How I Do It All - A Confession

Sometimes people ask how I do it all.  Here's the answer.

I don't.

I fail.

I am usually washing pots and pans before I can start cooking the next meal.  

My daughter reminded me halfway to school that I have not packed silverware in her lunch all week even though it has contained things like fruit cups and yogurt.  

While work paperwork is neatly organized and I have a whiteboard I use as a project manager, paperwork at home tends to be in piles or might ride around in my shoulder bag for 3 months until it gets too heavy to carry around.

While working on this new house my old house has rarely been dusted or vacuumed in those 4 months - which is embarrassing when friends and family show up to help start moving stuff.  

I have been known to show up at work in a shirt with grease spots (and in the past, spit-up) and not realize it for at least half the day. 

My truck stinks. 

No doubt I will find some scary, unrecognizable food object the kids dropped in the crack of the backseat next time I find a spare minute on my 30 minute lunch time to run over to the vacuums at the car wash (which I most likely won't bother to use because by the time I drive 40+ miles home it will be dirty anyways).  

My daughter needed a shower last night - but I was so busy with other things I didn't realize it was already almost an hour past their bedtime - so she's wearing barrettes to disguise the fact that her hair needs to be washed.  

The old house stinks.  

And it is still full of toys.  

I am about 2 years overdue for a haircut. Granted I am trying to grow it long enough for another Locks of Love donation but still - it needs help.  

I just threw away a giant stack of magazines and blogging ideas I had saved to read "when I have time" because I checked the dates and realized how unlikely that is...

My son has worn yesterday's socks to daycare - because all the rest were lost in the ever-present mountain of dirty laundry.  

The poor fairy garden hasn't seen me all year and is amass with weeds.  

I give up until next spring. 

Keeping up with the mowing of 2+ acres full of obstacles this year has been laughable.

I always tell my girlfriends we need to get together but it never seems to work out - mostly because of me.  

I am frequently ironing clothes either very late at night or frantically in the morning because I forgot the night before.  

We have eaten fast food and one-pot suppers way too much over the past several months - its sickening really - tonight is probably pizza.

Hockey equipment may or may not get aired out between uses...

My new living room/library is full of miscellaneous stuff we can't figure out where to put.  

I have a feeling it will mostly go into Rubbermaid tubs and never see the light of day again.  

I - the girl who hated to be late before I had a family - am almost always late or skidding in the door just in the nick of time everywhere I go.  

Mom - I apologize for every comment I ever made about that...

This is the first year since my daughter started preschool that I did not buy everything she needed and turn it in on open house night - I'm still filling out the paperwork too.

My daughter's birthday is this weekend and I just asked her yesterday what kind of cake she wanted and I'm very happy that she just wants to take a few of her friends to the zoo for the day so I don't have to do much.

Everyone's laundry tends to not make it into dresser drawers - it lingers in laundry baskets near the dressers...

Two years in a row I have forgotten to give the kids' school pictures out to family members.

And the list goes on...

So if you are having that day, know that you are not alone.  

In fact, the list of things we all wish we got done but don't get done is often as long or longer than the list of things we did get done.  

Its a matter of which things you chose to focus on that matters.