Confession: I felt like a failure last weekend.
I’ve been feeling guilty that I’m so tired and sick that I’ve mostly taken to watching the kids play while Tom takes the lead. Last week I decided to change that, and came up with a bunch of Easter crafts we could do, and spent time prepping them. I had big plans for the weekend. We’d make muffins to use up the bananas that were sitting on the counter, do some crafts, and even cut everyone’s hair.
The first sign that things wouldn’t go as planned was when E fought me on what to bake. He really wanted to make pretzels and wasn’t listening to my reasoning that we had bananas to use up. In the end, the muffins were made, but no one was happy. So when he asked for us to take out the slide we’ve been storing in the attic, I figured that was an easy win for him. And it was, until G tripped and fell on the curtains in his room which pulled the rod out of the wall.
So I spent the rest of my morning rehanging and anchoring blackout curtains to the wall. First the one that was ripped out of the wall, and then the other set, because it was probably only a matter of time until those were pulled out too. Curtains that NEEDED to be there by nap time, or we’d all pay the price when G didn’t sleep. Of course nothing is ever easy, so I ended up hitting a steal beam or something at one point. I don’t know why it was there, but it was preventing me from getting the anchor in anywhere near where it needed to be. It forced me to pivot and try something else, but not before I had four half inch holes in the wall and had wasted a lot of time. And then I needed to patch the wall (luckily I’m pretty good at that too).
I finally got it all done, but it took every ounce of energy that I had left, and used up all the time we would have been painting or doing another craft. Haircuts also didn’t happen. It felt like such a waste of a day, and left me so disappointed. I know I shouldn’t be… We did get outside a bunch, and the weather was gorgeous, so that helped. There will also be other weekends for crafting and adventures. I’ll cut their hair next weekend, and maybe we’ll even make pretzels too. But it was still a bummer of a day at a time where there’s not a lot of things to look forward to, and there’s already a lot of disappointment going around…
We have a lot of dreams and ideas when it comes to our house. Some of them we’ve managed to accomplish, and some we’ve pushed off. Sometimes we change our mind after living with a space for a while. I’m a big fan of making your house work for your current life, and being willing to edit it as life changes. Houses aren’t meant to be perfect. Try that weird paint color, give yourself grace over the messy floors (and counters and bathrooms and and and), or turn your dining room into a guest room if that’s what you need right now.
When we first moved in, we brainstormed every possible thing we might like to do, change, add or accomplish while we live here. On that list, but way down the line, was to finish our attic. It was a large empty space that was open with possibilities, and we thought about doing something with it in ten years or so.