Yes, my house is always clean and my life is always perfect except for NEVER.

Yesterday was rough. Like super-de-duper rough. Like every time I turned around I'd start crying.

Why, you ask?

Let me back up a moment.

I came home from my morning work out which on Tuesday is awesome because on Tuesdays I get on the treadmill, set my incline, speed and time and then totally space out watching Shameless. It's my second time watching the show all the way through (not to brag or anything) but I like it because when I'm feeling like my life is a hot mess I think, "Damn, at least I'm not Fiona." I was watching This Is Us on the treadmill. You definitely don't want to do that in a public place or people will think you are completely loony tunes. One minute you are actually sobbing and  dribbling snot all over the place and the next minute you are snorting from laughter. Those writers are totally amazing at tapping into every single emotion you are capable of feeling in a span of 15 seconds. But, like I said, you do that shit in public and people will think there is something VERY wrong with you.

Anyway, I came home from working out and I was ready to face the day. My back porch got over run with spider webs and cottonwood leaves last fall and I left it all. All of it. Cushions, rug, everything because truthfully I didn't have room to store all of it in my house. I put on my proverbial big girl pants and my actual sunglasses and got to work. I stripped all of the pillow and cushions of their covers, threw them in the wash, took the sectional apart and put the pieces in the yard, moved the table and took the rug to the driveway, sprayed and washed the rug, sprayed and washed the sectional pieces, swept the porch, hosed down the porch, washed the windows (because the back of the house faces east and the mornings point out daily what a mess the window are as the bright sunlight lights up the dirt, grime and dust for all in the kitchen to see) and then started to put everything back together.

I went inside and thought this would be a great time to take a picture of my kitchen because the sunlight was so pretty coming through my newly washed windows. And check it out...it really does look amazing- clean, tidy, just...so.




It looks like I'm ready to sit down with a cappuccino in my favorite mug and get started on writing something.

Awwwww snap. Empty. Looks can be deceiving, yo.


Here's the thing that I realized as I took those first two pictures. When you turn around there's a vacuum cleaner, the evergreen plants I JUST (yes, almost middle of April) removed my the table display, Windex, the girls' breakfast dishes on the counter, some lingering bath bombs from the chemistry experiments this weekend and million other things that are just out of place. Look behind the table and there's my sewing machine which is waiting patiently to work on some new window treatments along with some random fabric and cases for Fabulous Phony Ponies that need to be completed and look at that pile of rags on the floor all gross from washing the windows.



Suddenly my house doesn't seem so clean, tidy nor Instagram-worthy. The dining room seems like an oasis of perfection in a sea of a disaster. The sea of life.

And that's when it hit me. We've been living on an oasis lately but all around me a storm was crashing in.

(back to the crying that I started off with...remember that? Man, as my ex-husband would say, I really built you a clock to tell you what time it is)

We've been in Texas for 10 months and I thought things were going well over all. Sure I feel weird sometimes because I can't really be myself. Frequently, I smile and am friendly and people look at me like I'm going to ask them for something. Definitely different than the Midwest. Don't even bother trying to make a joke with a stranger here, they'll look at you like you need to be committed (remind me to tell you about the time I invited my neighborhood of 3K houses to a girls' night out and no one showed up except the girls I dragged with me). And then there's Agnes who occasionally cries herself to sleep but Margot and Edith both just made National Junior Honor Society and Agnes got moved to a higher class back in January so surely things are OK.

But they're not. No matter how many curtains I hang or light fixtures I change out this place isn't home for us. Not yet anyway.

Margot broke down on Sunday night and told us how miserable she was and how she holds it together for the other girls. Gru and I were taken aback. I knew she talked about doing her senior year of high school back in Wisconsin and she really wants to go to UW but then she started relaying the teenage side of what I've been going though. People here are different she explained...they wear make up and are all formal (dress code sucks, y'all...I'm with her- she misses leggings, baggy sweatshirts and Birks...basically college-wear- nothing scandalous but you know #texas) and are concerned with wanting boyfriends and she just misses her group back home that she could play Mario Brothers, catch fireflies, makes projects, create cheer routines, do acro-yoga and basically be herself with. I feel, girl, I feel.

She then presented a Power Point presentation (no shit...she did...kids these days, man) about what she wanted to do this summer. At first it broke my heart, like shattered me that she was so sad she came up with this plan. It came down to her making a pretty big choice for next year that I'm so torn on but all I can do is have faith that it will all work out. I will give more details as we make a final decisions and arrangements but man, I'm getting a small taste of that bittersweet feeling of when people let their babies go off to college.

But I really started to think that I need my dining room table to be clean because I need to feel normal in some ways to help stabilize even if the kitchen counters are a disaster. If you let the whole house be a disaster it becomes a very difficult task of where to start to clean...if you have one room, just one place that's clean, you can use that as your epicenter to start pulling yourself and your house out of the pit of despair it's become. It's the same with this move I think. If I give up on everything and curl up in the fetal position it's not going to help anyone. I have to keep positive, I have to keep an open mind and I have to keep going. I have to be the epicenter for my girls so they have something to grab onto when they are feeling despair. That doesn't mean I can't start crying and have moments of pity but I have to be that clean dining room table for them.

ACCC, who has decided that I AM a cheap, chic chick but with that comes all of me...the part that loves fashion, the part that has a family, the part that hates working out but loves cheese...I see this blog being more useful as I allow all of me to be here and not just the home bargains and decoupaged pumpkins part of me...

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