Taking a Breather ...

Whooooohhhh.

That's me, taking a breather.

I realized this afternoon, while wandering slowly and rather blankly at the grocery store, that my meager efforts to get the house ready for company had, proportionately, accomplished very little. And that the time remaining was very very short.

So after dinner we made a list on the freezer (we have a big magnetic calendar that's rarely used as a calendar, but makes a decent white board) of all the things I could think of that we needed to do to get ready. I divided them into "Must Do" and "If There's Time" and then divvied them up between me and the children. I assigned a few to work in the room where the littles were watching a video and we tackled the list.

We made good progress. I stretched bedtime pretty late to take advantage of Big Kid Power. But eventually it was just plain bedtime, and the kids had to call it a night. Plus I was out of jobs that were easy to assign to the young-to-middles who need simpler jobs and/or a lot of guidance. Some of the jobs even made things worse, like having them Mr. Clean Magic Erase one particularly bad hand-print on the wall? Makes the one spot clean and the rest of the wall look like a nightmare. It's like a spotlight drawing attention to the wall. I guess I'm supposed to wash those things sometimes. Or repaint. But that won't get done tonight. Anyway, jobs like "organize the snack cupboard" don't go over so well for the 7-and-under crowd. Well, actually, even *I* have trouble with jobs like that. It's just not in me to organize well, although Lord knows I try. I swear it takes me 4 times the time and effort for half the results. You're probably wondering why something like that is even on my list. Maybe you're so naieve as to think I have things like that on my list because most of the Big Work (like washing guestroom bedding and scrubbing bathroom floors) is well under control. Ha HA, I say to you, you do not know me well enough. The reason "organize snack cupboard" is on the "if there's time" list is because I am afraid Linda might open the cupboard, looking for something, and have 60 bags of odds and ends snacks come tumbling down upon her. She might be buried in hundreds of bags, each containing the last inch of cashews or pretzels or who knows what else. That's why they're still there, *I* am not even sure what's in there. I just buy new stuff and cram it in the front and the junk in back gets compressed further.

Of course, if you get right down to it, that's only one of many avalanches waiting to happen. Because I am nothing if I am not a piler-and-stasher. OH, the grief I cause myself with my piling and stashing. Sometimes, even as I do it, I think "This is a terrible place to heap this object" and yet I am helpless to do anything different. A Home for Everything, and Everything in it's Home ? Of course I follow that rule. As long as "home" means somewhere in this house. Or yard. Or garage. it's all in it's home somewhere.

So... what? Where was I? Oh yeah, taking a breather before re-tackling the list, alone. Because now my helpers, from excellent and not-so-much are in bed. And I've got miles to go before I sleep.

Miles to go.

must ...

get...

off...

internet.