Help

Before you start, this is a whiny post. Get out now while you still can, or keep reading but don't say I didn't warn you.

I am a bad playdate partner. I am terrible at having people over. You want my kids over, great. They are yours anytime. I will even deliver them to you. But I rarely let my kids have friends over. I am in serious playdate debt to about five families in the area who routinely have mine over to play but whose children have yet to grace my kitchen floor with their footprints.

Why? Lots of reasons. For one, I am shy. It takes a great deal of effort for me to pick up the phone and call someone. I get nervous having to leave voice mail messages for Mike even. It's bad, so I hate having to call other parents. I can do it in person, but not on the phone. I don't know why. So it is either spur of the moment pick up at school or in the church foyer. Don't ask me to call you later please. I probably won't.

The other reason is that my house is a disaster. No, I won't post pictures. That is something I am not willing to share with the world just yet. There is very little room to play in the bedroom, as most of the floor is covered with toys. Our living room doubles as a playroom but until just this week (get ready, shocking confession) has been inhabited by Christmas trees. I would send them outside but it is freezing, and by the time it warms up the yard will be overtaken by fire ants and poison ivy. So I am reluctant to have children over. Not that children are the problem, they usually don't seem to care about the clutter or the dust as long as there is a good quality snack and a wide selection of interesting toys. But such children usually come with parents, and well- I am sure you understand.

Here is the problem. You know that piece of advice everyone always gives to new moms, or working moms, or college students, or whatever. Usually some version of "Do what is most important and let the rest go," or "Your children won't remember if the floor was mopped or the shelves dusted, but they will remember if you read to them or played with them."

I HATE that advice. I want to throw the phone when someone tells me that after I have just told them how overwhelmed or frustrated I feel about the condition of my surroundings. I am not the kind of person who feels at home surrounded by piles of laundry, or prefers wrinkled skirts, or doesn't notice the crumbs on the floor and the dust on the shelves. In fact it makes me downright uncomfortable. But I have been heeding the above advice for about four years, and I am about sick of it.

First it was because we moved to GA, 600 miles from closest family, 3,000 miles from what I called home. The transition was rocky. Our apartment was too small, there was no storage, Mike was just sarting a high stress job with odd hours. So I did what I could, he helped when he could, and tried to make the best of the storage boxes left in the living room.

Then we bought a house- all space issues solved! I started working 2 months later, before I really had the chance to get organized and settled like I wanted, Mike started taking classes full time after work, and our car started on what turned out to be a chronic problem of dying at just the wrong time. Mike proved to be allergic to anything growing so the yard got neglected. Andy hated preschool and Lenna hated kindergarten and we all had adjustment issues. So we "did what needed to be done" and left the rest.

Then I got pregnant, then I wasn't, then I was. And it sucked. Then Mike got sick and couldn't be fixed, and chronic pain kept him from doing anything but sitting and plastering on a neutral face while tolerating intolerable pain. And when it came down to "prioritizing" we settled on clean clothes, clean laundry, and food. The rest was neglected. After I whined enough he tried tackling the yard work and ended up in the ER. I was given the choice of quitting my job early or spending my"off hours" in a reclined position, so we really had to scale back to doing "just enough to get by".

Then we had a baby. And no one has adjusted. Lenna cries at the drop of a hat, Andy is always angry, and Mike winces when he has to pick up the baby. Did I mention he lost his job, too, and that several miles of government red tape are keeping him from the new one? And me, well, I am writing this post. And barely holding it together.

I wait for the moment when I can turn off the lights and not see what two years of "just the essentials" has left in every corner. I pray that the car won't break down, the baby will stop crying, that Mike will heal or at least find a useful treatment approved by the restrictive government HMO, that Andy won't grow into a delinquent, and that Lenna's heart won't break the next time the obnoxious seven yr old down the street tells her that her room is so messy that the police are going to come and take her away to foster care (self preservation note: it isn't dangerous or neglectful, just a toy explosion from combining two bedrooms into one to make room for a crib).

And so I ask you, how long can a family survive on "just getting by?" Because it isn't working so great over here. And what can I do to get to that other place, beyond just the essentials? Remember, you can't tell me to just do the important stuff and let the rest go, because the rest is taking over to the point that I can't get to the important stuff either. And please don't show up on my door with storage bins and a mop. I won't let you in, it would be too humiliating.

And yes, I know I need help. And I am getting it- but therapy and medication won't put more hours in the day to get the mopping done, or make the baby stop crying, or rake the leaves, or fold the clothes, or fix the car, or file a years worth of papers, or heal the tiny broken hearts that have been so neglected recently. And although I am confident that it will help me to get up and going during the day, instead of wanting to curl up in ball and put my hands over my ears whenever the baby cries or the kids need dinner, it won't put the toys away or vacuum the rug.