A Personal Disclaimer

So apparently I have been giving off the vibe that I am feeling a bit impatient, unsettled, frazzled, concerned, stressed-out, or even insert the troublesome adjective of your choice here.  But that truly isn’t the case.  As a matter of fact, I am really not feeling any of those things.  I am actually quite at peace about, well, everything right now.  So, in response to the appreciated and heartfelt “it will be okay” and “hang in there” sentiments that I have received from several of you over the past few days I feel that perhaps I need to put out a disclaimer to explain my recent behavior.  You see, it all comes down to the way I keep house…

As anyone who has ever visited our humble abode knows – my house is a mess.  It is always a mess.  Some days the disaster is confined to a smaller area than others, but it is always a mess.  And truth be told I make no apologies for this fact.  I really don’t try hard to hide it because basically no matter how much I try to clean, straighten, vacuum, sweep, do laundry, scrub toilets or complete any other household chore that needs to be done – my house is still a mess.  And I’m okay with that.  I accepted this fact a long time ago.  I have a dog, a cat, a husband, and four children between the ages of two and eight… no matter how much I clean, there will always be more to do.  And that’s okay because I have made my choice.  Years ago I realized I could spend all of my time trying to keep my house clean and orderly amongst the whirlwind of my family or I could spend less time cleaning and actually have time left over to spend being an active part of that family.  Hopefully, you can understand why I chose the way I did.  In my book cleanliness is wonderful, but my family is even better.  (Besides, one day all of my children will be old enough to do the chores themselves and I might just get to see the floor for more than a minute at a time.  Maybe...)

Here’s what it is though.  Some people are cleaners, some people are not.  As stated above, I am not.  I am a planner.  I plan activities for the girls, weekly menus for my family, a budget for our bank accounts, doctor’s visits, shopping trips, vacations, etc., - and I am good at this.  When I was teaching my desk and room were always a mess, ask any teacher I worked with, but my lesson plans were ready and I carried out intricate unit plans that grabbed my students’ interests, made learning fun and applications real.  And ultimately, which is more important?  Neatly stacked pieces of paper arranged between the stapler and the tape or active learning and lifelong skills?  Again, I made my choice and I am happy with the one I made.

But here is the trade off.  Planning is for the purpose of accomplishment.  And accomplishment can only be measured by results – good, bad, successes, setbacks, triumphs, failures, etc.  Otherwise plans are not plans, they are only dreams.  And I am definitely not a dreamer.  I am a planner.   And that leads me to now. 

Life here Shiplandia is currently consumed by an overly active planning session.  On one hand, Dan is planning most every aspect of his deployment in relation to the soldiers he is deploying with.  On the other hand, Dan and I are working together to forward plan what will need to be handled on this end while he is gone regarding cars, computers, finances, etc., in order to keep things on this end running as smoothly as possible.  Then, there is the third hand, our adoption.  As grateful as we are that we are in the final stretch and getting close to travel time, that timeline results in more planning as I work to organize what I will need to take with me to China, what I will need to have in order at home for my parents and the girls while I’m gone, making sure paperwork is in the right place, fees are paid and cash is available at the right times and in the right places, etc.  This in addition to the incredibly long list of items I am supposed to take with me in order to be prepared for quite literally every possible scenario and/or incident which could occur while staying in China for a complete two weeks with most likely less than 14 days notice of travel. 

And then there is the next hand, getting Jolene and Becca ready for school.  Doesn’t seem like a big deal, I know.  But there is a very real possibility that I will be traveling to China right when school begins meaning I need to have their school supplies and other shopping done ahead of time, and this must be scheduled around the other events already on the calendar such as Art camp, Vacation Bible School, visits with grandparents, etc.  Not to mention that if it is not done before Dan leaves I will be working one-parented meaning when one goes out we all go out.  

And then there is the next hand (what are we on, like hand number five now?), the hand of medical insurance.  I’m not sure if you have caught on to this or not, but Jack’s is a special needs adoption.  That means he has what some would call a “pre-existing condition” and he thus needs to be medically evaluated upon arrival home even moreso than either of the girls did.  He will also need to be referred to a specialist, if not two, in addition to visiting with a mainstream pediatrician.  And if you are not familiar with our many adventures of getting Becca from a pediatrician’s referral to an actual appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist, let me just say I have about four months of reasons why government run healthcare is not as great as some would like you to believe.  Will Jack get to the doctor’s he needs – yes.  Will this happen speedily and within a couple weeks of his being home as all would desire – I seriously doubt it.  But as a planner, this is one more thing that I am trying to stay on top of to eliminate as many road bumps as I can.   

And, finally, as if hand number six really existed on my body, there is the never ending list of things that truly need to be accomplished around the house before Dan heads out and/or Jack moves in.  Things like getting Ellie and Jack’s closet reorganized so that Jack has a place to hang his clothes.  Clearing out and organizing the seven bins and multiple bags of hand-me-down clothes that currently reside directly next to my bed so that I can knowledgably make decisions about who needs what as school begins, Jack joins us and the summer months wind down.  (Believe me, those months will wane more quickly than you think…)  Getting my car back in the garage, downsizing our toy collection, and so on…

So, as you see, there is a lot going on around here.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about any of this.  This is my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Well, I might ditch the whole deployment thing if I had the chance, but ultimately my role as MOM is exactly the role I want it to be.  But being Mom is not good enough, being the best Mom I can be is the ultimate desire and the daily aim, and for that I must plan.  And I must implement said plans.  And to successfully execute these plans I need information.  I need to stay ahead of the game, be able to plan ahead, to generate lists and to complete the tasks on them, and sometimes this means multi-tasking.  Okay, it almost always means multi-tasking, but it also means being able to take a block of time, cut out the white noise and focus on a single element of a goal until at least that tiny bit is accomplished thus allowing me to move my focus to a tiny sliver of another.  And that is pretty much where I am right now

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It is not that I am overwhelmed by all that is going on around me.  Yes, I’ve had my moments when I can see overwhelmed poking its head around the corner at me, but I find the best weapon for staving off panic is often simply a little gift from the world of Hershey.  Amazingly that really is true.  But most days I simply work through the issues as they arrive and I try to use the time in between to knock out as many of those little slivers as I can.  So, it’s not that I’m anxious for this letter or that email or some other piece of information to arrive because I’m worried or panicked or running out of patience.  It is more a matter of simply wanting to implement the plan in the most efficient way possible and loving the feeling of placing big check marks next to mandatory actions as the need for them to be done becomes a thing of the past.

So that leaves me here… in a messy house, with a tote bag full of adoption paperwork, marking days off of\n my calendar while working through my to-do lists as I try to spend as much time as possible with my husband before he leaves the country while at the same time allowing him one-on-one time with each of the girls amidst our packing, cleaning, and organizing.  A very busy place indeed, but the place I would absolutely fight someone for if they tried to take it away.  So please don’t misunderstand my facebook posts or Monday emails or quick comments made on the fly.  Life here is fine.  And really things are going great.