Thoughts

There were a string of daily thoughts by Real Simple that I posted about for a while there until I began to feel like I was overdoing it.  They were so good and then they kind of started to suck. I am a words person. I love being uplifted by a phrase or a song. Sometimes I have to seek out the inspiration, and sometimes it falls in my lap. Well, this week has been rough. Seth's job is making me want to pull my hair out so the posts have been a little thin this week. In the process, the really amazing daily thoughts have piled up and I need to address them all because they have gotten me through the week:

1) "Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

This house drives me crazy. I have such a love, hate relationship with it. We started our family here. We have put a lot of ourselves into it, and we continue to do that now. That is where the hate comes in. I hate that everything seems dirty and old and hard to keep up with. Today, the shelf that holds hanging clothes in our laundry room just fell off the wall. Thank God Lila was taking a nap. I got so frustrated and angry because it seems like things like that are constantly happening. Then I think, the house doesn't matter. It never has and never should. What matters is that we have a home to share the love in.

2) "A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world." - Lois Wyse

I have said it before and it has to be said again. I feel so incredibly lucky for the friends I am blessed to have. Seth will of course be the number one person in my life for the rest of my life. But, there is so much to be said for the women that often get me through the day. You are the key to my sanity in a totally insane world and I cannot thank you enough.

3) "If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep." - Dale Carnegie

This hasn't been an issue for me in a long time. The extreme ironic stress reliever of motherhood is that nine times out of ten, when your head hits the pillow there isn't an ounce of delay in falling asleep. In fact, I find myself smiling at the how motherhood has pretty much cured my insomnia. BUT, every once in a while I still feel the worry set in and this week that has really been the case. I worry about my husband and how he works himself to death. I worry about my students and how they will do on the stupidest test ever created. I worry about the time I spend cleaning and cooking instead of playing with my fabulous little one. But the more you read the more evident it is that stressing makes things worse. So I actually did this one night this week. I was so tired but so stressed that I couldn't go to sleep. I got up, walked around my silent house, and just really appreciated the peace and calmness that my family was feeling in their beds. This daily thought made me feel like it just takes a little stroll around the house at 1 am to get your thoughts in order.