Things are scattered. I think I have more time, but there are more children around, but Lucy has been at camp in the mornings, and at a play date nearly every afternoon, so really there are less, but Jake requires constant monitoring, so I am sort of trapped in the kitchen dining area of my house, or the back yard, so I can't get anything done. Oh, and I feel guilty for not playing with him or taking him any exciting places.
Everything seems to be breaking around here, so I've been running around buying parts, or taking things apart and looking at online schematics, and trying to figure out whether it is better to buy new or fix the old. I was able to fix the washing machine, which made me feel pretty awesome and also pretty annoyed that I spent more than $200 paying someone to fix the exact same problem when it broke last September. The dishwasher is no longer making that terrible noise after I took the entire thing apart and cleaned every tiny part of every tiny part. When someone says "They don't make 'em like they used to." I will now nod my head in absolute agreement.
I have a lot of goals for myself this summer, but I just can't seem to finish anything. Which leads me to one of my first goals of course... I need to let some things go, including giving myself a hard time about everything.
Here are some other things I am going to let go of this summer:
- other emotional baggage
- old cookbooks
- ratty t-shirts, even if I think I should "keep them for painting"
- baby toys, unless Jake really, really likes them
- towels we have taken, almost always by accident, from Super8, the gym, and various hospitals. They are thin and nasty and never ever get soft.
- paperwork that does not matter. Seriously, do I need all of those old phone bills? WTF?
- clothing that does not look good on me
- shoes that do not fit
- beauty products that are past their expiration
- luggage that is beyond repair
- cracked laundry baskets
- pens that don't work
- mugs I do not like
I need our house and our life to make more sense than it does now. If it is this hard for me to accomplish great things here, I can't imagine how much harder it must be for Jake who has difficulty processing. He works so much better in an orderly environment, and I have more patience for sitting and teaching when our life isn't strewn about my field of vision. Lucy will benefit too, she is trying to figure out how to prioritize things in her world, and learning habits which will follow her for a long time. If I can teach her now how to have a place for things, how to make order out of chaos, she will go farther and do more in life than I have.
Jake goes to summer school right after the 4th of July holiday, and Lucy has at least two more weeks of camp, so I will have some quiet sorting time when they are off being crazy kids, but it isn't too much longer until we need to prep for our cross-country trip. I have already begun the lists for that.
and by the way, making lists is a great way to avoid doing work. I am an expert.
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