Day in the Life - All photos, No words

Wednesday, October 7th

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Reclaiming my home

I’m reclaiming the spaces of my home.  It took one signifiant repurposing of the 3rd bedroom to set into motion a purging and reorganizing of every space in our home.  

Whether it was the long string of time we’ve now lived here (4 & 1/2 years), the drowning in chaos that comes with having a few small kids at home all day all week all year, or my own underdeveloped skill set for homemaking, our house had become a puzzle of shuffled chaos. 

It’s easy to think I’ll get to that another day when I have more time.

Earlier this summer a family member pulled out her phone and I saw a notification for over 2,000 unread emails. I won't say who here, but she knows because I gasped. ;) 

I could not sleep at night if I didn’t know exactly what those 2,000 were about, if I hadn’t sorted them and called them by name. I could not think clearly without those emails in their respective homes. 

But yet my house was just as much an unclaimed, waiting mess of stuff.  Things are mostly in their places but cozied up next to neighbors who had found their way there by accident and never left.  In the kids’ room mostly toys but also binders & board games. In the laundry room mostly cleaners but also tools & manuals.  In the garage, mostly… okay, everything is in that garage… but also lots of garden essentials that would have a wonderful home in our shed if only just escorted. 

And so it is I’m reclaiming the spaces of my home.  It feels good. It also feels a bit embarrassing, but I’m used to that.  As an INFP, I live life in a dreamy landscape and then reality sometimes bites me in the ass just as I’m musing at the pink sunset. That reality right now, teeth deep in my cheek, is that the linen closet provides the impression a drunk person was in charge of cleanup after a camping trip.  

Contents of our linen closet. I wish I was joking. 

Here is exactly how I’m getting everything in their places and booting out all the rest:

1. I’ve set a deadline for myself: 

Paul and I listened to a podcast a couple weeks ago that made me rethink deadlines.  Essentially, our work expands to the time we give it.  Often we aren’t getting what we want done because we aren’t setting a deadline to do it. 

I’ve set a deadline for New Year’s Eve.  It’s always been one of my very favorite holidays.  Since I was a little girl, my love for a new year has known no bounds. It’s a bit ridiculous how excited I get.  This is what is pushing me. To know our family is starting a new year with all the things we love and need in their right places so we can seamlessly work hard and play hard too—the best! 

2.  Follow a thorough system. 

This is just how I’m doing this. I’m incorporating a lot of things I’ve learned from professionals like being comfortable with extra space in areas and getting as many alike things together in one place to increase simplicity. With those gems, I made my own system appropriate when one finds their home is a kaleidoscope of unorganized nonsense and they have to mostly start all over. 

1.  take everything out

2.  think of the function that is best for this space & declare what it is and what it is not 

     

3. bring as many things for that function into this space (and do not worry yet about lack of space or extra space) & take all extras that were in this space but now don’t belong to an interim space to be pulled from later (for example: basket in the garage or spare room)  

4. make order of what is here without buying extra things to do so (buying organizational stuff is often a distraction from the real work of making decisions & you can do this at the very end when you know you truly do not have any extra container but need one)

5. come back (later when other spaces are established as well) and make decisions about letting go of things that no longer belong

       * caveat: if purging is so obvious and automatic that it takes no energy—do it right away

5.   paint, decorate, and organize with whatever is needed to do it. 

3.  Thinking grateful thoughts and multiplying benefits.

This weekend I worked on creating a board game closet.  Right now, there’s no fancy system in it.  I just have all things in that group in this space and the space makes sense because it’s as close as possible to where we will use them. 

As I put everything in place I did two things.  A prayer of gratitude for the past.  And then a thought about a more productive future. 

I thought of all the memories we’ve made so far with those games and puzzles. Thomas naming the states our extended family members live in and where Nana went on vacation.  Paul schooling me in Monopoly. Sharing beers and laughs with friends over games of Wizard and Telestrations and Taboo. Piecing together 1000 piece puzzles with Thomas last winter as the snow fell just outside the sunroom windows. 

And then I thought of how a new home for these things means more likely use and easier cleanup. Organization is not a blueprint for living in a museum home, seeing our things tidy and beautiful at all times.  Organization's ultimate purpose is so we can live a full, rich lives. Lots of play. Lots of work.  Access to the things we need in the way that works the best for our family.  And that’s how I think of it as I’m moving things.  A laundry room that makes me want to fold and sort.  A kitchen that calls your name in to bake.  A kids’ room that allows for play but doesn’t also give mom a heart attack… still crossing my fingers on this one. Send your suggestions.  At this point, burn all the things is an option I’m strongly considering.  

+     +     +     +     +     +

So there you have it.  A “how I’m doing it” from someone who is totally making it up as she goes.  I’m not too proud to share that I’m not great as housekeeping. It’s humbling to see that I’m really bad at something that is a good chunk of my job at the present. 

But I’m 30.  30 is, for me, a license to freely admit my faults, and to work on them with joy.  

Life is too short to hide from our shortcomings.  Embracing them and learning intentionally how to wade through the new, foreign, or messy in order to get to the things we know we need is much more fun! 

Leave me a comment. Let me know if you have had similar “findings” in your house. If and when you’ve purged or reorganized or if you need to now.  If you’ve got tips, tricks, or advice, I’m all ears for that too! 

Our house is unorganized and I'm on it.

On Monday I disassembled the guest bed that was in our 3rd bedroom. I cleared out everything that didn’t fit the [new] single purpose of an office and study space. Our guest bed was getting so little use and it far from fit the needs of our family. As soon as the bed was out, I felt I could breathe. It was all wrong before. And now the room was right. 

The next day I continued.

I took three loads of stuff out of the garage to give away or recycle, hauled even more to the curb, and spent 4 hours rearranging our storage layout and all the things in it. Our garage is extra long but not extra wide. Previous owners put in cabinetry on the right side of the wall. It has always been all wrong, and we are finally having a contractor take it out. This is why I was out there. I was shifting all storage from the sides of the garage to the back where there has always been dead space. 

Yesterday, I took out everything from the laundry room and the cleaning closet. Thomas asked if he could earn money helping. I pulled things down and he organized them on the table. Housed in our laundry room cabinets were a freak show of miscellany. Paint sample cans. Abandoned socks. Tools. Empty boxes. Cleaning products I didn’t know we had. More screws than I could ever know what to do with. And enough manuals to build a tower as tall as Alistair & Emerick. 

Through this process all week I’ve been excited but not anxious to rush. I’m telling myself: no shuffling, no hiding, no shortcuts. If this thing in my hands isn’t sparking joy or its purpose expired some time ago, it’s time for it to go. And then I’m taking each item and putting it in its home not based on space I see or lack of space or where things were before. I’m putting it where it makes sense and with all the other things that it makes sense with.

This whole process of re-claiming my home is bringing me immense joy. We have better access to our tools and things which let us work and play with ease. In three days, I’ve gutted a disease of sorts which has caused us unnecessary stress and waste of time and replaced it with a visual declaration of “all things in their place.” 

Much of the beginning of 2015 I dwelled in this head and heart space of feeling and knowing that caring for twins is ... "challenging".  Of course my kids bring me tremendous joy. I am crazy lucky to be at home and I treasure my time with them. But I also felt like grabbing friends and family and saying, "YOU DON'T GET IT. THIS IS HARD."

Adjusting to life with three boys was [is!] very real and instead of handling it, I looked outside of myself and believed lies that if I was just “that mom” or I had “those kids” or I had “that set-up” my life would be easier. Ha! Maybe that is true. But what a bunch of crap that is wasting time on a life that isn’t yours when there are about a million things we can do at our fingertips to simplify, re-energize, and strike success with the one we do have!

Just about a month after the fog of my hard-heart lifted, homeschooling started. I’m going to admit something now that is even more shameful than the fact that I had tools in my laundry room, bottles of cleaners in my garage, and a guest bed I’ve always hated set up in a room we very much needed. 

Paul travels a lot. He does about 75% travel. He’s in Chicago this week. In the two weeks before that he had taken two trips each week. I used to post on Facebook that he was leaving or coming home or maybe blog about it here, but it’s such a normal part of our life that posting about it seems kind’ve silly now. 

This is our life, and I’m happy to be a part of it. Normally, I could keep up without extra help at night— the dinner clean-up, baths, books read to the kids. But with homeschooling now. WOAH. Like, woah. Could. Not. Just....No. Here it is… Here’s the kicker…. Since school started, three times Paul has come home to a house that was not clean. It was mostly clean. It was pretty clean. But it wasn’t that clean that a man who’s been busting his butt to provide deserves to come home to.

I’ve actually typed the words out to him: “I’m really struggling.”

Have you ever had this? A new stage of life. Maybe a baby. Maybe a promotion. Maybe a new house. Maybe, like me, homeschooling. And you can feel the growing pains. You know you are going to make it through but in transit you are looking like one. hot. mess. You’re not just dropping stuff, you are tripping over yourself and falling on your face. Well, if you have—then you know what my life has been like this year. I’ve mostly been a mess. 

And that’s why all this cleaning, pitching, purging, and creating a new vision for my home and how we live in it.

I’m in a good place right now.  A very, very good place. My eyes are not on anyone else’s life. Not the woman who has a man who is home at six (been there). Not on the momma of one sweet and tender, calm maybe, little girl (thought that). Not on the momma I’m going to be when I magically transform (NO effort!) into a well-oiled machine of both gentle nurturer and competent homemaker.

All I’m thinking about is where I am today and what I can do about it. I refuse to feel shame for the paint cans and messy garage, the slow claiming of my space, the past consumerism that stuffed our lives beyond good enough, or my lack of ability to magically transform into super-mommy or super-homeschool teacher.  I'm only thinking about the work. It's true what they say, that it doesn't matter about your past, but in light that it's always time to get to work on the right now.

I’m glad to be here doing the work. I’m grateful for a husband who trusts and believes in me. I’m happy for another beautiful day to be empowered, imaginative, and to pull out weeds and cultivate delight.

The traveler's wife

Every once in a while this dumb thought pops up in my head:

"I KNOW about being the supportive wife to a husband who travels a lot. THAT'S what I should write about on the blog. Encouragement for women who do the same!"

And that's when I remember:

"Oh, wait. That would require me to not be a hot mess about him traveling. It would require me to actually, finally be the "together wife."

And that's when you might be thinking:

"Ashley, surely you aren't really a hot mess when he's gone. What's a hot mess anyway?"

Actually, a lot of you AREN'T thinking that because you are friends and family and know my faults. Shhhh....love you!


I haven't counted the weeks in total, but let me tell you I've put in enough time at this point it should be my second nature to roll with the traveling all easy breezy like. Instead, it's somewhere fall down the list of my traits, falling even below my inclination to put on false eyelashes (once ever).

All things I've done while Paul is gone:

+ avoid the bed like the plague because I don't want to sleep alone, so I set up camp on the couch and do the only thing you can do to make your brain go so numb you completely forget about possible intruders: watch truly ridiculous amounts of reality t.v.

+ circle town evaluating which fast food place has options that are healthy enough that I won't feel mom guilt but cheap enough that I won't feel wife guilt and realizing every time that no such place exists so I go home and make pb&js and settle for just mom guilt with a plot twist of kids grateful for pb&js....again, fanciest of fancy feasts

+ desperately eager for adult talk, I invite a woman into my home for this thing called a "play date" where none of our kids play but insist on needing 90% of my attention, leaving just enough of my energy to start 30 conversations and not finishing one of them. At the end of the "play date", I say goodbye to my friend, close the door, and Thomas asks me why I am crying

+ woken up the next day (which is hardly a thing because when you just camp out at your house for 4 days the time just bleeds together) and looked at my YouTube history and felt that I truly did not know myself anymore

+ gotten into the car on a Thursday and smiled at the kids in the backseat and said "alright kids, to the grocery store!" [pulling out of the garage...into the driveway...looking at the house and the neighborhood...] "Guys, we haven't been out of the house since...Sunday. Oh my gosh, WE HAVEN'T BEEN OUT OF THE HOUSE SINCE SUNDAY!" <blank stares>

+ gone 4 strong days without a whiny text, a desperate call, or so much as yelling at the kids. Ha, 4 days of being some mom goddess of ferocity-- reading calmly, loving generously and laughing the days away only to fall apart on Friday with frantic texts that "I need to get out of this house. I'm about to LOSE MY MIND. Would you be opposed to me leaving the house the second you come home so I can walk around the mall and pretend I'm still normal?"


Just keeping it real for you. Easy breezy like. :)

The Risk (and Gain) of My 1st Year as SAHM

It was this time last year I walked away from my job as a teacher. I grabbed the last few items from my classroom: my portfolio bag, a fake magenta flower arrangement, and a few thank you notes I scrawled last minute to people I hated to leave. I turned in my keys and cried like I was some super hormonal woman overstuffed with babies. Because I was.

If there is something I want to write more about, it’s about being a woman.  If there are things I’ve been avoiding writing about, it’s some things about being a woman. Being a mom. Working. Or “working”. Gender differences. Wanting more kids. Not wanting more kids. Dressing for stretch marks and love handles.. And despite so many of us aware it doesn’t have to be a versus situation with all those priorities most important (schooling, feeding, working, etc.), it still feels like it.

I’ve been at home a year and I’ve found a few great mommy friends that aren’t scared enough by my methods of motherhood (which recently did not exclude hosing down my 4 year old’s naked butt in the backyard with my guests an earshot away) to stop coming over. I love them. I’m so glad to have them for companionship. Sometimes, though, I think of how I don’t quite fit. It wasn’t long ago I was giving them the raised eyebrow. Not them exactly….just all women working (in bunny ears)( and maybe even literally in bunny ears since I've now come to find myself in a host of ridiculous get-ups to buy time) at home.

To my stay-at-home-mom friends, I’m happy to extol the virtue of extended breastfeeding (or what I’ve come to intimately appreciate as lazy parenting) and the tenets of classical education.

To my working friends, I’m happy to pretend that my absence from teaching is akin to stepping out to get some air. In this case, air defined as an unprecedented amount of yelling and crying. Me, not the kids.

A litmus test for my personality is in digesting this statement I will now make on leaving the workforce:

It was, and continues to be, the scariest thing I’ve ever done.

Oh, I know, I know. You’re thinking, wow, that’s pretty lame. And I totally agree, but hear me out.

After you look at my cuties for one teensy second...

1st, there was a loss of half of 100,000, give or take several thousand (but definitely take). And I would care about that being private information except that’s it’s not because I was a public school teacher and I know people would look it up anyway, so I thought I would save them the trouble. Just kidding. You would all just guess that I made crap.  But it wouldn’t matter how well you are off or how much you love the home or your kids, if you aren’t freaked out by losing that kind of money, I just can’t understand. Because I’m evil or something? Moving on.

2nd, there was parenting.  As a working mom, it was easy for me to divert my attention away from my faults as a mom.  I know multitudes of wonderful mothers who are clearly in the captain’s seat despite being away for their 40 (or 50 or 60) hours. I was not one of them.  I rode on the coattails of the daytime care givers. He learned to use a fork? Awesome. You taught him to say thank you? Great! On most days you would have found me in a quiet school (because other mothers had already flung their door shut to snatch up their littles and not miss one more minute) hunched over my desk grading essays like my life depended on one. more. comment. Every one of my teacher evaluations deemed me competent. Almost every one of my experiences disciplining my firstborn deemed me either a. incompetent or b. in a catatonic state.

After a few months at home and some time after the twins were born, I found there was even more to fear.  How a home is ten layers of quiet that is normally okay or great to think in but can cut deep on a bad day.  How my heart shouldn’t rise and fall on my husband’s praise, but it often does because the rest of my conversations bob between comical and illogical musings of a 4 year old.  How it feels to get no more than two consecutive hours of sleep for three months and yet work in close proximity to three beds, two couches, and a dining table that would do just fine. How doing what you believe in is sometimes no fun at all and instead of it being no fun at all with a laughing co-worker, it’s just no fun at all. How not showering in 72 hours feels like you haven’t died of stench and wow, showering after 3 days feels like I just visited a spa...maybe I’ll try this again but not admit that to anyone!. How I’m watering my irrelevancy every time I snuggle up to Thomas and giggle over a few chapters about Ralph S. Mouse or Annie and Jack or Danny and Josh or Christopher Robin or Charlie because my comrades have been reduced to:

a.) People small enough I’m in charge of wiping their butts

b.) Characters in children’s novels

c.) Stay at home moms who have yet to figure out that I’m an imposter

A couple months ago, I went out for a birthday party for a friend I worked with last year. There was some “work talk” at the table. A lot of it. There were also drinks at the table. This combination, in excess (and maybe just the drink part), later culminated to something of a horror scene where I shot up in bed at 3 am to a baby crying in the other room and me with eyes wide open and internally yelling, as if shocked awake from some nightmare, “OH MY GOSH. I’M JOBLESS!!!”

See, even if I was the best mom (hahahahaha, that’s ripe) and we were filthy rich (Richie Rich times three, to be exact), I would still be pretty much freaked out about being off the grid.

One of the cornerstones of my personality is that I’m terrified of risk.  Absolutely terrified. I have to quell panic attacks when people share photos of a tattoo they just got because I’m thinking, Are you sure about that? Oh my gosh, you are sure. Of course you’re sure; you just got it. This is real and already there so I should say something and stop staring. Am I smiling?  Did I say something? Oh wait, I'm staring at Facebook... I’m so terrified of risk that when other people take risks I put on the burden of being terrified for them which is probably good because a lot of you look just fine, if not downright joyful, about the risks you take.  

Leaving the workforce was completely uncharacterisic of me. The only thing as uncharacteristic would be me being a mom...which I am...to three.  So, leaving the workforce to be nothing but mom served up what should have been epic disaster. Oh, and it did. But not like what I mean. There’s been so much nursing and so little showering---that kind of stinky disaster--yes!. But not the identity struggle I anticipated.

Me before the black hole of jumping to SAHMing it:

Outgoing? Nope.

Visionary? Woah. NO. No. No.

Extrovert? Nope.

Leader? Hahahahahahaha.

Nurturing? Hell no. Never been.

Selfless? <silence>

Risk-taker? You’re drunk. Go home.

Here I am, at home, being very much different than what I thought I was.  I’m assertive, decisive, and quick to act. I’m drawing boundaries (aka saying no) with others and teaching my son to respect me and his dad. I’m actively searching for and nurturing friendships. I’m laughing more as I loosen my grip and need for control.  I’m feeling good about being a mom (and I didn’t for a very long time which makes me very sad for time lost feeling crappy). And I’m falling in love all over again with Paul because that’s vulnerability which is risky and I know risky because I quit my job to just be a mom.

I’m so grateful for this past year. Just like any other job, I’ve learned a lot the hard way--that’s H as in hell, heckling, hurl, and hurt. I don’t know how long I get to stay at home or what’s ahead to discover this year. For now, my take away, other than a home and family pretty happy and healthy, is that I loved diving into something scary and finding I’m so much more than the labels I saw as absolutes.  There is no price to put on the freedom of breaking those illusions. 

But if there was a price, I would say it would be half of 100,000 give or take several thousand (but definitely take).

A Day in the Life

When I was working full-time, I carried around a curiosity for what those stay-at-home moms were doing.  Really, I didn't hold an altogether respectful attitude about those on the other side of the fence.  Call it jealousy or ignorance, I wondered why it was the mommy bloggers all too often seemed ungrateful or bored or lazy. Can't they just pull it together and get more done? I mean, c'mon, I'm working AND doing all the things.

And there was a smidgen of nice curiosity too. That kind of daydreaming wistfulness that takes you away from the day job. I wondered what it felt like to be full mommy full on all the time.  A naked wonderment at the women brave enough to stay put. I still wonder the exact same thing even though I'm doing it.  It has taken months of tweaking our rhythm and uncovering tricks, but those are mine--what about everyone else? Even my close mommy friends, the ones I visit with and discipline alongside and send my dramatic texts to, I wonder what their days look like. Not a cleaned up, perfected version.  Just the mundane & beautiful & ordinary all mingled together.

So, without further ado, a real honest-to-goodness boring and uncut look at my life at home (on a pretty typical day). 

Oh, and this version is a wee different than others I've seen. This is ordered by one photo and some related notes per hour. If I included all the things I do in a day around here (or the things I hear or see or think, my goodness), well, we just wouldn't ever escape this post. It would have all of us dribbling boredom out of the side of our mouths.

My day starts at 6:00 with nursing, diaper changes & feeding all the people in general, but I didn't think to do this until...

7:00 

Breakfast dishes. Laundry started. Tidying things up. To do list written for the day. Twins happily playing on their own. And Thomas and I attempt to put new handles in the master bedroom (that I'm slowly, slowly and with a lot of help from my friend, Natahle, redoing). Despite a great deal of morning person enthusiasm on our parts and a competent Youtube video, the ordeal ends in Paul's handle halfway done and mine about a quarter of the way.  So both not done is what I'm saying.

8:00 

Alistair & Emerick are so attached to each other, this is what it looks like when I'm feeding them their breakfast. The other watches and waits (and smiles!).  We've been up for two hours with me primarily working around the house and feeding people, so this is when I give the kids some attention. Supervising Thomas play with his brothers. Tickle the babies. Read some books. Daydream about the days of getting a shower without fear of child destruction and/or destruction of child.

9:00 

The babies are down for their morning nap so Thomas and I step outside.  After a short mommy & son sword fight, because I'm the best influence, I grab all my gear and start thinning through the plants on the east side of the house.  Thomas waters plants, hides behind our Asian maple pretending to be a ninja, and talks to the neighbor so much the neighbor has to excuse himself from conversation (of which I was absolutely zero part of because I'm pulling out more dead excess mass from our plants than there are plants). He also pulls a dead flower behind his back and tells me he will kiss me and I will fall in love with him. Then he will use his magic flower to turn me invisible.

10:00 

I'm sweaty and exhausted from yard work. This, plus a generous amount of humidity rolling into out area, has my hair looking like I lost a fight with a cat whose sole attack strategy revolved around perching on my head. I'm also exhausted by the prospect of managing clothing and bodily function removal for three boys before going to the store and myself looking just like this. This entire hour is spent nursing, changing diapers and clothes & gathering people into and out of the car for the grocery store. 

11:00 

Because I would rather poke my eyes out than go grocery shopping in my "free time" (haha, like I have any of that), I sport around the kids in this fashion.  The twins are super easy. I talk to Thomas a lot about all the food, the meals we are going to make, etc while I point to my grocery list and have him cross words off and sometimes help bag or place foods in the cart. The kid is like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors. He needs your blood (attention & educational fodder) at all times. He did tell me when I pulled into the parking lot spot that he would just stay in the car while I shopped. I definitely considered. 

12:00 

We eat a quick lunch. And here's one of my favorite anchors to our day. Thomas and I cuddle in my bed and read his chapter book. Today, it's Winnie the Pooh. I laugh at the nuance and Thomas laughs because his mom is laughing and because he is vaguely aware Pooh is adorably daft. No matter how our morning has gone, we always read about twenty minutes after his lunch and I let the babies play with each other in their sunroom cage as pictured below. Then, I nurse each baby and read a book to each separately and tuck them into bed as well.  Every day I think I'm going to do some sort of freedom dance by this point (all kids curled into balls and smushed up faces on sheets) but all I can manage is to turn on my warrior woman internal voice who says to not sit down or you will slip into hibernation and surface in three weeks.

1:00

Put away groceries, clean kitchen, and tidy up the house, and picking up my sanity one minute of podcast at a time. And since doing all those things are just about as boring and un-photogenic as you can surely imagine, I present here a random photo of this watercolor beauty I managed earlier this week complemented with, of course, a unicorn Thomas made two days ago. 

2:00

I think one of the things you learn once you've breached the more-than-one-kid zone of parenthood is this: you make food well before you need food. Hunger makes for an oil spill of all kinds of nasty emotions, and that's just when I don't get fed. If we're all hungry at the same time (6:00 am on a lot of days), it's a nuthouse of quakery and crazed lunatics out for some protein, dangit. So, I make roasted corn salsa and clean up the kitchen againagainagainagainagainagain. I mean, what?

3:00 

It's so quiet in the house and it's raining outside. This time of day, during the twins' 2nd nap and during Thomas's nap, is when I make calls, go through mail, send emails, write, etc. I will sometimes take a 20 minute power nap but this is becoming more rare now that I'm getting ample sleep at night. Here I am typing this post about what I was doing yesterday at this time. Get it? I'm typing right now just like I would be typing yesterday. Hey, I never said this was going to be interesting.

4:00

Hey, look! The kids are up and adoring each other.  Routine at this time looks the same way every day: 1. Thomas wakes  2. Snack  3. Thomas plays until he asks for screen time  4. Thomas is given his list of chores for the day and he does them at his own will and supervision (It's ingenius, I tell you--do this if you need space at 4:00 because you are completely spent. Kids have an innate way of navigating a wayward course toward chores which means they become sparse real quick.). I tidy up. Vacuum. Finish a project I started earlier.

5:00

This is a photo of beer. Because discipline. And four year olds. And a traveling husband who is on his way home but will be on a call when he arrives and maybe leave again next week. Judge me, but I won't feel bad at all. Walk a mile. Stay a week. ;) *and the wee black item is a Lego helmet

6:00

The kids adore their dad. I adore their dad. Paul is almost home from a week in D.C. after a week previous in D.C. and this kid, who can be found at any moment of any day moving his mouth or moving his feet but probably both, perched himself on the couch and wouldn't move for ten minutes because he didn't want to miss the moment Paul pulled up. Heart = puddle. 

Welp, friends, that's a day in the life here at the Anderson ranch.  I couldn't quite figure out how to get photos of how stunning I looked doing it all, but I'm sure you can use your imagination.

xoxox

Ash

Notes from a Lonely Housewife

Last Monday, Paul left for a 5 day work trip to Washington D.C.  I got a call that night as I sat in Paul’s parents’ sitting room situated on the other side of the state. Paul said his trip was extended a week and should he fly home in between or just stay there.  We decided for him to stay there and for me to linger around the care of his parents for a few more days. They pour magical cocktails.

Signature look on Alistair. Cautious amusement from cousin Everette. 

Baby Gladiators.

I know a lot of life to be happy accidents. I also feel like some things just are.  Like my decision to be a teacher. My desire to dance. The way my chest gets pulled up in a happy ache as I walk up to receive Communion.

This is how I feel about Paul traveling and his work.  Somehow, the life of a lonely housewife foreshadowed into my fifteen year old heart.  I’m okay with that stretching that happens between us when he’s out of sight, out of state, or just darn unavailable.  It’s okay because I always wanted to be the supportive wife.  When I was 19 and thinking of landing such a role, I had something else in mind: packing a UHaul in our Missouri driveway (I’ve lived here all my life.) and waving goodbye to friends so we could lay down roots in a climate that labels 40 degree weather frigid. Traveling trophy wife.  Instead, I lean over my Missouri kitchen counter and yell past the chocolate stuffed in my mouth that I’ll be right there to wipe Thomas’s butt.

For your pleasure and in no particular order, I present unglamorous details of a wife holding down the house without the better half.  And they all start, because I say so and I’m in charge here, once upon a time…

… I took Thomas to Chic-Fil-A to break up a super bleak and very cold stretch of days with just the kids. Invisible food poisoning on his plate. At 3 in the morning Thomas walked into the bedroom and threw up into his hands. I canceled the playdate for the next day, the only time I would have talked face to face with an adult during the five days Paul was gone.

… I watched 8 parts of a documentary about the Boxing Day tsunami on YouTube with my iPhone in between nursing babies and eating bowls of cereal. End of story.. I watch weird stuff when he’s gone as some twisted preemptive strike against disaster.  Two trips ago it was The Dahmer Files.  Two nights ago it was Blackfish.  I once lay in our big empty bed listening to a 911 call. The comforting phone operator lulled me to sleep.

… Paul walked in the door from a 4 day trip a few months after I had the twins.  On this trip everything went perfectly. I was so together and so great with the kids. I held the twins in my lap on the couch.  Paul walked through the door in mid-afternoon on a call, waved hello and turned the corner to go straight into the office to finish the day’s work. I burst into tears, the babies bouncing a bit until I knew he couldn’t hear me over that conference call.

Oh, but these are the bad stories.  There’s so many great things about Paul traveling (and working a lot) too. Like, how our clumsy re-entry into togetherness has sometimes brought a glass of wine to my lips or how I’ve acclimated to solo parenting by talking to myself a lot and liking it.  Two weeks ago I walked into the family room where I found Thomas stirring his Lincoln logs with a Lincoln log. I threw out my arms and shouted, “WILL YOU PLEASE JUST CALM DOWN. JUST. CALM DOWN” before I stole myself into the other room and started my 3rd podcast of the day.

This trip has been different. Thomas is still at Nana & Papa’s. Paul is still in D.C. The twins occupy each other in the sun room with happy shrieks and swiping of toys.  I really am on my own.  

I’ve actually gotten things done this time too.  I spent time with my sister, Amanda, this weekend shopping and catching up.  I filled out these beautiful baby shower invites for my sister, Andrea, who’s expecting identical twin boys this summer. And I visited Target 3 times in the past 5 days for, among many other little projects, revitalizing our master bedroom. Think soft. Think sheek. Think vavoom. Think the walls will paint themselves?

Thank goodness for Paul’s family for taking me in last week and letting Thomas play “I live here” for another week.  Thank goodness for my sisters (and sister-in-laws too!) for helping me fill the hours. Thank goodness for a wee bit of peace to write this out to you.

Thank goodness for a man still waiting on his trophy wife to bloom.

xoxox

Ash

Thomas arrives sometime tomorrow. Paul arrives tomorrow night. Ba da da da da. I'm lovin' it.

The twins begged me to get a photo with their uncle E. Bunny