An Honest Look

I've heard some criticism about people who blog that they try too hard to make their lives look shiny and perfect, and of course it isn't.  I have never necessarily gone out of my way to make my life look or sound better than it is, but I certainly have never given you all the gritty details of my life. (Let's be honest, my life isn't that really what anyone would call gritty, but I do spare you the boring mundane parts.)  But today, I'm in a grouchy mood, and there is no good reason for it. And because of that I am going to give you every detail of my mundane and not so gritty life.  Then I dare you to tell me that I try to make my life seem perfect on here.  (None of you have ever said that I do that, but I suppose this post will take away forever any right you ever have to say that.)

Hallie woke up at 3:00 and climbed into our bed.  I said, "Hallie go back to bed."  Devin is sick right now with the cold we all had last week, but for some reason he was feeling charitable so he said she could stay for two minutes and then he would help her go back to bed. I rolled over and ignored the whole thing.  I found out later he was up for the next two hours uncomfortable from his cold and that she had woken him out of his deep sleep cycle.  She woke up again at 6:30, and on weekdays that's fine because he is awake then too.  But today he didn't want to get up that early.  He's sick, remember?  He came downstairs with her, put in an episode of Curious George, and came back to bed until 7 when he went to turn it off and start making breakfast.  I woke up at 7:07, and Hanna woke up at 7:17.


We all congregate in the kitchen to eat breakfast.  I offer to make the pancakes and let Devin go back to bed.  He won't do it.  I tell Hallie to go wake up GramB and ask if she wants breakfast.  They come back downstairs. We all eat, except Devin who isn't feeling well, but he has to leave to go help clean the church so he heads outside to shovel the driveway.  It snowed all night and so far all day today, too.  I try at first to talk him out of going, he's sick, remember? and then to talk him out of letting the girls go outside to "help" him shovel, but he won't listen to me.  I lay down on the floor with Hanna's sweater as a pillow.  I am still like that when they come back in from shoveling the driveway.  Devin kisses us all goodbye and tries to leave.  He can't even drive down our street far enough to get past our house, so he somehow gets the car back in the garage and calls to say he can't make it.


He comes inside, I am now sitting on the couch, my enormous belly propped up with various pillows and blankets underneath which I am sweating, but without which Heather hurts me.  He begins cleaning all the bathrooms.  My mom does my dishes and cleans my kitchen.  The girls play with toys, and get in random fights over things like the pieces of the YAHTZEE game.  I try to break up the fights, but I don't have much energy and mostly just don't want to listen to the yelling.  My entire body hurts every time I move.


Devin finishes cleaning the bathrooms and begins doing the week's laundry.  He collects it all, sorts it all, sprays stain remover on the girls' shirts that I really care about, and begins a load.  Then he cleans up the laundry room from all the accumulated clutter from the week.  Most of this is usually my Saturday chores, but I'm not doing anything today.  I'm now sitting at the table reading articles from the Ensign.  Good stuff in there this month.  The girls are now pretending to be panda bears at the zoo.

Devin was finally feeling "well enough" to go running, so he went downstairs to go on the treadmill.  The girls desperately wanted to make cookies, so I told them to talk GramB into it.  It wasn't a terribly hard sell I don't think.  I help get some of the ingredients for the cookies, and then, my strength sapped, I collect the first load from the drier and begin to fold it.  Devin finishes his run, takes a shower, and we all sit down to eat lunch, the smell of fresh cookies teasing us from the counter.  I eat two scoops of leftover chicken broccoli and rice and that's all Heather will allow me to put in my stomach.  She is generous in making room for a couple cookies though, and for that I was truly grateful.


The laundry is all washed and dried and Devin folds it all (except for my one small load, of course) and then he puts it all away.  He works for a while on a lesson he has to teach at church tomorrow, and then to the delight of the small people in this household he takes them outside to build snowmen.  At this point I am asleep on the couch, and literally even in my dream Heather is pushing on my ribs so hard I'm sure they are bruised, and my hips ache and it isn't a really very restful sleep because it feels too much like actual life.  Although in my dream Reed McGrew came over with his family and a cheeseball, and he and his wife and adopted four sweet girls who kept wanting to rub my belly.  How's that for random?

And I've just woken up and written this angry blog post and now the girls are coming in through the garage all snowy and wet with cheeks pink and full of stories about what fun they had outside with Daddy in the winter wonderland we've finally gotten to have a taste of this year.

So, there's my life.  And I'm not really angry or even all that grouchy, but the selfish immediate part of me wishes that Devin would just lay down on the couch and be miserable with me instead of being Mr. Grade A Wonderful because then I wouldn't feel so bad about the absolute nothing of my day.  I'll repent now. Please forgive me. 

How's that for honesty?