{"id":965,"date":"2008-08-21T08:58:15","date_gmt":"2008-08-21T14:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/?p=965"},"modified":"2008-08-21T08:58:15","modified_gmt":"2008-08-21T14:58:15","slug":"discouraged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/?p=965","title":{"rendered":"Discouraged"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m having a discouraged day.  Don&#8217;t fret, these happen every so often.  I usually get over it eventually, once I find a way through the cloudyness that fogs my brain and my soul.  But right now I feel very weighted down.  <\/p>\n<p>My children fight over every little thing, and nothing I do is right, or good enough, or soon enough.  I didn&#8217;t buy the band book that my daughter needed TODAY, and I didn&#8217;t find the band book that I bought last year for my son.  I didn&#8217;t go to the soccer game last night to support my son.  I didn&#8217;t let my daughter play with a friend.  I didn&#8217;t make the right thing for dinner. And the list goes on.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the dishwasher doesn&#8217;t seem to be working.  All the dishes come out with, well, with bits of food still on them.  My washing machine isn&#8217;t agitating.  Maybe I should have my kids work on that one, since they seem to have the agitating thing down to a science.  My air conditioner isn&#8217;t keeping up with the heat, and even though we have nice cool mornings and I don&#8217;t even start the air until the afternoon, by 5:00 it&#8217;s 85 degrees in the house and I find myself very grumpy.  I could call a repair man, but I am just sick at the amount of money that will cost.  I&#8217;ve spent so much money lately, I just don&#8217;t know how we&#8217;re ever going to save up for the things we are trying to save for.  So I do nothing.<\/p>\n<p>My kids&#8217; rooms and my room are disaster areas.  Oh, let&#8217;s just be honest and admit that the whole house is a huge mess, shall we?  I have these grand dreams of projects that involve painting and taping and curtain sewing and rearranging, but whenever I walk into that area to get started, I just look at the mountain that is before me and I can&#8217;t summon up the energy to even start.  Or I get sidetracked because I can&#8217;t find a tape measure.  Or my sewing scissors.  Even just cleaning up the boys&#8217; room seems an overwhelming task to me right now.  So I avoid those areas and try to read a book.<\/p>\n<p>When there&#8217;s a bunch of bananas going brown on my counter, I decide to make banana bread.  But it turns out kind of mushy and not quite right.  Plus, I tried a &#8220;fancy&#8221; cranberry orange banana bread, and it seems people around here prefer the normal &#8220;Plain&#8221; kind of banana bread.<\/p>\n<p>I got a box of apricots from my in-laws so we could make some apricot jam.  We love apricot jam.  I even got some jars and pectin.  But I let the apricots go bad waiting for me to do something with them.  The thought of the mess that would make was overwhelming to me and I just let them rot.  My husband must have gotten tired of seeing them sitting there in the box, and he threw them away for me.  So, at least I don&#8217;t have to look at the box of wasted fruit reminding me that I failed.<\/p>\n<p>I have a lesson to prepare, as I teach the young women on Sunday.  I haven&#8217;t looked at it yet.  We also need to plan an activity for the girls to do on Tuesday.  How about we come and clean my sons&#8217; room?  Or clean out my basement or paint my daughter&#8217;s room?  Could we count that as service?  Well, I would never let them come and see the state of my basement, my sons&#8217; room or daughter&#8217;s room, so that&#8217;s pretty much out.<\/p>\n<p>I never see my husband, as I&#8217;ve had places to go every night shortly after he gets home.  And it seems when I do see him, I&#8217;m just irritated by every little thing, and so we have nothing to talk about.<\/p>\n<p>I would ask for help if I knew what I needed.  I&#8217;m trying not to be stuck in my feel sorry for myself funk. I&#8217;m out there being busy, really I am.  Yesterday I loaded John up in the jogger stroller and we went for a two mile walk.  We stopped at a park and he &#8220;played&#8221; while I &#8220;jogged&#8221; (using the term very loosely, my friends) around the track.  We&#8217;re trying to enjoy <a href=\"http:\/\/illustratormommy.blogspot.com\/2008\/08\/simple-joys-of-life.html\">the simple joys of life<\/a>.  The day before that we went to yoga.  But today I just can&#8217;t make myself do either of those.<\/p>\n<p>I will get up.  I will turn off the computer.  I will take a shower and get dressed.  I will clean my kitchen.  I will run my dishwasher again and hope it will work a bit better.  I will fold some laundry.  I will vacuum.  I will go and buy the band book and the new piano books and try to find the other band book for my kids.  Maybe I&#8217;ll even get them to them at school by the time they have those classes.  I will continue doing what I know I need to be doing.  Maybe doing these things and putting my house in order just a little bit will help me find some order in myself.  <\/p>\n<p>I hope. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m having a discouraged day. Don&#8217;t fret, these happen every so often. I usually get over it eventually, once I find a way through the cloudyness that fogs my brain and my soul. But right now I feel very weighted down. My children fight over every little thing, and nothing I do is right, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}