Peace and Quiet

I don't think I've spent more than 20 minutes straight in this house since last Friday, besides after 10:00 at night -- and who wants to clean their house at that time of night? So, right now both kids are settled down and I can finally begin to clean this insane mess that our house has become over the last week. Lots of outings, shopping, and trips to the pool do not make for a clean house, when you don't have anytime after each trip to clean up because you're on your way to the next outing. I'm not completely procrastinating the cleaning, but I feel entitled to sit down and catch my breath for a minute before I try to find spots in this little house for everything that "needs" to fit in it.

Strike that. The kids are not settled down. Madeline called me into her bedroom because her "head hurt" and it needed to be dried... by water from the bathroom sink. (Who can know the mind of a 2 year old?) I didn't let her leave her bed and was asked to sing "Go to sleep you little babe" from Oh Brother Where Art Thou? for about 5 minutes and then I told her to go to sleep. She is currently making an extremely annoying half whining, half crying, half coughing, half "mommmaaay!" (I guess that would be a quarter of each of those, but I don't care right now). Oh, and now she's sing "Your mama's gone away, but your daddy's gonna stay..." to herself. Oh well, she will settle down. And I will do my best not to lose it on her.

I'm finding myself very edgy lately. I think a lot of people are. I think it's the heat. I don't know how people in hotter climates survive such long increments of heat. It just makes me crabby. The messy house also does not help. I was worried I was having some post-partum hormonal issues and asked my mom about it. I told her I was mostly crabby when the kids were cranky, the house was messy and Marc was irritating me, and that the rest of the time I was fine. She suggested that it was probably the messy house and husband and the cranky kids, not the hormones.

Pondering the messy house the past few days and thinking up the title to this post, I've thought about what makes "peace". For me, it seems like I can't have peace without having calm surroundings -- a clean house. I just can't relax or settle down until things are in order. But is this a reflection of how I respond to life in general? I haven't had too much bad or traumatic happen in my life, and sometimes I wonder if it's because I just couldn't handle it. Normally I'm good at getting perspective over a lot of the situations and experiences of life -- dealing with church, people, etc. But Marc constantly tells me that I should just relax despite the mess in the house because it doesn't matter; and I know I should, but I just can't. So, I'm kind of wondering if I'd be able to have peace about something major happening in our lives in the midst of all of the "mess" of it, or if the peace wouldn't come until it was all "cleaned up". I guess it's something to work on -- to be able to have peace in the mess, while you're working to clean it up.

Well, better go sweep...