Paying Double

A sweet friend and reader sent me an email a few weeks back. This email came to me at such a perfect time. I needed some encouragement this day and was feeling down.

I have a blog suggestion! How about a typical day in Linsey Wilt's life????? I am utterly amazed that you are able to post your blogs for everyone else to read with their first cup of coffee in the mornings. Be an obviously fab mother to 4 adorable kids. Be a loving wife. Run a household. Take time for Hawaiian themed girls' nights. Photo shoots. Keep your house clean (I'm guessing this by all the photos, your house always looks put together and picked up...unlike mine :o) Shopping all night in Denver on Black Friday. Taking over night get aways with your husband. Run in distance races which means you're obviously exercising and training and I can only imagine what else...cooking, cleaning, laundry, getting kids off to school, homework etc etc. Do you sleep? Seriously, what is your trick. What is your deepest darkest secret to keeping it all together? And...all the while, there are smiles and good times for your little organized chaotic clan! I love it. Your family would make an awesome reality show that I would watch religiously and continue to be inspired by! So....what do you think? Linsey Wilt's typical day.... :o

I know, how incredibly sweet is she! She makes me sound like the energizer bunny on steroids.

I was thinking about this idea and jotted down a few notes, but really was at a loss. The bones of my typical day are not all that exciting. Get up early, blog, feed some people, clean, maybe go to a play date, feed people, sometimes get a workout in, feed some more people, then go to bed. That is my life in a nutshell. The in-between varies so drastically day to day, that it was hard to think of what typical really looked like for me. I am awake from 5-9, what happens in between is a surprise!

There are those days that I do get a lot done. My attitude is always to get as much crossed off my list as possible. I guess I am one that just needs to be busy. I also contribute a lot of it to my self-diagnosed OCD. It might look like I get a lot accomplished, but it definitely is not without lots of failure, mounds of stress and a massive amount of caffeine. I live a very stressful life, no denying that, but I guess I thrive on it. If the stress is gone for to long, for some reason I seek it out in one form or another. I am one that would throw the needle into the haystack just for the fun of trying to find it!

On a side note, my post for Monday is going to be on my New Year's resolutions and it includes slowing down a little and lessening some stress. They say stress if bad for you, right? Blogging without a self-inflicted deadline will be one item on my list, at least for a season.

Now even though my goal is to get a lot accomplished in a days time, that doesn't mean it always happens. I recently had one of those days. The type of day that drove me to start this blog in the first place. I try to be as organized as possible, for sanity reasons, but on this day the chaos overtook the organized by far.

My alarm went off at it's usual time, 4:45. But, the day before I had been skiing all day. Let's just say I am not as young as I once was, my muscles were speaking to me, "you can't get up right now." I caved and hit my snooze six times. I finally rolled out of bed at 5:15 and did my one eye open, one eye shut walk to the coffee pot. This totally freaks Erik out. Yeah, I'll give it to him, it does look weird. This is how you would see me on my initial wake-up call and my middle of the night bathroom trips.

I guess it's my rebellious side, not submitting to the fact that I am awake yet.

I brewed my energy and then headed to my office. My whole morning is very routine, again for sanity reasons. The next two hours is my quiet time to get whatever I want to get done, done. Blogging, picture editing, bills, facebook browsing, and so on. The kids get up around 7:00, cartoons go on and I continue working. I take periodic breaks--to get them food, change a diaper, clean up dog pee, etc.--they know the routine.

On this morning, I was taking all four kids to the dentist. "Yay!" We had to be there at 9:30 and it's an hour drive. So I stopped working at 8:10. Now, you're probably thinking that doesn't really add up, don't you need to leave at 8:30? For some reason I like to cut things really close, you know, add to my stress. Not all the time, but I wasn't all that excited about going to the dentist, so my procrastination skills set in. In my mind, it now becomes a game. "Everyone ready and out the door in twenty minutes, let's do this!"

I came out of my office and went immediately to start the freezing car, remember we only had twenty minutes. I came back in and assessed the situation. Matty was naked. Jon was dressed, but his shirt was on backwards and his shoes were on the wrong feet. Ella had done her own hair into pigtails and was wearing what she had on the day before. Abby looked pretty cute, except she decided it would be a good idea to look like Hannah Montana to impress the dentist! "Okay, looks like mom needs a hat and we are all good to go!" Well, okay I did dress the baby so he didn't freeze his ____ off! I was thinking hiney, geesh, you have a warped mind! I guess this is something that has helped me in my day, I choose not to stress to much about the minor things. They really did look decent enough for the dentist, and small adjustments could be made once we got there. I am already judged out in public all the time anyway, why not give them a little something more to add to their story.

The dentist went great, only two people glared at us for our volume level. Matthew only sprayed the water gun twice and it didn't hit anybody, bonus! We did have a few tears over the x-ray machine. I don't know one person who finds that fun, give the poor frightened kids a break. That x-ray technician lady and I didn't get along that great. She is one of those, you know, never had kids, no patients, wearing a fake smile type. She is smiling at you and using a soft tone, but what's coming out of her mouth is basically that she has no respect for you whatsoever. Yeah, she wasn't much fun.

In our house, a no cavity visit equals lunch out! We stopped and had the oil changed in the Suburban on our way to lunch (this was one of those, get as much crossed off my list today as possible, even if it means implementing major coping tactics). We always go to the same place, they know us well and are very accommodating. As I was paying for the oil change Mark asks, "So at the end of the day are you like exhausted?" My reply to him, "Completely!"

We loaded back up and headed to Safeway, with the Starbucks inside, for our lunch date. We ordered our sandwiches at the deli, then headed to Starbucks for some hot chocolate. We sat and enjoyed our lunch for a bit, but then for some reason everything started to fall apart. Abby turned around and her hot chocolate goes flying and comes crashing to the floor. We were in the middle of cleaning it up and I hear another crash. Jon had knocked over my full, not yet sipped, Chai. Yummy hot beverage now covered two table lengths of floor below our feet. The lady at Starbucks calls over the intercom of Safeway, "We have clean up in the Starbucks eating area, mop and bucket required." Abby is running back and forth for napkins, Jon is loudly repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mom I'm sorry," the lady is telling me to stop cleaning and that someone is on their way. I didn't listen to her, I had to at least lesson the massive mess we had just made. So I am down on the floor, sopping up what I can with my stack of napkins, when I hear the unbelievable sound of yet another drink come crashing to the floor. I am not kidding. This time it was Matthew joining in on the fun! Within a three minute time span, we had managed to spill about $10.00 worth of sweet goodness. Now Matthew was crying, many were looking, some were talking, and I was saying, "Time to go!" I apologized many times and reassured the Starbucks staff of the good in the situation, in case they were failing to see it. Their floor was going to be very clean, when all said and done. Fresh mopping for the whole right side of Starbucks, thanks to us! At that point all you can do is laugh! But, we did leave as fast as possible.

Of course I went through the drive-thru Starbucks on my way home. There was no way I was going home without my Chai after that. Paying double for my drink that day wasn't even a concern to me.

While we were in the drive-thru, Matthew starts crying, loudly. I couldn't figure out what he was fussing about. I looked back and he is trying to open his little pizza box, and crying. I started to get frustrated with his fit and I told him in my stressed voice, "Stop fussing I will help you when we get home, mommy is driving!" He was trying to tell me something that I couldn't understand and he wouldn't quit fussing. I looked back just in time to see his chubby little finger stuck in the hole of the pizza box. It was sort of purple. Abby quickly helped him get it out and then we all just start laughing. He was fine and it was a funny end to our hectic adventurous morning!

Who is ready for a nap?

I do not have it all together by a long shot. I feel like most of the time I am just bumping through life praying it all turns out okay. I hope that the contents of this blog shows you just how messed up we are, and how often we fail.

One thing I will say we have is love, a lot of it and to me that is the ultimate accomplishment!

If you relate at all to our craziness, I hope this blog is an encouragement to you. Let's laugh at life together!

Here is one tip that does helps me out a lot:

I keep a notebook, well lots of notebooks because they fill up fast. These notebooks are my to do lists, blog ideas (sometimes just a sentence that comes to me), things the kids say, photography notes, MOPS ideas, party planning, goals, random ideas, shopping lists, phone numbers, online research, books I want to read, movies I want to see (I have a chick-flick, go-to list), random things I need to remind myself, gift lists, it all goes in my notebooks!

It's nice to have my second brain to refer to, because my main one tends to shut down on me a lot!

Happy New Year!