Not Feeling the Love

September is here, the kiddies have been back at school for 3 weeks, Baby starts preschool on Wednesday and I am feeling frustrated.

It's hard to pin down why I feel like this. It was a huge relief to send the kids back to school. The last 2 weeks before it resumed were easily the worst 2 weeks of the summer. Constant fighting, constant attitude, constant mischief, and no desire to do anything constructive on anyone's part (me included, although I tried out of sheer desperation).

But naturally, the start of school brings with it the start of other activities -- soccer, gymnastics, church activities on wednesday nights--which have to be added to piano and our weekly trips to the allergist. If my hair was on fire all summer, I am spending my days shot out of a cannon now.

My littlest has hit some kind of personality wall -- I don't remember the 3s being so grouchy/stubborn/naughty in my other two. They are excruciating with her. My husband chirped in that perhaps she needed more activity -- I should take her to the park, the play place at the mall, a friend's house, a play class... I had to point out to him that I can only do the laundry when I am, in fact, here. Also, I cannot make dinner by remote control, although I would certainly like to try. While a constant round of activity sounds great, I do have to be in the house some of the time. We do go the the library and I take her on errands -- she recognizes Target, Home Depot, TJ Maxx and Barnes and Noble and loves all of them.

Normally not being able to complete projects makes me nutty, but we've actually gotten quite a lot done over the last month. I have some indoor projects that need doing -- first up is repainting my half-bath -- but while I would like to get those done, I don't feel a huge need to do so. I think one of the things nagging at me is the sheer volume of stuff we have in this house. I am going to hit some kind of breaking point soon where I just start chucking things in the trash or the Goodwill box and get it out of here. The garage is one place I'd like to just pitch stuff out of. After that it's the basement's turn.

Maybe what I need is a good Spring cleaning. Certainly a lot of things would seem less overwhelming if there were just less of them. Like toys. Of which we have 40 million or so.

Too much stuff. Hmmm. Am going to let this idea percolate and see if that's my trouble.