Eye--strain

My brain races with ideas and when I slow down to put them into words on the page; I lose so many strands of my thoughts. I usually have lots of different ideas twirling around in my head. Hubby asks me "What are you thinking about?" and my standard response is "In which millisecond?" Today, I'm having more trouble than normal in organizing my thoughts in such a way that will make sense others. I don't know what happened, but my right eye is all swollen. It's my upper eyelid. When it started bothering me yesterday afternoon, I thought I'd gotten a bug bite. But there's not an obvious bite site. And it itches all over my eyelid, especially right under my eyebrow. About an hour ago, my other eye started itching, but I'm telling myself it's sympathetic itching and that this problem won't spread. Itching is one of those things that would be a great torture mechanism. It takes all my concentration not to scratch it (and I've stopped to but ice packs on it a number of times to try to freeze the itch away). Fortunately, it's not too swollen. I can still open my eye easily. I can tell it’s swollen, but it's not like when I was 7 and got poison ivy all over my face and my eyes were almost swollen shut (or like when my sister had a reaction to eye make-up remover and her eyes were swollen shut). In addition, my allergies are in high gear, so my whole head feels heavy. I just want to lie down on the couch all afternoon and watch football. No such luck. Too much to do.

Hubby comes home tonight. Finally. It's lonely in the house without him. The Driver is talking of driving to school this week. She got use to having access to the car. She's not gonna like that her dad has first preference on that vehicle.

Friday was one of those days from hell. I spent the day doing my weekend housecleaning as the Imp was bringing friends home before their dance. To prove Murphy's Law, the toilet in the girl's bathroom got clog...and good. I really hate low-flow toilets and often wonder how much water they really save, when you often have to flush multiple times and when they get clog so easily. This toilet has always seemed more prone to clogging than the one in the master bath (or is it because kids use that one and adults use the master bath? I wonder). I've got a call into a plumber to come out this week to check and make sure we don't have root problems, or something because this commode has become clog on a regular basis this past month. Friday afternoon, I spent at least an hour trying to unclog the toilet to no avail. Finally, we had to leave for the dance. When I got home, I spent another one or so working with a snake and plunger. No luck. I was near tears. Time came for me to pick up the girls and still the toilet was clogged. After picking up the Imp from the dance and the Driver from Hallowscream, I came home and tried again. Sometime around 12:30 am I finally got it working. So what did you do on Friday night? I guarantee it was more fun than what I did.

Having Netflix is a great thing. I've "ordered" lots of old shows to watch (and to introduce my children to, so they have some cultural literacy). I watched the first few shows from Mork and Mindy last night. Robin Williams was soooo young, and so incredibly funny. The story lines are corny, but the one-liners cause belly-ache laughs. The Driver came in and actually watched a whole show. She was laughing out loud, too.

I was helping out at school last week and a mother who had taken the afternoon off of work, commented "sure wish I was a stay-at-home-mom so I could just volunteer whenever I wanted." The image of bon-bon, soap-opera watching women is still strong in society. I can't volunteer at my daughter's school "whenever" because I have a number of other volunteer obligations that I do during the school day. In addition, I stay at home to make our quality of life better. So it's my job to get basic household chores complete, so when we're home as a family we're not spending all our time keeping our house up. Additionally, I spend time preparing meals, sewing costumes, and yes, I even bake cookies for my family. I worked full time with kids. It was not fun. It's extremely stressful. I constantly felt that I wasn't doing what I should both at home and at my job. I made my kids a priority, but still could not give them the time and effort I do now. The Imp use to get up and sit in my lap for 15 minutes as she woke up. After those 15 minutes, I was out the door. So if she wanted 5 extra minutes, I really couldn't give them to her. And even rocking her and cooing to her, my mind would be on my job that day. Hubby and I could have more stuff (better vacation, clothes, cars, etc) if I went back to work. And the lack of structure and the lack of a sense of accomplishment with being a stay-at-home mom aren’t easy. But we, as I've mentioned before, went back to our family life plan...."to raise our children to know, love and serve the Lord." When you have a mission statement, it's easier to decide what the right thing to do is.