Take It or Leave It

Try as I might to be like Martha Stewart or June Cleaver, I am just not that kind of mom.  I am messy and disorganized, but not disgustingly so.  I have good intentions, but sometimes my food just ain't pretty.  Let's face it, so long as it tastes good, who cares?  I do enjoy cooking, and even it is not perfect, I will cook as long as the effort is appreciated.  Maybe it's petty, but if you complain about my cooking on more than an occasional basis, then it will taste like the festering resentment that I will be cooking it with.  Not so appetizing, but true.  I suppose love is a magic ingredient in food, and resentment is it's evil twin.

I am not the one who would ever enjoy people just stopping by.  I don't appreciate it and find it more rude than flattering. I'm sure this is because I am not the neatest of people and the house is always in some stage of being cleaned.  Sometimes it's the laundry that is out in its assembly line before getting put away, and sometimes I don't have time to do the breakfast or lunch dishes until I'm making dinner.  So, a phone call, even from down the street, isn't too much to ask.  Since I don't like it done to me, I don't do it to others. The only people allowed to just drop in are those who I know love me despite my messy house and screaming kids.  Once you're that close to me, I've got nothing to hide, sucks for you, haha.  Then again, if you have the nerve to be one of those pestering people, then you should be forced to sit in the middle of my chaotic life for that amount of time and pretend to be me and see how far you get with your chores before all the kids get home and the insanity ensues.  Scratch that, if you handled it better than me, I'd feel like crap.  Just call first people, is all I'm saying.

I keep telling myself that if I had more time during the day that I could get things done.  Somehow, I just don't believe that.  I used to when I was younger.  However, as my old age is settling in on me, I've noticed that the free time I do have I tend to horde.   Would you rather finish the laundry than take a long hot bath if you had the rare opportunity for one?  I have to schedule time for Hubby to come home a little early in order to grab an extra twenty minutes to keep the grays at bay.  If I need to basically make an appointment for that, then I really do not have much time to pamper anyone, much less myself.  So, after a long hard day of chasing four kids I am usually so exhausted that pass out as soon as I go horizontal, but only after at least an hour of mind-numbing veg-out time.  If I don't give myself time to slow down my mind, I can't sleep at all.  And it's not the productive kind of sleeplessness where I can actually get things done.  It's more like my body can't move, but my mind is racing incessantly almost to the point of making me nauseous.  So, when I have an accidental extra fifteen minutes or so, you could probably find me piled up with kids taking a nap.  This way, if the move, I'm up.  Yes, I do feel lazy taking those few minutes every so often, but I am a very strong believer in "if Mom's not happy, no one is".  That's not to say that I purposely make my family miserable when I'm in a bad mood.  But who wants to cook and clean and yada yada yada when you're cranky and unappreciated.  Okay, maybe not completely unappreciated, but underappreciated anyway.  Again, I am not that girl.  I do, however, give fair warning to any and all who cross my path.  Then it's their own fault if they choose to ignore it.  I mean if I ask you if you put a new bag in the can when you took out the garbage and you said "yes", then I expect there to be a bag in the can.  Usually, I'll show you the bagless can and stand there while you insert said bag.  On my cranky days, you will find the can full of all the garbage that I intended to put in the bag.  Then, if you don't notice and the garbage gets full, I expect it to be put in a bag and the can hosed and sanitized and the surrounding area swept up and the garbage emptied from around the house....... in other words, sucks for you.  Heed the warnings people!

It's a good thing that I'm usually easy to get along with and I don't hold grudges.  I also bend over backwards for those that I care about, so I'm not too evil after all.  Though, I did come across this little ditty on the web a bit ago, it made me laugh:
Girls Are Evil