3 am and squiggly lines

Every time I wake up in the middle of the night…or just earlier than expected… I’m frought with worry and my brain stumbles around with all my inadequacies….  I feel like I completely mismanage my time and therefore my house looks like crap and I get behind in work.  But then, I realize that I’m just constantly juggling life!

This week for example wasn’t planned, but it was something that has been looming over my head and one thing led to another!  FIXING THE HOUSE after the contractors didn’t totally fix the house!

Let me tell you… when you invite someone into your house to ‘fix’ an issue….you hire them with all the hope in the world that they will get the job done, and done WELL….. And that’s usually the case….well sort of…..okay, not very often!

The other day when I came home from dropping my daughter at school, I couldn’t take it anymore.  The painters who came to our house didn’t paint behind the bushes, EVEN THOUGH THEY ASSURED MY HUSBAND THEY DID!  So about a month after the painting was done, we were forced to remove the bushes and lo and behold….. the paint job wasn’t complete…..

Now, I have lived in this house for 12 years.  And from the day we moved in, the paint job was ALWAYS an issue.  For whatever reason, the previous owners decided to “touch up” parts of the house, only the touch up color was somewhat of a “near miss”.  Okay, to be honest, it wasn’t even in the same color family….. but we lived with it, because we knew once we painted a little, we’d have to go all in and fix some dead wood in the process….and the budget with a new house and two small kids and a stay at home mom wasn’t there.  So we lived with it.  I stared at two tones for 12 years and it was just a tiny thorn in my side, because it was so ghetto.  When we finally had to get the house painted and the wood fixed, I was thrilled at how fresh and beautiful it was.  FINALLY a house with uniform colors.  UNTIL….. we had to pull the bushes.

Once again, I’m staring at a crappy unfinished job and should have called out the painter.  Only it was such a small job and he came from a bit of a drive and I just didn’t want to unleash my husband on him…..so I stared at it every time I pulled in to the driveway (the lower slats on either side of the driveway to be exact).  and saw not two tones, but four.  Never had time to get to it for whatever reason.  Until this week…..

We recently had additional work done on our house and had the electrical upgraded and lights put in our house.  The guy did an okay job, but when he left, he left a lot in his wake…..what a slob…. Globules of patch on my tile floor that he missed during his cleanup and all the dust and mess from the patchwork was right outside my front door and on my plants.  This isn’t the first time a contractor decided to dust or texture my house plants and leave them in their new state.

So, when I came home the other day, I’d had it.  I looked at the paint and couldn’t take it anymore.  I decided to complete what these guys started and put my house back together.

I started with the garage, and then moved into the house to hit the patch work.  Although he did patch the holes he’d made, there was no texture, and I’m not even sure he taped it.  BTW….if you hire contractors for the love of pete watch over them like a hawk and question everything.  I have been through MORE than my fair share as we have had a lot of things done over the years and I’m left scratching my head with every last one of them.  Okay, there was one that was THE most amazing guy, but the rest….notsomuch……

Thankfully, my bestie came over to help and in a days work, we repainted our ceiling, textured the walls (I can do a MEAN Orange peel finish) and put the place back together.  It took all day and I was left exhausted, but satisfied.  My dream of having recessed lighting finally accomplished and we saved SO much money by completing the finishing work ourselves.

I need to really write a blog one day about all the contractors and mishaps as a cautionary tale of what not to do, but for now, I need to realize that I’m capable of much and kind of ride the crest of that wave for a while.  Although finishing my house wasn’t on my “to do” list, it still needed to be done and I did it.  I wish I would remember those things when I wake up in the middle of the night, but all my accomplishments seem to fall by the wayside, because the joy in them is somewhat fleeting amongst the gargantuan list of other things that need done.

It’s a never endling task of juggling and switching things around and being somewhat pliable.  Throw three kids into the mix and BOOM…..  A recipe for full blown anxiety….

I think perspective is the key here.  This week, I put out a bit of a fire and completed something MASSIVE.  And did it all to surprise my hubs so he didn’t have to think about when the house would be finished.  I took that out of the equation.  And when he came home from work that day and saw that everything was put back together, it was a pretty amazing feeling.

So though I wake up in the middle of the night and constantly worry, I have to remember I’m doing the best I can.  The goal in life would be to have that straight line from point A to point B….but reality doesn’t work that way and it would be pretty boring in the process.  It’s a whole bunch of squiggly lines that move in unpredicable patterns and get even worse when you have a family who pulls your demands in a million different directions.

We are all doing the best that we can in life and I hope I can convince myself of that with the next 3am wakeup…..