Frustration

As I rushed to straighten up our TV room yesterday - arguably the focal point of our house, not because of the TV, but because of its proximity to the kitchen - in order to get it vacuumed before Little Man got too grumpy playing in his bed upstairs, I paused when I came to this corner of the room and realized what an apropos cross-section of our/my life currently it represented.

Despite the fact that Graham is sitting up now and can entertain himself pleasantly for extended periods (of 20-30 minutes) and is napping pretty regularly and newly sleeping through the night (she mention reticently and with fingers crossed) and the fact that I have a helpful, responsible, largely self-sufficient 5 1/2 year old underfoot, my life remains a messy muddle and my days are often marked with frustration.  Frustration with my inability to "get it together" and get more than the basics of meal-making, dish-washing and a bare minimum of laundry done.  I end most days wishing I had just a little bit more sense of accomplishment.  

Despite my best efforts, yesterday, what little sense of accomplishment I did have was from getting the kitty litter changed, it so rarely gets done in a timely fashion.  Unfortunately, that accomplishment was offset by the sticky mess I made on the floor by knocking over the container of freshly-baked S'mores Cookies, which spread they're ooey-gooey marshmallow creme centers all over the floor.  It's one step forward, two steps back most days around here.  Today, when I have time for those chores, I've instead spent it typing this post.  Matching time availability and motivation is a challenge, too.

The kitchen remains a perpetual mess, only reigned in at night, after the kids are in bed, which spontaneously combusts during breakfast the next morning.  The to-be-filed pile grows on my desk, the digital photo album I started weeks ago goes untouched (even though I somehow whipped through 4 annual albums in April).  I can't even get a row of knitting done before someone needs me during the day, or I just give out at night.

The stool in the photo above above holds my current knitting project, a lovely "Sugar Maple Shawl" that I started over a year and a half ago and have run into multiple obstacles with, some not even of my own doing (yarn shop employee told me to pick up stitches the wrong direction, so after picking up 100+ stitches the wrong direction, I had to rip them out).  One row takes 20-30 minutes to complete now, as I add stitches every row.    

Next to it is one of Jeremy's Star Wars Legos that he and Gideon assemble together and then Gideon flies around in battle; unfortunately the assembled ships are made more for looks than actual battle and they fall apart easily, leaving Lego crumbles helter-skelter around the house.  

Underneath the shawl is Charlotte's Web, one thing we have managed to finish around here - twice.  Going for three times now; Gideon loves it and I don't blame him, I find many of the passages relaxing and beautifully written.

The pink basket next to the stool is Graham's toy basket and is most representative of my life - it gets dumped and refilled several times a day.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Chasing my own tail.  But he never tires of the routine, and I'm happy he can play and be curious and enjoy looking at the same things over and over and over and over and over - oops, drifted off there - again.

The glue bottle on the lamp table is from when we made flubber over a month ago; the remainders of the projects we do complete are omnipresent.  The washed out book next to the glue bottle is a square-foot gardening book.  After ripping out the original, now-too-shady garden plot last fall, we planned to make a raised-bed garden for this year (because weeding is something I don't do at all - talk about not being able to get ahead); now we're hoping just to get the beds constructed before fall begins in just a little over a month.

School starts next Wednesday for Gideon and while my heart skips a beat at crossing into a new phase and I know I'll miss Gideon terribly, I am looking forward to fewer games of dominoes and maybe, possibly, hopefully just a little more time for feeling a sense of accomplishment, of making even just small progress in my days - is that terrible? I do try to remind myself that this is just a phase and that someday, I'll be able to keep my house neat and tidy and clutter-free - and will probably be bored to tears with the order and quiet and ability to follow my thoughts to their end.  I will miss these messy, muddled days, and I hope I won't look back and feel like I spent too much time wishing I could clean instead of just being with my boys, who are already growing up so fast.  A whole other kind of frustrating!    

The crickets sang in the grasses.  They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad, monotonous song.  "Summer is over and gone," they sang.  "Over and gone, over and gone.  Summer is dying, dying."  

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever.  Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into fall - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Everybody heard the song of the crickets.  Avery and Fern Arable heard it as they walked the dusty road.  They knew that school would soon begin again.  The young geese heard it and knew that they would never be little goslings again.  Charlotte heard it and knew that she hadn't much time left.  Mrs. Zuckerman, at work in the kitchen, heard the crickets, and a sadness came over her, too.  "Another summer gone," she sighed.  Lurvy, at work building a crate for Wilbur, heard the song and knew it was time to dig potatoes.

"Summer is over and gone," repeated the crickets.   "How many nights till frost?" sang the crickets.  "Good-bye, summer, good-bye, good-bye!"

The sheep heard the crickets, and they felt so uneasy they broke a hole in the pasture fence and wandered up in to the field across the road.  The gander discovered the hole and led his family through, and they walked to the orchard and ate the apples that were lying on the ground.  A little maple tree in the swamp heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety.

- Chapter XV, Charlotte's Web