New Rules for the Heart of the Home

OK, so today was a bit of a disaster--huh, a bit?...no, it was a major catastrophe, in my mind at least. There were at least three times today when I stood shaking as I stared at my whining children/messy house/laundry piles/dirty dish piles/mirror reflecting my unkempt appearance/unedited MOPS newsletter/unfinished sewing projects. Shaking? Yes, well, when you have only God's grace barely keeping you from throwing the nearest object as hard as you can against the wall, the resulting physical response is shaking--at least for me.

As I sit here analyzing what drove me to such emotional extremes today, I realized several things. One, motherhood is a vacationless job. Two, when my kitchen is a mess, so is my heart. I can't do anything about the first so I will begin to address the second.

I prepare and clean up three meals and two snacks in the kitchen every day. It is the gateway to the laundry room, where I load and unload at least one pile of laundry a day. It is the current residence of one yet to be potty-trained or named puppy. It is the location of the refrigerator from whence my middle child's beloved milk (soy and "weguwa" ("regular")) comes, thus requiring at least four bottle fill-ups a day independent of aforementioned meals. And it houses my sweet sewing corner, where, when I have a free moment, I enjoy the gentle purr of my Baby Loc traveling over cotton prints of delightful variety. So many forms of nourishment come from the kitchen.

So when the kitchen is overrun, as it has been for the last two full days, with piles and piles of...well, CRAP...I am miserable. Thus, I make some new rules for the kitchen:

KITCHEN RULES:

1. Do not throw food on the floor (no matter how bad mom's new recipe is.)

2. Always say "please" and "thank you" when requesting or being served.

3. Don't pile things on the island or counters just because mom had cleared them off. Put everything in its proper place.

4. When walking through the kitchen after being in the muddy yard/chicken coop, please remove dirty shoes.

5. Until the puppy is trained, she stays in the laundry room. It is not "sad" or "pathetic," it is sanitary.

6. Pray unceasingly, but particularly before meals. This helps us remember how blessed we are and that it is completely unnecessary to blog for half an hour about how sucky our day was when so many others have it so much worse.

Hmmmmm, perhaps I should have started with #6.