The House of the Half Assed

I live in a house where majority of our projects and lifestyle changes are half assed.  We, as a family, have become quite efficient at shit-shifting our lives.  Do you know what shit-shifting is?  It's when you focus intently on ONE PART of your house/life/career and clear all of the clutter from that ONE spot and it looks nice, but in reality all you did was cluttered up other areas of your life.  So I might shit-shift on my main floor, but rest assured my upstairs and basement is DISGUSTING.  I might shit shift and become better about going to the gym and working out, but then find that my relationships with my kids suffers - or my house falls apart because I get tunnel vision. 

When we toured our house before we bought it, it was immaculate!  Even with whatever amount of clutter existed from two people living there for 50+ years and raising their four children there (who are now grown adults) the home was immaculate.  Every wall white, every nook and cranny cleaned.  Each piece of furniture was a solid 20 years old and it didn't matter because they were still in pristine condition.  Bill & Helen took care of this house.  They loved this house.  The basement had file cabinets lining the walls and they were packed to the brim (yes, i checked - shut it) - they had a strawberry patch in the back yard with a hollow owl to scare away squirrels.  Everything was immaculate.  They could fit two, yes TWO cars in their garage.  at the SAME TIME.

We moved in and basically shat on it.

We brought an 18 month old and a 3 1/2 year old in and then, just for fun added another baby like a year later.  With babies come bottles, pump accessories, dishes, toys, laundry, and chaos.  Before I knew it, my house came to life.  My laundry haunts me like a bad memory that I continue to relive via my dreams.  My pristine 3000 square foot house that literally has 16 rooms if you count the bathrooms has turned on me.

Do you know how AWFUL it is to clean THREE bathrooms?!?!  I do.  I avoid it like a cat avoids a bath.  But GAWD the smell is horrible.  Little boys pee EVERYWHERE and NEVER flush.  I may or may not have looked into the automatic flushing toilette that would eliminate the problem entirely.  They are banished from using MY bathroom but that doesn't fix the pocket bathroom on the main floor and *gulp* their bathroom.

Do you know how much CARPET is in a 3000 square foot house!?  It's STUPID.  My Dyson is about to flip me the bird after I've emptied the canister like three times - and to be clear, I only empty the canister when I hear Tarv yelling at me about it.  Then I make a snarky comment about how if HE is the canister expert he should handle the vacuuming and generally follow with an insult about what a douche he's being.

Any thoughts about how much "better" and "easier" life gets when the boys get older is a wives tale.  Trust me, that theory will hold as much water as a macaroni strainer.  Wanna know what actually happens!?  They get bigger, their clothes get bigger, their appetites get bigger, their brazen behavior gets bigger, their messes get bigger.  What used to take me 10 minutes to pick up myself now is a 45 minute argument with two perfectly capable children about how it's not my mess, it's theirs, and they need to learn responsibility now or they never will.  Followed by me having the worlds biggest internal conflict with myself because they are little kids, and I could just let them be and do it myself and it'd be done right and no one would be fighting.  Then I'm all over the place about which is better - teaching them responsibility if that means spending time arguing with them or letting it go and risking having ridiculous habits to break down the road. 

Austin throws these temper tantrums that are so big, so grand, so angry, littered with negativity and at times curse words - truthfully, I've only seen erratic behavior like that come from one person - me.  Aden would rather watch TV than do ANYTHING, he's convinced that anything else is boring and that he doesn't want to get up, at all, ever, for anyone - I've only seen behavior like THAT from one person - me.  They both leave their crap everywhere - they both never finish what they started working on, they both leave dishes, snack remnants, laundry EVERYWHERE.  Guess who they learned that from.  Yep, me. 

I am having a hard time with this one because I see it & while I'm perfectly content with where I am in my professional career - I'm REALLY struggling.  Not to mention, not everyone can pull off this behavior quite like I can.  Not everyone can pull off a hot temper and seemingly lazy housekeeping skills and survive.  Somewhere along the lines, I learned restraint - truthfully, I have to be pushed PRETTY FLIPPIN FAR to react like austin reacts.  What makes me nervous is that I didn't act that way when I was 7.  I didn't come into that until later on in life - so what happens for him?    Same with Aden - I have always loved TV - and I'm obese.  I don't want that for him.  He is already incredibly susceptible to that for the simple fact that Trav and I are overweight.  I realize I was never SKINNY, and he doesn't seem to have the body type to be SKINNY - but is that really reason enough to write it off?

I haven't mentioned much of Aaron in this post because he's still so young - early predictions say he'll have a temper like Austin me but will be constantly on the go like his father...which, by the way - didn't protect Trav from obesity either.  As a thirty-something adult he is VERY active, struggles with weight because the fact of the matter is, changing your diet is hard.

I'm tired of having things half assed.  I'm tired of being halfway done with everything.  It's not fun.  On the back side of this blog I made some check lists or goals that I'm going to TRY to accomplish in efforts to be a better example for my kids AND maintain a balance while I'm making changes....  Bonus - maybe it'll give me some blogging material for the future!  Here's hoping.