Laughing Through My Dusty Tears

It's been seven days since I last posted. I feel like I should precede that last sentence with "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned" and I'm not even Catholic.

I had to dust off my laptop when I turned it on. That might be sad. No, it is sad. Of course, we watched The Dark Knight (Thank you Easter Bunny!) Sunday afternoon and I noticed this morning that the case sitting on top of the DVD player is covered in dust. Have I mentioned we're getting new windows and oh, how glad I am to be getting them? Living on a dirt road with 32 year old windows just pretty much sentences you to a life of dustiness. July cannot get here quick enough - of course, I have a feeling our Amish friend is dreading coming back onto the property.

I am prone to self-diagnosing and I have recently come to the conclusion that I suffered from SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder - this winter. I lost interest in pretty much everything other than sleeping and eating and my hiney is loud and proud out there proving it. This is something new for me because winter is always my favorite time of year and I loathe summer. I finally feel like I'm human again and am slowly getting back into the swing of things. It's time to drag out my FlyLady folder again and get back into routines and shoes and dusting and living. It's time to start posting to this blog more often than twice a month and time to enjoy it again. Awhile back someone asked me why I had stopped posting and my reply was, "Because my life isn't funny anymore. My kids aren't even funny." Really, though, I don't think life or my kids stopped being funny, I think I just got too bogged down in my own yuckiness that I stopped seeing it. I'm glad I'm laughing again.

Of course, my family isn't as glad. They've just enjoyed the heck out of the fact that for the last four or five months we have been happy as pigs in slop here in our dirty house and that I haven't cared how messy it's gotten. I haven't been following them around harping about shoes in the living room, hairspray buildup on the bathroom counter, dishes in the sink or the fact that I had to buy Abby new socks because all of her disappeared. AGAIN. Nah, I've just let my little piglets wallow and I've been there wallowing, too.

I knew I had gotten depressed and down this winter and that I'm coming out of it when I walked into the bedroom the other night and busted into tears at how messy it is. I love our bedroom because it's HUGE and I have a pretty comforter and my bed is big and pretty and there are pictures on my dresser .... but now it's just a cluttered room. And my comforter? Haven't seen it. If you happen upon it send it my way, willya? For all I know it could be out running with scissors. I think I saw it in a corner a few months back but I cant' be sure and didn't have a stick handy with which to poke it. I don't just go pulling things out of a corner, ya know. Dangerous behavior, that. The pictures of my family which cover my dresser and used to look like the old opening scene of All My Children now looks like a haunted house and I'm pretty sure my Granny Glenn wouldn't be happy about the fact that she and Grandpa are covered in about 1/4" of dust right now.

Saturday Paul was at work, the sun was shining, the kids and I had no plans and it was like all of a sudden I woke up. We cleaned. We dusted. We vacuumed. We threw away. We found socks. Abby now has enough socks to cover the piggie-toes of a small third world country. (And if you're curious as to where I found socks? Her desk drawer, floor vent, under the bookcase, back corner of her closet, a small tote sharing space with a few KidzBop CDs, the box her sleeping bag came in at Christmas, stuffed behind her boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia....want me to go on?)

It's not done yet. There's still clutter and dust and excess excess but we're getting there. We managed to get rid of a badminton rack that had long been un-badmintonable and the packaging from every crappy Dollar Tree toy he's ever purchased - yay Sam! We tossed out a Disney Princess calendar from 2006 AND four tubes of lipstick that looked like they had been eaten - yay Kady! We bagged up 40 gazillion candy wrappers and tossed out one petrified piece of popcorn chicken that had taken up residence in a dresser drawer - yay Abby! We pulled all of the fishing/hunting lodge-themed paraphenalia that has long since stopped bringing joy and had only been providing a place for the dust in the house to have rowdy parties and big dusty keggers down off of the mantle and now there are only three pictures of our gorgeous children - yay Paul and me! We have so much more to do but we're getting there.

It won't be long and I'll feel like opening the front door when the Schwan's Man drives up and I'll be posting here so often you won't be able to keep up with the hilarity.

I'm laughing again.