this is not my year

I think I've heard it said that whatever you're doing at midnight on 12/31 is something you can expect to do a lot of in the coming year.  At midnight 42 minutes ago, I was lying next to my son while he went to sleep much too late and praying that God would help me be better.  This shouldn't make anyone think that I'm a wonderfully pious person because the truth of it all is that I'm not... and that sad little fact occurred to me just then and so I said some prayers about it.  It hit me all of the sudden how selfish I've been being about a lot of things but especially (unfortunately) toward God.  Losing faith in one's church family is no reason to give up and stop trying.

There.

I said it.

And that's all I'm going to say about it.

I also want to go on a little about new year's resolutions and how I think they're pretty much a crock and I don't really do them, but I do have some hopes and thoughts about 2009 that I wanted to put down somewhere.

As I was lying in bed with my son (before I settled into any kind of serious thought patterns), I was noticing the general clutter of my bedroom and thinking about how nice it felt just a few nights ago to lie down in a very clean house.  It really brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction just knowing everything was in its place (for the most part) and that I had a clean house to wake up to.  Maybe that's a chick thing... I don't really know.  I'll admit that some days, I fart around and don't get the laundry done and sometimes the toilet could stand to be cleaned and it doesn't happen because I just don't feel like it.  For the most part, though, when things don't get done it's because I'm doing way more important stuff like sitting on the couch with my kiddo watching Blue's Clues or building something really tall out of blocks so he can knock it over or, ya know, playing peekaboo through the crack in the laundry room door.

My point here is that tomorrow my baby is going to be another day older and another day closer to not being a baby anymore.  And guess what... the laundry pile may be another day older too (and a little taller) and the toilet may need to be cleaned even worse, but those things are still gonna be there needing to be done.  And the day after my baby isn't a baby anymore... they'll still be there needing to be done.

And furthermore... in May I'm getting another little bundle to add into the mix, so I'm sure it will bring with it tons more way important stuff to do.

So, maybe someday I'll be the person who doesn't have several purses hanging on her bedroom doorknob and a bottle of nail polish sitting on top of a CD on top of the television.  Maybe someday I will be so on top of getting my laundry done and so there on getting my toilet shiny that people are gonna be like WHOA.  Maybe someday I'll hang up clothes when I take them off and wash dishes as soon as the meal is over and put things where they go instead of on the kitchen table or counters.  But I don't think this is my year for that.

Maybe someday I won't have a junk drawer that you have to talk into closing and maybe someday all of my closets and the garage will be in order, too.  I don't think this is my year for that either.

Maybe someday I won't lead people to believe that I have only ONE junk drawer...

I think what I'm getting at in a rather long-winded fashion (if you can only imagine that) is that this is not my year to strive for perfection of any sort.  I've let myself get way too caught up in worrying about attempting to keep the house perfect, making the perfect grocery list with all the coordinating coupons, and worst of all trying to keep up some grander illusion of myself than what I really am to fit into what other people think I should be.

Well... this is not my year for all that... and I'm not going to do it anymore.

And in 2009 I hope to...

...achieve the best version of myself and to be satisfied with whatever that is.

...be a good wife and mama based on my standards and what's pleasing to God.

...let God make me better and to seek that on a daily basis.

...be able to stop focusing on negative people and things.

...think/care less about what people think of me and my family.

...play with kiddo #1 a whole lot and produce a healthy and whole kiddo #2 (and then play with that one a lot as well!).

...read a lot.

...write when the mood strikes.

...and maybe learn to sew a little better.

With all that being said... happy 2009! And goodnight to all.

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postdiluvian post

I don't know if I spelled that long word in the title correctly, but I know what it means so I get points for it anyway.

I have to expound upon the day's adventure... because there always is one, you know...

My plans for today involved a lot of laundry, as much crocheting as possible (to finish up Christmas gifts), and wrapping presents in any spare time I had.  So after breakfast I got right on top of the laundry and did, lemme think about this... a load of colors and had a load of socks going in the washer.  The socks were washing away and I had already finished folding and putting away some stuff that had been sitting the basket waiting on me and getting wrinkly, so I wasn't in the back of the house folding anymore (unfortunately).  At some point, thought, I came back to the bedroom to do something (no clue what), and thought I could hear water running in my bathroom.  The bathroom door was shut which muffled the noise, so I figured I was just hearing water in the pipes from the washer draining.

I got a little closer to the door... and the water noise got louder.

I opened the bathroom door and there seriously had to be a waterfall happening... it was loud.

The faucet wasn't on, so it had to be something going on with the toilet or the shower.  So, I started into the bathroom to check it out...

... only to find myself WADING in water up to the bottoms of my pant legs.  I'm pleased to say that I refrained from cursing because (you're just going to have to take my word for it) I do not make a habit of using fowl language, but for whatever reason when I'm taken by surprise or am startled or am about to be rear-ended by a very large and quickly approaching red truck, it's the first thing out of my mouth.  I think I said "schneikies" (thank you, Tommy Boy).  Whatever the case may be, it wasn't anything worse than that, and I really felt like that was worth mentioning.  Maybe my subconscious is becoming better behaved...

But I digress...

So yeah, there was water pouring over the side of my shower stall.  Don't panic too much... it's just a step-in shower, not a full-on bathtub.  That really would have been terrifying.  Not that it wasn't... because it was.

The first thing I noticed was that I had set my foot down right next to my little electric shaver deal which was, of course, plugged in.  Thank the good Lord above that He was looking out for me and I didn't get electrocuted.  The next thing I did was either call David or turn the breaker off for the back part of the house... I don't remember what I did first.

Regardless... at some point, I called David and said something like, "There's water like pouring out of my shower, what do I do?" and his response was, of course, "Call your dad," which is what everybody says when practically anything goes wrong.  Computer crashing? Call your dad.  Transmission fell out on Plano road? Call your dad.  Having a mental breakdown because you're newly married and can't figure out how to live with another person in your space? Call your dad.  Bathroom flooding? You get the picture...

Another aside here... my mom will tell you that she is not electronics savvy and it's pretty darn often that their small collection of remote controls gets the best of her.  Every grandchild that knows how to speak so far knows the solution when Mam-ma's about to lose it because she can't get the TV and the DVD player to jive: "Call Poppy."

So I called my dad and basically all I had to say was, "There's water coming from the drain in my..." when he delivered the joyous diagnosis that the septic tank was backed up and I needed to call somebody to come pump it out.

Now there's a fantastic occupation.  How does one settle on septic tank work? It's like proctology or driving the dead wagon or working at Wal-Mart.  Four guys came and dug a hole in my back yard.  One of them literally sat on the side of hole and stared down into it... another one stirred.  Yes, I know... lurvely.

What is the dead wagon, you may ask? It's a large truck in which a man drives from farm to farm collecting any dead livestock.  I assume they do this year round, but it's really the most obvious in the summer.  And you, ya know, hold your breath when you see you're gonna meet him on the road... and, ya know, dead carcasses swell and split open and stuff like that.

I think I'd still rather do that than deal with other people's crap for a living.

Back to the topic at hand... obviously when I turned the washer off, the water eventually stopped running out of my shower.  It was such a mess though... oh my gosh, was it a mess.  And after the dudes came and took care of stuff (p.s, there was a root growing into our septic line, by the way), everything drained properly and did fine.  So, everything was happy in Carter land again.

I still had to clean BOTH bathrooms, though... since water backed up into the tub, too.  Errr... not pleasant, but oh well.

We discovered through all this though that Scotty is capable of sleeping in the daybed in his room.  I would explain how this relates, but it's another long tangent and I'm sure anyone who's reading this is utterly exhausted and probably a little (or a lot) confused by now.

There's my interesting story for the day.

Oh and...

Amount of laundry done = 2 loads 

Number of presents wrapped = 3

Amount of crocheting accomplished = zip, zero, zilch-a-roonie

Best laid plans...

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