Finishing Up

Ok, so I've been holding onto this post for almost a week, debating whether I should actually post it or not. I've been worrying that my blog is too much of a downer- filled with detailed descriptions of my messy house and disorganized life instead of presenting my family best foot forward. I decided to overcome my better judgment and post it anyway....
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I never finished my last blog post about my long, hard week. I thought maybe it was better to end the blog post on a more upbeat note. Never fear!! There's more ranting to come! =]

Last Sunday morning dawned bright and late, like usual (it is nice to have a weekend when you don't have to be up for the school bus at the crack of dawn). I did have to drag myself out of bed by 10 am because ward choir was at my house at 11. I started to call a few people to remind them, but in the process of trying to pick up the house, bathe Jackson and feed Jackson, I just ran out of time/energy. Choir went well- we didn't have as many people as we have had the past few weeks, but the turnout was respectable.

It took a while for the choir crowd to dissipate, after which we had a visit from our home teachers. By the time they left it was past 12:30. The older kids had not been fed or bathed, Jackson was hungry again, I had no make-up on and needed to change into my church clothes and Dave still needed to shower. Sound promising? Never fear, Karen is here- kicking her rear in gear! I got Jared and Camryn through the bath in record time, got dressed and ready, threw food in the general direction of the kids and before you know it we were... late, as usual. But not horribly late. Again, we made it during the opening prayer. We slipped into the second row of folding chairs in the cultural hall (YES!! We are moving up in the world! We were at the FRONT of the overflow!) and a friend of mine waved hello. At which point I remembered that she was singing a solo in Sacrament Meeting for the musical number and she was being accompanied by... yours truly- who in my haste to arrive five minutes late forgot the music at home. So after depositing children and husband on folding chairs, I immediately turned around and went home to get my music.

After I got back and slid into my seat after the sacrament ended, I realized that in my haste to get out the door to church, Jackson hadn't been nursed since before choir. So I took him out to the mother's lounge and gave him a quick feeding, listening to make sure I didn't miss going up for the musical number. I came back in with about 3 minutes to spare, played for the musical number (which went really well, by the way), sat back down and took Jackson back out to finish nursing before I had to race off to sub for Singing Time in Primary (children's Sunday School).

I have to insert here that subbing for music time in Primary is great fun-I've done Singing Time enough that I don't have to spend any time planning it. I just get up and do activities to the songs and have fun with the kids. When you have to do Singing Time week in and week out, there's only so long you before you run out of ideas and you feel like you're doing the same thing all the time. When you sub, all of a sudden everything you do is new and creative all over again because everybody has forgotten that it was what you used to do every week. Fun times.

The weather recently has been really nice, so after church we ate dinner on our deck and went out to the backyard for a while until I had to go visiting teaching. Of course I had procrastinated until the end of the month and Sunday night was the only night left that worked for a visit. So Dave watched the kids while I went and had a good, albeit really long, visit. Over the weekend I had started to catch Dave's cold-of-death. By Monday morning I was completely stuffy and not sleeping well and Jackson had caught the cold as well so he didn't sleep much either.

Monday morning dawned finding me tired, feeling yucky and cranky, greeted with a Sears-Tower-size mound of dishes from the weekend. The weekend had passed and I felt like the extent of my time with Dave over the weekend was waving at him in passing once or twice (to his credit, this was 100% not his fault, as he had watched the kids while I had something going on for 3 consecutive nights). So with my customary balance and fortitude, Monday was my day to fall apart. Suddenly, life was terrible, hard and horrible. I NEVER got to see Dave. This was definitely because he didn't like me or care about me [not because he was watching the kids for me]. Nothing good ever happened to me. I ALWAYS felt awful and sick. Nobody appreciated me or how hard I worked. And there was no hope of it ever being different than it was that day. (All very level-headed, rational, well-founded thoughts, of course. I'm not ever over-dramatic.)

Luckily, I have learned from past experience that there are three good courses of action for dealing with this type of mood: 1) Call my mom, 2) Call Ranell or 3) Get out of the house. I chose to go with numbers 2 and 3. I got picked up Papa Murphy's pizza, went to Ranell's and let the kids play in her backyard while she compassionately listened to me go off about my sad, hard life. After my rant I felt much better and we ended the evening by picking apples with some other families for Family Night. In talking to Dave that night, I found out that not only does he still like me and care about me, he was kinda sad that we didn't get to spend more time together over the weekend too. (Who'd have thought??) =]