The Almighty Wipeout

Today was going to be a great day. We were going to meet Beth and Mia for lunch at my favorite place in all the world, P.F. Chang's. We were going to Get! Out! of! The! House! The house that has taken on a life of its own, with dirty laundry piles in the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, and God only knows where else. The house with the kitchen floor that hasn't been mopped in weeks (and has only seen the broom maybe 3 times in that time). For those of you with a toddler learning to self-feed know exactly how filthy my floor is right now. Especially when the broom misses a few peas your toddler has chucked across the room, and you slim the bottom of your foot and smear peas across the kitchen floor during a midnight raid on the fridge. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I finally managed to move the laundry that had been sitting in the laundry for the last week into the dryer (only after washing it 4 times because they'd soured, and each time forgetting to move them). That laundry has been taken out of the dryer and is now sitting on my couch, begging to be folded. The living room hasn't been vacumned since the beginning of the month, and dusting? I forget, remind me what that is?

Some of you may blame my husband for not picking up the slack. To those of you who say that, I say a hearty "Screw You!" My husband has been amazing these last few weeks (heck, who am I kidding, he's always been amazing). He now wakes up between 4:30 and 5:30 to give Shepherd his morning bottle, allowing me to sleep through until at least 7 am. He's kept our dishes clean, and he's not uttered one word about the filth we now live in. To top it off, each weekend, when I'm passed out from exhaustion from running around all week with Shepherd and growing a baby, he gladly takes Shepherd and plays with him while I sleep, and sleep, and sleep some more. And despite all of that, he's gone to work every day, worked his butt off, and comes home every night exhausted from the hour and half commute TO work, and then again home. So after spending 3 hours in a car, he comes home, feeds Shepherd dinner, gives Shepherd a bath, and then puts Shepherd to bed. So, no, it's not that.

I know one of these days I'll catch up. I feel that I'm behind in everything. Not only am I behind in housework, I'm behind on my friendships. I haven't kept in touch with friends like I want to... Normally, I'll e-mail folks several times a week, and yet, I find it utterly exhausting to sit down at the computer and type. The same goes for blogging. All I've written about is how bad I feel, but I guess that's to be expected. I feel as though I'm losing readers, who come to the site for something else, and instead leave utterly depressed, or there are those who kindly write me encouragement, and I feel guilty. Like they've written because they felt obligated to cheer me up from this hum-drum slump I've been in. I know it's not the case, but still...

I don't even know the purpose of writing this, except maybe to get it off of my chest. I so very much want things to return to a semi-normal state, where I have at least enough energy to put clothes in the laundry one day, and enough the next to mop, and the next to vacumn. My only hope is that magically, overnight, the cleaning fairy will show up and do everything for me. Who says you can't dream?