Three day weekend! Woohoo! Except that I was sick with a terrible head cold all three days!

I was looking forward to getting my house back in order after a long summer of three kids at home all day every day. I made a few dents, but it seemed that with every area I cleaned, everything else just looked worse and worse. I feel a little better today, but at bedtime last night I was feeling pretty much like the Failure of the Century. I love order and my house is the epitome of chaos. I have read and tried every organizational plan there is and still I live in an incredible mess. I know that the answer is daily maintenance combined with well-trained “troops”, but that’s like saying that the way to lose weight is to exercise more and eat less.

I feel completely overwhelmed.

We want to sell the house and buy a condominium in a beautiful area just down the street from us. Now that Earl is working full-time and going to school at night, the yard work and maintenance is really overwhelming to him. But part of me is saying, “Well, great for Earl. That solves his crunch, but what about mine?” The condos are gorgeous, but they are actually larger inside than our house! So now I can have more messy square footage.

And another thing, (and this is a big one) what in the heck am I doing making dolls and crafts? Where do I get off throwing so much time into this other “stuff” when I can’t even keep my house in order? I get so involved in my sewing projects that I resent every other demand until I lift my eyes from my current project and see that I am sewing under layers of cobwebs. And sitting in drifts of used drawing paper, discarded dishes, dirty socks and popsicle wrappers. And then I dig myself out only to start all over again.

Sigh. Sorry to be so gloomy here. If there’s a way to combine a full-time job, parenting three children, keeping a house AND having any kind of creative life, I’d like to know what it is. Something has got to give. Since the job, the kids, and the dwelling place are all mandatory, I guess that means that the creative stuff is what has to go. Even then I don’t know if I’ll have any success managing the remaining responsibilities.

I just realized my list of responsibilities is completely lacking any mention of community giving. I haven’t done a Memory Box in months. I don’t volunteer my time anywhere and I would love to do so.

Oh man. I don’t know. I feel like Eeyore right now. Sorry. I think I’m going to finish up my swaps and go into “crafting hibernation”. For a while anyway.