Some days are magical. I wake up - refreshed! - and everything just seems to mesh from the very first moment. The baby is easygoing, the older kids wake up at a decent hour (NOT six o'clock), and there's no bickering before breakfast. The dishes get done, a load of laundry makes it through the entire life cycle of wash - dry - fold - put away, and no one spills juice on the computer keyboard. Sometimes things are so perfect I even get a little time to (gasp!) sew. Or knit!
And then, well....then there are the other days. Days when I don't have it together at all, and nothing seems to go the right way. Food gets burned, laundry gets forgotten to sour in the washer, the baby runs out of diapers because I've forgotten to put them in the wash, and if those are the only catastrophes we have that day I count myself lucky.
I'd like to say I'm a domestic wizard. (Wizardess? Sorceress?) Clearly, I'm not.
I might aspire to have all my ducks in a row every single day of the week, and I might wish I was so overloaded with organization (and well behaved children!) that I had time to sew an entire wardrobe from scratch, but then I get over it. Because life? Well, it's not perfect, and I can't always have what I want.
But even, or maybe especially, on the bad days, there are lessons to be learned. Like patience, humility, dealing with disappointment, and appreciating what's right in front of you. And that's something (no matter how small) to hold onto when it seems like the world is falling apart at the seams. On these days, when my temper seems tethered by an impossibly short leash and I'm dangerously close to bursting into tears I just remember that it's the difficult times that make me a better person, a better wife, a better mom.
And when that doesn't help? Well, I just remember that tomorrow is another day, another chance to do better.
Then I toss the kids at their daddy and lock myself in the bathroom for a long, hot shower.
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