Story of My Life

For the last, I don’t know… maybe 7 years, the story of my life seems to be something like this: I clean a room, something breaks. I fix something, five messes spring up. I try to tackle a new project, the house becomes a war zone, and when I go to clean it up, another 10 things are broken. And through it all, I just barely manage to take teeny-tiny baby steps forward. Oh, an 85% of all messes or broken things are the result of having kids, a young (very playful) dog, and chickens.

To be fair, it’s not always like this. We have been able to take bigger strides in the past couple of years, and there have been less broken things and fewer messes (for the most part). But we still go through rough seasons from time to time. And a rough season doesn’t mean that every part of every day is bad, or that nothing gets accomplished.

When things go wrong, it seems to always happen at once, and for an extended period of time. For example. We decided to take a “spring break” from homeschooling right after Easter so that I could spend time doing fun stuff with the kids, get the yard cleaned up, and just focus on getting things done outside. Well, we got sick with a stomach flu instead. Nothing got accomplished, and all of that hard work I had put into getting the house clean the week before, while still useful, slowly fell apart throughout the week, since we couldn’t even do complete normal maintenance.

The next week, we just had to focus on house stuff and school work. And to be honest, it was a pain in the rear. Whenever we get sick, it takes forever to get back into things. We didn’t have much energy, so it was slow progress through the week. The kids slowly became more and more difficult to deal with because they didn’t want to do their school work or their chores, and thought they’d test my patience and see how little they could get away with.

This past week, I still didn’t have my energy fully back. It didn’t help that allergy season is here and we were all beginning to suffer for it. E started going through a phase of sleep regression at night, which meant that even though Baby Cheeks sleeps through the night about half of the time, E was getting up 2 or more times a night for over a week. He finally slept all night the last couple of nights, but bedtime has been a little stressful for both him and us. One of the older kids was really pushing the boundaries with me throughout this past week. They always struggle with staying focused, and this week was above and beyond. Thankfully, I did manage to make it outside a couple of times.

Then there was this morning. Today, Scott let me sleep in, and I was so grateful. The baby was resting, and I really needed the sleep. I was just beginning to wake up, not quite fully there, when the kids decided to cause a commotion outside of my room. There’s nothing quite like being woken up by the sounds of unhappy children. Scott took the older four away to go do something fun, and my plan was to just work on a bunch of outside things today whenever I could get out there. Baby Cheeks fell asleep right away again, and E wanted to watch a movie, so I went out to get a few things done right away.

I finished up the kitchen garden that I started the week we got sick. (Yay!) I finally picked up a bunch of garbage from around half of the yard (which was all over because we have 5 kids who play outside, a dog that likes to chew EVERYTHING, and chickens who think it’s fun to rip apart garbage bags when you set them down for two seconds, releasing said garbage from said bag, and then running around the yard with it… It feels like I live at a zoo). Then I decided to try and get the lawnmower running. It hasn’t been used this year yet, except for by the chickens, who decided to roost on it and poop all over it. But the battery was dead, so I had to put it on the charger. Then I went to start up the 4-wheeler, but somebody left the ignition running, which drained the battery, so I couldn’t start that up either.

Then E and I went to go round up the chickens. We about half of them in the fence. The others refuse to come close to their mobile run. They have been a pain to catch, and I desperately need to clip their wings. We thought we’d try catching the second half, but I couldn’t find the net, Poppy kept scaring them, and so did E. Plus, they don’t trust us. So now I have to wait until tonight, when I’m tired and they have finally decided to roost, and hope that I can catch at least some of them, and clip their wings. Until then, I can’t plant any garden stuff outside, and it doesn’t pay to try to clean up the chicken poop that is everywhere, because they’ll just do it about 50 times each before they settle down for the night.

Oh, and I broke a hammer, the blinds in Miss Lady’s room have been cut, the kids didn’t do their laundry this week (and I didn’t have the time to remind them or check on it because I was too busy trying to get them through their school work, or nursing a baby), and the house is messy once again. And some of our dishes have miraculously disappeared. I don’t even want to know where they are going to turn up next.

I admit, it’s really, really hard not to let those negatives outweigh the positives. I couldn’t help thinking all week long that when I lose my pregnancy hair, it’s all going to come back in grey. But hey, the yard is partially clean, the kids got their school work done, the house could be worse, the chickens are alive and well, and I can start planting my gardens just as soon as the chickens are dealt with. Tomorrow is a new week, and if I can preserver through today, we just might be back on track by Monday.

More good news? I now have two more hens and two less roosters. We swapped a few birds with my brother last night. We purposely didn’t butcher all of our roosters for this purpose. We are now down to three roosters. So that’s very good news.

If all goes well today, I hope to get the house clean, the lawn cut, and to start catching up on laundry. What are you doing this weekend?

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the lovely moms out there and mother-like figures! I know I would not be where I am today without the love, support, and wisdom of my mom or my mother-in-law, my aunts, sisters, mom-friends, as well as our grandmothers who are no longer with us. I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Love~Danielle

Update (4:20, same day): I got the lawnmower running… and then the tire came off the rim after cutting maybe 1/8th of the lawn that I was hoping to get cut today. True story.

Update (6:30, same day): The broom just broke. The head was loose and I went to tighten it, and it just snapped off. That’s the THIRD BROOM in 12 months!!! I swear, I’m not making this up!

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