Enough with the whining

Time to do something about this house.

One of the blogs I read daily is Fetching Fashions with the adorable Justine.  She's a Dallasinian and an aspiring psychologist who recently outlined the stages of grief and loss here.  To echo her sentiments, there is no disrespect intended in this post, but I think we women have all experienced transitions in life where internal desires and outside forces don't match up and you find yourself desperately seeking those things which used to be dependable and familiar.  It may not equal, but it certainly does echo the feelings of helplessness and despair that the loss of a loved one can bring, especially when you think of the loved one as the comfortable home you used to share.

I've gone through all of the stages of grief when it comes to the state of things in our home.  Denial that it was as unorganized and unmanageable as it felt.  Anger at myself, my husband, the dogs.. for daring to leave signs of our existence here, there, and everywhere.  I've definitely bargained.  I can check Facebook, blog, search for things on Ebay, call my friend, and go out to dinner with Mike tonight, IF I get up tomorrow, down a pot of coffee, and buzz through the house cleaning like a madwoman until everything is DONE.  This never happened, or at least not to a satisfying degree.

It started to affect my relationship with my husband, which you can read about here.  Knowing that I was breaking my promises and letting him down lead pretty quickly to depression. Depression is like quicksand to motivation, and I went into a bit of a survival mode, doing only what I absolutely had to do in order to function, reserving my energies for school.

Now, I think what I'm beginning to experience is acceptance.  I know that New Year's tends to be the popular time for resolutions and renewals, but I find that I am much more apt to reset my resolve in the spring, when the whole of Earth is coming up for fresh air.  Sorry, but trying to convince me that the dead of winter is a good time to take up spinning and give up comfort foods just ain't gonna happen.  But!  Show me blue skies and hint at summer vacation, and I can see the logic behind two-a-days at the gym, cutting carbs, and downing spinach shakes dusted with protein powder. Likewise, I'm realizing that there are definite behaviors that have gotten me to this point, and if I want to turn things around (which I do) then I need to wake up and make some changes.

It's very easy to forget that with adulthood, and even more so with marriage, comes a baseline of acceptable behavior.  You cannot, for instance, decide to leave your job, go to school full time, and forget that you still have a household to maintain and a marriage to support.  You cannot adopt a student's schedule and a student's mindset.  It will be harder than it was when you were 20.  It will take more effort for less thanks.

Thank God I can blog about it. :)

So that's my loose plan.  I'm going to go through this house, bit by bit, and start to put things right.  I'm not going to use this forum for support, but rather for accountability.  Interspersed with whatever other inspirations I decide to write about will be the occasional post on my progress, the challenges I've tackled, what worked and what didn't, failures and victories.  At the end, hopefully what we'll have are a clean and organized home, balanced life, and a healed and happier marriage.

Here comes Spring.

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PS!  Don't forget about the giveaway!  You can enter up until Tuesday night, right up to the stroke of midnight, so if you're looking for some new spring schwag take a peek and leave your info accordingly.