Happy and Messy

Not my house. Because you knew I wasn't posting that on here, right? 

“So what do Mom and Dad say about us, then? Our family?” I ask my sister. We’re talking about our parents and their opinions about everybody in the family again, and I start to wonder what they’ve said about me. “Oh, you? They don’t have to worry about you.  They say you’re happy. Happy and messy.” I guess that’s about right. We are happy. And no denying it. We’re messy.

And I guess I wouldn’t prefer sad and neat. Cold and efficient. No, that’s not how I want my life to be.

But I wish I wasn’t so messy. I wish I could transform my space into the pictures I see in magazines, the spaces that so many of my friends have, the ones you, readers, probably have…where there are not toys all over the place, big plastic boxes in the hallway because I need to readjust my storage space in the garage to make room, cluttered mountains wherever there used to be surfaces, miles of laundry piled everywhere. I think I remember, when we moved into this house, that there used to be some counter space.  I wish I didn’t run out of room in my drawers, then start storing clean, folded clothes on top of the dresser, that every flat surface didn’t become a clutter magnet, that any spot in any drawer wouldn’t end up full of something, bulging, stretched until I need a bigger space. I wish I automatically cleaned things up—the kitchen, the laundry—without getting sidetracked and getting behind on everything.

I wish that when somebody called to say they were dropping something off at my house, I didn’t immediately respond with heart palpitations, anxiety, and self-loathing. Seriously—if you want to drop by, you really need to give me a week’s notice, or just pretend you’re in a hurry and have to leave it at the end of my driveway. Because no matter what, I’m going to be totally mortified that you’ve seen our mess and my inability to take control of it.

My house needs to go on a diet. I’ve never watched the show Hoarders because I’m afraid it will hurt my feelings, so please…in the comments…please, please don’t mention Hoarders. I don’t watch it because I am hoping that my space doesn’t belong on it. And if it does, I certainly don’t want to know about it. And know that there aren’t gross things in my house like I hear about on that show...Rat feces, bugs, that sort of thing. There may be more dirt than I'd like, but there are no infestations of anything, although people do keep holding the door open and letting flies in lately. It’s just that that sitting in a room in my house might give you a headache because we have too much stuff for the amount of room allotted to us in our little house.

Right now, while typing this, I’m worrying about the comments. And about what you’re thinking about me. I so want to hide my mess. If you are judging me for this description of my mess, please don’t post it here. Just lie to me and tell me your house is messy, too. Because it’s an emotional issue for me, and sending me to a personal organizer is not enough to fix it. And I’m already a Fly Lady failure. I mean, my sink isn’t even shiny now. And today’s Saturday. I have absolutely no excuse. A shrink? More likely to help, but only after years of sessions.  

My dad’s solution was to build extra storage buildings for his excessive stuff. He went so far as to measure the plastic boxes and build shelves tailor-made to fit those plastic boxes. Somehow, if you organize the ridiculous things you choose to keep forever, it makes things seem better, I guess.

But I don’t want to build new buildings to store more plastic boxes. Not ever.

I look through my girls’ books on their bookshelf. Get rid of some of these, I say. Then they pull out a book and toss it carelessly to the side, and my heart breaks. I remember holding Rosemary, pudgy, big-cheeked, squeezable, lovable, big-eyed, curious, golden-haired Rosemary, while we flipped those pages. We flipped those same pages hundreds of times. I can’t let go of that book. She’s tossing it to the side, ready to let go—and I want to hold on. Forever.  Not that one! Oh, and not the other one over there, either. I remember that one, too…But there’s no more room on our bookshelves, Mama, she says. 

I want to make room. There has to be room. So I stack it horizontally, across the other books. There’s space up there. I can fit this book if I put it that way.

Once, I let her fill a box and I gave those books away. I didn’t let myself look in the box. And I still worry about those books, and if any of them were ones that were really special.

So I’m happy and messy. But not really happy about the mess. And not ready to give up the mess, either.

How do you manage your emotional ties to things?

photo credit: sindesign via photopin cc

The Psychology of Mommy Guilt...and Hair

I am growing out my hair--because my girls need me to have mermaid princess hair instead of the pixie hair I wanted. Well, that's part of the reason. Also,  I believe my husband looks wistfully at pictures of me with longer hair, even though he'd never, ever, ever utter the words, "I wish you'd grow out your hair."

So those are the secondary reasons I'm growing it out. The main reason is that the shorter hair messes with my self-concept enough that I'm sick of doubting myself. Let me explain.

You see, I wanted Hermione Granger's hair--the cut after the Harry Potter movies. I wanted the hair of every girl in every picture on Pinterest under "pixie hair". And I got my pixie cut, and I was elated. I was ecstatic. I was edgy and daring--or at least my hair was those things. And I can "do" shorter hair. I believe I can pull it off. It took me less than 5 minutes to fix, and it always looked good.

Me after my pixie cut. Easy-peasy hair...

I was also freaking out that I might look like a boy, and wondering who the edgy and daring girl in the mirror was when I'm clearly still "feet planted firmly in her secure, stable, and often boring  life Jessica". I felt that I needed girly accessories and earrings all the time so that I'd look feminine.

One day this lady at preschool walked by and said, "Oh! Oh MY! You cut your hair! It's very...interesting." That didn't do wonders for the ole' self-esteem.

Months went by, and I continued to wonder what people thought when they looked at me, and if they weren't talking about why in the world I'd cut my hair, and wondering if they thought my haircut meant that I had left my husband and taken a girlfriend, or if perhaps I'd undergone chemotherapy and they just hadn't known about it, and of course now I was growing it back in. And I also wondered why half the posts on Pinterest under "pixie hair" explained how to grow it out. I mean, if it was a good cut to have, why was everybody getting rid of it? All of these excuses for growing my hair show weakness in me, but what can I say? I thought them, and I admit it.

And now my hair is getting longer and...guess what. I am thinking that perhaps I was better off with it short. It's starting to flip out funny, and I am remembering again how much of a pain the longer hair was to fix, and when I see pictures of it when it was longer, I keep thinking of how much more flattering the pictures of my hair shorter are. 

  

Anyhow, sometime in the middle of the moment this morning when I was looking into the mirror and loathing my hair, I thought of how so many of us look at the decisions we make as mommies in the same way I was looking at  my hair. We don't look at the decisions we make with acceptance, and we don't look at the decision-maker (ourselves) with tolerance. Instead, we pick at those decisions like we'd pick at a rough scab. We pick at them until they ooze.

Acceptance and tolerance: the cure for "Mommy Guilt"?

I guess that's called "Mommy Guilt". Why do we do this to ourselves? I've worked full-time with a baby, stayed at home with a baby and a preschooler, and worked part-time with my kids. And there's one thing I've learned: having kids makes it nearly impossible to achieve a life balance, no matter what setup you have. There are advantages and disadvantages to each setup, and no matter what you choose, you wonder what things would have been like if you'd have chosen differently.

And it's that way with more than the stay-at-home mom vs. working mom debate. We moms have to make choices about public school vs. private school vs. homeschooling, cloth or disposable diapers, the number of and types of activities our kids go to after school, how to allocate money for college, if and when we will allow our kids to have cell phones, who to leave our children to in our wills. 

I have spent hours second-guessing the choices I've made about my hair. I've spent years second-guessing the choices I've made as a mommy. I wonder if, in the end, I wouldn't be happier and everybody involved wouldn't be better off if I would just go with my gut--if I would just make decisions and stick with them. I wonder what it would take for me to stop looking back. 

But you know I'm going to grow my hair so I can get it cut again, and so do I. And then I'm going to grow it right back out again. 

And worrying over the decisions we make about our kids is one way that we love them.

Have you made any big parenting decisions and then second-guessed yourself later? Have you made any big hair decisions and second-guessed yourself afterwards? I'd love to hear about either one!

photo credit: sh0dan via photopin cc photo credit: Neal. via photopin cc

Here are some other great blog posts for you to browse.

 

8000 Things NOT To Do: How Does Your Garden Grow?

This post is part of a series of posts entitled, “I Don’t Know What To Do, But Here are 8000 Things NOT To Do.” This is what my husband suggested as a title for my blog, so I believe it must be a fitting title for this series of posts. I will add to the series as relevant events occur. And believe me—they will. 

Here is one more thing NOT to do:

Today we planted a garden. 

 

Yes, it’s the end of May—sort of late for planting a garden. But Rosemary’s New Year’s Resolution (you can read about mine here) was to plant a garden, and we’ve been busy with ball and ballet and work and life and stuff, and it’s rained a lot, and sometimes it has been cold outside, and we had “technical issues” with our tiller, and had to find time to make a trip to Lowes, and…well,  anyway, the fledgling plants and seeds are out there in the dirt. 

The Evolution of Grumpy Mom

Let me tell you about my morning, listener out there. This morning, I woke up 6 painful minutes late. 7:06 am. Those 6 minutes cost me any sanity I might've maintained as I prepped the girls (and myself, sort of) for school. You see, they woke up early this morning. A whole hour EARLY. 6:30 am. And I woke up 6 minutes LATE. This means that they plugged into the television, which I typically don't allow in the morning, and they even had time to start a second show while I was in the shower--and it's that fatal second show that throws everything off. By 6 minutes.