What's in a Name

It's 8:25 and the boys are tucked in for the night.  For the first time in eight hours, I'm able to sit down and write uninterupted.  I have been working on pulling together the beginnings of this blog for the last six hours but buses, cookie dough, scooters in the basement, dinner, and even TV have been pulling my attention away every nanosecond or so.  This is a typical day. 

I wanted to share with you why I named my blog The Scatterbrained Homemaker.  My sister-in-law was commenting the other day on the method my brother uses for cleaning.  Having the same mother (teacher), my methods are very much the same. 

On that particular day, I sent my kids off to school on the bus and headed to the kitchen to wash the dishes.  I looked behind me into the living room where I saw nothing short of an explosion of clothing so I decided to collect it up and start a load of laundry.  The washing machine can be productive while I do the dishes after-all. 

I needed a basket to collect the dirty laundry and wouldn't you know it, both of my baskets were upstairs full of clean laundry.  I tiptoed into the bedroom (so as not to wake my second shift husband) to get the first of the laundry baskets.  Apparently I didn't tiptoe quietly enough because he rolled over and asked if we were still going out for breakfast. 

Laundry abandoned, I climbed into the shower and got ready to go out.  But on our way to breakfast, we would be driving past the bank.  I was going to need to go to the bank later anyway so I took a few minutes to get the checks ready and off we went.  We also stopped for gas and ran into the post office while we were out.

By the time we returned home, I still needed to clean up the living room as well as the dishes because I had a babysitter coming for the afternoon.  I headed back upstairs to get the laundry basket but it seemed pointless to carry an empty laundry basket downstairs so I collected up the dirty laundry from the bedrooms and the bathroom and lo' and behold, that basket was suddenly too full to fit any of the clothing from the living room.  I returned for the second laundry basket and emptied that one as well.

Finally back to square one (almost), I collected the laundry from the living room and discovered another layer of disaster that needed to be dealt with.  School papers, shoes, mittens, dishes, you name it, I found it.  At this point, I'm just trying to get my house navigable for the babysitter in two short hours.  Eventually, I made it to the basement to start that load of laundry and then back to the sink to work on the dishes. 

Now, with my husband being on second shift, our noon meal is "dinner" so he can enjoy a meal each day that doesn't require the microwave (unless, of course, I'm using the microwave on a particular day to cook dinner).  Despite the fact that we had just come back from breakfast, and I was trying to prepare for the sitter, I had to live up to my wifely duties and make the man some dinner.

While cooking dinner, I kept one eye out the window for the half-day bus that brings my youngest home.  In between stirs, I could dart out the door to escort him off the bus and later examine the contents of his backpack from my position in front of the stove. 

By 1:30, hubby was out the door on the way to work, and I was headed out for my afternoon activity.  This is a typical morning in the life of me.  It would be wonderful to hold a train of thought long enough to remember why I walked into a room but I have resolved to getting caught up on laundry and dishes in fourteen years (when my little guy is old enough for his own apartment).

As this blog develops, I hope to share a little of what makes me tick.  Join me to get a chuckle, find out what I'm reading, projects I'm working on, shows and movies I've enjoyed recently, ways I stay on budget, and anything else that stumbles it's way into my quest for sanity.  Maybe you can identify.  I'd love to hear from you.