Living in a mess.

Spending every Christmas away from home is a challenge. Coming back home with a sick kid, being thoroughly wiped out, AND coming back to the huge mess you left in the rush to get gone is down right frustrating.

I remember the mindset that I left with. I spend my Friday, December 22 doing every speck of laundry that I had skipped for so many days when I had been trying like mad to finish my shopping. I also had to buy ingredients for party noshes and then prepare said noshes (which took some doing as my grinder broke). So I said, what's the big deal. We'll do the dishes and we'll get busy cleaning when we get home. It'll be easy, we'll have one less kid, maybe we'll even get rid of some old toys to make room for the new ones.

What we didn't count on was Girl being SO sick, neither Mr. Hobbitfeet nor myself getting more than 4 hours a sleep for almost a week, and just how overwhelming the mess would be once we added all the Christmas stuff to it.

And it's not like there is a lot of stuff. The gods blessed us this year and everything we got was smallish. Small enough that we were able to fit everything into our car, even with a bike (though truth be told, had Boy come home with us that wouldn't have happened).

But the house is trashed, which makes it difficult to function. Does anyone else have this problem? When the house is a little messy, I can rush around and clean it. When it is a big mess, just the thought of how long it will take, makes it nearly impossible to move on it. I guess it's just the lazy-ass-bitch in me coming out.

Where's Mary Poppins when you need her?