A very sweet person told me that the hardest part was over, which was finally landing that job. I wanted to believe him, but I knew it was still coming. I was right.
Preparing a house for sale just points a big magnifying glass on our life. We're out of the house at 6:20 to sit in the car for an hour, work all day, sit in the car for another hour, then come home and hit the ground running to work, work, work even more. There's dishes and laundry and dinner prep and dinner eating and homework and baths and coordinating and organizing and falling into bed, where we are asleep before the girls every single night. That level of GO GO GO is just what's required to get by. We're not doing anything extra. Not going to any school events, not cleaning the house, not even watching TV. The best we can do is a little Facebooking in between tasks, on our phones (because we can hide from the kids with them).
On Friday afternoon, I realized that weekends make me angry. I looked around the house, and it looked like a bomb went off. Crap everywhere. Papers, crayons, magazines, random toys, clothes, shoes, jackets. School papers from the girls on every surface. So the weekend is just about repairing the damage from the week, so we can get the house livable enough to do the whole thing over again-- not even clean, just livable. It's not a life! This is not a life! I must be a failure at working motherhood, because I flat-out cannot keep up with this, and I damn sure am not enjoying any part of it.
A side effect of this is that anyone that tries to make plans with us, or if a holiday pops up (like today, which is Easter), I get frustrated and angry. These are supposed to be the GOOD parts of life. But they get in the way of my survival-level treadmill, and I end up irritated. A lot. And then I get upset because I love the people in my life and I have a great time with them every single time we're together. It is never time wasted. But then I come home and there's still crap everywhere and piles of laundry and and and.
I don't know what my point is. I guess this is exactly why we're doing what we're doing. Today I started packing the one box I'm allowing myself to store of sentimental things-- yearbooks, photos, my high school letter jacket, our wedding programs. It was painstaking, but I'm glad I did it. I can't wait for all of the STUFF to be gone. All of it. We're within a few weeks of the estate sale, maybe a month, and I cannot wait.
