Amish Country Home by Carl Valente

I may say that I work best under pressure, but I crave the peaceful happiness in this picture. There is too much going on in my little corner of the world. There's good stuff, like planning for school next month, and heavy stuff, like our struggling church, and difficult stuff, like a six year old who thinks he 16 or 60 (the rolling eyes, the know-it-all attitude, the "Listen, mom, it's like this") - oh my word. Sometimes stuff just seems to take over my life.

But my big problem lately, and you'll just have to trust me - it is a big problem, is me. I'm letting everything get to me until I'm not getting to anything. One problem leads to another and while I'm busy thinking about those problems, three more crop up. It's like laundry...first you just skip doing it one day, then you're running late because your kid is out of socks. And when you're late maybe you yell "hurry up" one too many times and maybe your kid has a melt down from the stress. Maybe. And maybe you're so exhausted from the day that when bedtime finally rolls around you veg out in front of soapnet instead of doing the laundry. And, again, this is all purely hypothetical. But my point is, "taking a break" or giving myself some "me time" doesn't really seem to help. The work just waits for me and, since it's bored, it reproduces. And then I'm more discouraged than I was when I started. And I don't intend to live my life discouraged, always wishing for my next time away.

Meredith shared today that she's ready to snap out of it - I think she called it Better Wife Bootcamp:) If anyone has a good reason to take it easy and let some things slide, Meredith surely does! But I'm so glad she wrote this post today.

So I sat down to make a plan of attack...it's not a full bootcamp, but hopefully it will be a start.

• I must have a clean (clean! not just straightened up!) kitchen before I go to bed every night

• all the laundry gets washed and dried today, folded and put away tomorrow


• no tv tomorrow - a trip to the library, the swimming pool and helping Mommy should keep everyone busy


• set my alarm to get up in the morning in time to fix Casey breakfast

Now, to get to work...