Piles

Andy makes fun of me, claiming I may have mentioned our laundry woes once or seventy two times on the blog. He helps with laundry, it's just that there's always laundry to do, so it's on my mind. But this post isn't about laundry piles. And our laundry really isn't a big problem...
I find myself, my handle on things, problematic at times. IQ points trickle out with breastmilk, patience ebbs and tears flow. These things aren't unique to our circumstances. In fact, most mothers of small children can likely relate to fuzzy thoughts and fragile emotions, to problems of varying severities. I'd wager that if everyone threw their problems in a pile for all to see, most people would likely grab their own back. Sometimes I wish we could leave our problems in the pile; not necessarily trade them with anyone, but grab something that seems a little more manageable.
Occasionally people mention that when they face a new challenge, or become overwhelmed by a situation, they think of us, and their perspective is quickly righted. That doesn't make their challenging situation less significant; even when problems are average, they still feel like problems. But we do long for average, for the normal overwhelmed, overworked, overlooked average. The kind of average where laundry piles and dirty cars, home improvement projects and work deadlines, grocery budgets and bad hair days are big problems. Stress is stress though, and everyone's got some. When we find ourselves marinading in stress, short on patience and long on sadness, we slather on some memories of happier times, let them pile on top of each other and release their balming quality.

And we realize, no matter how problematic it feels, how stressful it is, there is no way we'd ever trade this, no way we could leave this in the pile.JEB