I hate laundry

I'm totally ignoring it. Is that legal? Are there Laundry Police somewhere that will come crashing into my house with Shout stain remover in squirt guns because I refuse to admit we have a problem? I cannot keep up with it. I need a separate room for it. I actually do have a separate room, but it's not big enough to fold the clean clothes. So the process goes something like this:

Big mess of clothes on the floor. In between getting three kids ready to drive Romania to the bus stop and fixing my face, I dump a load of wash into the machine. I may even decide to take the clean clothes out of the dryer and dump them on my bed.

Come home. Do school. Clean up Holland's experiments, computer cords, chicken coop project (ask my mom about that one), typewriter motor (still playing with this thing), eat lunch, do more school, let Holland loose around the house while I try to spend some one-on-one time with Egypt. Clean up more messes of Holland's. Try to remember we need to eat tonight and thaw some type of meat. Try to contain Holland and tell him we are not in fact done with school. Go pick up Romania. Sit down and ignore the fact that it's 5 and I still don't have dinner figured out.

Walk upstairs to see the giant laundry mess on the hall floor. Put the clean clothes into the dryer. Walk into our room and notice the sky-high pile of clean clothes on the ironing board. These never get put away. I find there are more important things to do than put away clean clothes. I'd rather read a book to my child, or bake some cookies, or look at something with our new loupes for science. I feel guilty and frustrated and tired looking at this pile of clothes. Last weekend, bless him, Super Hero says "My goal is to have all these clothes clean by the end of the weekend." Awww. What a nice, child-like thing to say about laundry. Do men actually think laundry ever gets "done". Like it will somehow end? Sure. If we all are nekkid, then laundry will be done. Of course, it doesn't help that I have three kids who at some point have accidents and I'm changing sheets.

So I will just have to let the Laundry Police storm my house and shame me into finishing the laundry. That's the only way it will get done. There are just too many other things to do. Last week, the school OT came over to do some testing on Holland for his 3 year IEP eval. I know she means well, she only works 2 days a week and her kid (notice it's not plural) is gone all day at school, but she asked if I thought about giving the kids more chores. I tried so hard not to laugh. It's probably a combination of several things: I homeschool, so the kids are actually HOME; I have children, one more than the other two, that has to be moving every second of the day, creating, building, planning, that it's impossible to stay on top of all the clutter from him; and I just don't have the energy to follow through with the chores I DO give them. I've done lists and charts and frankly, I've come to the conclusion that my energy cannot be spent on worrying if my house is perfect. That just means that I can't have much company right now! Life is a season and this season will be over and I will have missed it if I spend all my time cleaning!

Growing up, my mom had a fridge magnet that said "an immaculate house is the sign of a misspent life." Amen!

Busy Two Weeks

I haven't had time to post about anything the past week and a half. Super Hero had shoulder surgery on May 21st and I've barely had time to do anything except take care of him (drive him around), cook, clean and do school with Holland. The last post was about our jet boat ride on the Willamette and that was the day after (I post about the important things) his surgery. We totally needed a break and he just slept all day anyway. I realized how much I depended on him when he couldn't help out. Getting the kids dinner; getting them to bed; cleaning up at night. I'm totally exhausted and he's still pretty much out of commission. He has to have physical therapy every day for three weeks to make sure his shoulder doesn't freeze up again. And a few days I had to drive him (and bring everyone else in the process) because he was taking Percocet. You know what they say "do not operate heavy machinery". Crud. That means cars. So we'd pile in the car and drive dad to his appointment.

He went back to work on Thursday (which I thought was too early). He's still very sore, but he's itching to get going on some projects at work and felt he needed to get back. The day he had his post-op appointment, Holland had an appointment with a neurologist; Egypt had an eye doctor appointment and he also had a physical therapy appointment. That was one crazy day. We found out that Holland is getting migraines. We're supposed to try getting him more aerobic type exercise. I told the dr. he's really 'busy' but she said he needs more "sweat" activity. We did walk around a park only one day this week. But at least it was once. It's just too hard with Egypt in a jogger stroller. She wants to walk/run/play and Holland is complaining he's bored. He also might be getting the migraines from stress. Did you even know kids could get migraines from stress? I'll be sure to eliminate all that stress for him. Right after I do that for me. I had a migraine that lasted 16 hours one day. I literally felt I couldn't drive to pick up Romania from the bus stop. But who's gonna do it? So, you just suck it up and do what you gotta do.

So if you noticed that Egypt had an eye appointment the same day as Super Hero and Holland, you probably figured out I was a driver short for that. I had to get my mom to take her for her 3 month check up. This appointment takes a little longer because they dilate her eyes and look more closely for the infection that can result from the JRA. She's fine - just nearsighted which he said not to worry about until she's school-age.

So I am really tired from all this activity. All I want to do is sew. I have people that have asked me to sew them ruffle pants or make a head scarf - and I haven't had time to do it. I'm assuming people with jobs outside the home totally ignore their kids. How else would they do everything? As a tribute to trying to do it all (or just the laundry at least), I turned one of my good white T-shirts pink today. I save a whole load of red laundry to do together and forgot to pull out a white shirt that I wore under a red sweatshirt. See? One person just cannot do it all. But now I have a nice pink T-shirt to wear. I really didn't want a pink T-shirt.

Ewww. Gross.

No two ways about this. Tonight I was getting ready for my monthly game of Bunco with my girlfriends. I had to make dinner, keep the kids from killing each other and I was washing clothes. I have a new pair of capri jeans that I wanted to wear. I went up to the washing machine and opened the lid. There was this white fluffy junk all over the clothes and stuck to the sides of the machine. One of the boys had left a pullup in his pajamas and put it in the laundry room. I can usually tell when there are pullups left in pajamas because I can feel the added weight :-) But this one happened to be dry. That is until I washed it. Now I know what the inside of a used pullup looks like. So I didn't get to wear my cute new capris. I had to shake off all the fluff, and vacuum out the washing machine and then rewash the clothes.

Here Comes the Sun

It's been hot here the past few days. Don't feel like doing much outside. But while doing laundry, I had hung a few things on the chairs on the deck because I wasn't sure if the stains I treated had come out. I could not believe how fast everything dried. I've dried clothes outside before on a rack, but the wood always get gross and looks moldy, so I don't want to ruin the clothes.

You might remember we have a zip line from our deck to a tree at the bottom of the hill. I've thought about hanging stuff on it before, but felt weird that my neighbors could see our laundry. My sister convinced me that it didn't matter, so I have a bunch of stuff hanging up. Egypt helped me with the clothespins and handing me clothes. It's so nice to do something that's FREE!