Ramzee was given a nice wooden easel for her birthday a few
weeks ago. She was really pumped. It’s adorned with a white board so she can
create, erase, create, erase all day long.
I let her keep it in our living area for a few weeks until the new
started to wear off. It didn’t wear off
as soon as I had hoped, but I wanted it out of my living room. Why? It was not
particularly in line with my feng shui I have going on in there. Fancy huh? Ok maybe I don’t have any feng
shui going on, but I didn’t like the way it looked in the epicenter of our
home. I have decorated our place to
reflect the space I think is most comfortable for our inhabitants. Or maybe
most comfortable for me.
Now if those sweet little inhabitants could just clean up
after themselves and help me out a little when it comes to trying to keep this
humble abode real humbly abodey. I have
noticed the times I am most irritated or short tempered with my husband and
kiddos is when the house is out of order.
(I feel the need to share the fact that I employ a maid every two
weeks.) (I feel now that I have lost some credit with those of you who aren’t
as fortunate to have any type of sanitation aid in running your household.) The
house can still begin resemble a landfill within days of her visit. Some days I
swear I am standing on top of a pile of dirty clothes, folding clean ones with
the hum of the machines running 2 loads behind me only to walk into the
bedrooms to find a wasteland of apparel in their floors. Good grief people. And apparently my husband has passed on a
gene to our boys that causes them to leave male accessories in sporadic places
around our home. Hats on the table, belts on the stairs, shoes by the couch.
Make it stop! Then there are the toys, ponytail holders, markers, dvds, and all
sorts of other clutter screwin up my FENG SHUI!
Then God and I had a moment.
I thought, “IF THERE IS AN EASEL IN THE LIVING ROOM IT MIGHT
LOOK LIKE KIDS LIVE HERE OR SOMETHING!!!”
God, “Duh.” (I
realize that God never changes and is always the same, but I’m sure he keeps up
with common slang practices to relate better to his creation.)
This house looks like a hurricane disaster area because
there are people living here. There are
dirty, really dirty boys that traipse in and out daily. There are meals taking place together as a
family every evening. There is a man who
works hard to show our kids what that looks like and leaves a trail when he
comes home. There is a little girl who
wants to draw on her easel in the presence of all this excitement taking place.
My husband recently told someone, “You know those houses you
go in, and it looks like no one actually lives there? Our house isn’t like
that.
Gee thanks babe.
But he’s right. It isn’t one of those. You walk in our home
and clearly it isn’t perfect, but there are great things happening there. Love
is happening. Life is happening. And lots of laundry is definitely happening.
When I first looked through the lens of my camera to take
this picture I thought, “O crap. I gotta clean up all around that thing before
I take an interweb worthy pic.” But that’s exactly what the whole life lesson
was about. So what if she left a wipe on the hearth next to the karaoke
machine. So what if Zane was playing with a tennis ball in the house and left
it on the floor. (And for the record those are my shoes that I will be picking
up immediately.) It’s the family picture that is the center of this
representation of our home. Through all
the mess that’s all that really matters and the only thing that we will take
into eternity with us.
I have come to realize that one day we won’t have an easel
in the living room and it makes me sad, but those are the things I want to
cherish FROM THIS SIDE OF THIRTY.
