodes. I was crying this morning because my house is a mess. Not just because my house is a mess, but because I'm so overwhelmed with having to take care of the kids AND keep the house cleaned up. It seems like these days are worse than ever. I hardly ever get downtime from them. The older girls don't nap and, though they'll usually let me sleep, it doesn't mean they're not wreaking havoc in the meantime. Liam and Lorelei have only been napping spottily lately. Not that it matter since whenever they're sleeping (or even quiet) I'm usually passed out too. The mornings are crazy. Especially lately with swimming smack in the middle of it, but even after that's over, it's still crazy. I guess the past week has been a little unusual. In addition to swimming lessons we had construction going on so the kids couldn't play outside. That's over with too, though, so I can send them out and hope they stay out for a while. They've been so whiny and needy lately. It's hard for me to tune them out and have energy left to work. Anyway, Thursday they are going away for most of the day. They're leaving between 9 and 9:30 and not coming back until around 2:30. That gives me five hours alone with my house. Bob is planning on taking off work, so maybe, between the two of us, we can get the house back to a nice resting order. I forgot - one of the older girls is going over to Bob's mom's this afternoon. Maybe I can bribe the other one to help me... Anyway (again) - the bedrooms are bothering me more than anything currently. Our bedroom is hard to walk around because there are so many clothes and baskets laying around. Lorelei refuses to leave anything in her room alone, so the winter clothes, the shoes, whatever else I've been storing in there has to come out. I hate putting things in the attic. It's a buzz in my head already. There's no room in our closet, which leaves Molly and Maggie's. I need to purge both Maggie and Lorelei's rooms. You can't even see Maggie's floor. Part of that is Lorelei because lately she's been going into other people's rooms and pulling all the clothes out of the closet and dumping them on the floor. Why? I'd really like to know what the thrill is. I got the kitchen mostly cleaned up before we left this morning. By the time I get back, the first load should be done and I can fill it with bottles and pots and pans and run it again. I should start laundry too. There's so much laundry to be done, in various stages. But then I have to do the bedrooms before naps. It'll make nap time late, but, oh well. If I do Lorelei's first, Liam's won't take that long and then I can work on Maggie's and then ours and then Molly's, cause her's really isn't that bad. Maybe getting the bedrooms cleaned up will give me sufficient motivation to clean up the rest of the house. If I can get all the clutter and toys and mess straightened and have it to that point before I go to bed tonight, I can start to actually clean tomorrow. Mopping floors it first priority. Then cleaning bathrooms. After than it's just putzing around dusting and misc organizing. *sigh* It sounds good on paper, but when it comes to implementation... add the four whiny kids and I'm tired already. I need to clean out 'my' portion of the garage as well. And make a large trip to Salvation Army. And deliver a toddler bed to a friend of mine. It's like the walls are closing in on me when there's clutter all around. I feel claustrophobic. It starts affecting my stress level and everything builds from there. I have much less patience with the kids when the house is a mess. Although, that can backlash too - when I've worked so hard to clean it up I can be pretty touchy about them messing it up right away. It's like, if I can just have A DAY of a clean, resting house, we can start the morning with it neat and it's ok if it gets used during the day. But by the end of they day when I've just finished and am exhausted, it'd be nice if they respected the work. It's so quiet and cool and peaceful here in the shade. The breeze is perfect. There's the background noise of the kids in the pool and the moms talking, but it's nothing obnoxious. I could easily fall asleep. I'm not looking forward to going back home. That's pretty bad, because in general I like our house and when it's open and CLEAN it feels like some sort of vacation. It can be a pretty restful place. Just not right now. I ran out of my pain med so I couldn't take an extra one this morning. I'm thinking I need to take both my Lyrica and Cymbalta twice a day instead of once. Taking it again in the morning seems to make a big difference. Swimming lessons are almost done. I hope my blog doesn't somehow get erased between here and posting it when I get home.