Perfect

Perfection. Something we all strive for. Does anyone actually reach it? Not me. I burn out before I get there. The job remains half done. You'll notice it as you drive into my yard. There are bikes parked here and there. Children's toys and piles of wood (my husband's a carpenter and collects scraps). 2 tree forts (my kids each have their own), a basketball hoop, a fire ring, a monkey bar and my garden, which is currently over-run with weeds. Please don't pay any attention to the dishwasher on the front porch. It just died and we haven't gotten around to taking it to the dump yet. Where else are you supposed to put something like that??? Step into my living room and you'll see 2 coffee tables and 2 side tables, covered in clutter. Books, school papers, pens and pencils, nail polish, magazines. My walls don't hold expensive art, but pictures of my family and art projects the kids made at school. The carpet is stained and covered with dog hair. We have vacuumed already, trust me. Our dog just sheds THAT much. In one corner of the kitchen, instead of a dining room table, are 2 fold-up banquet tables that make up my craft and sewing area. I have a list of projects that need to be done, and so many scraps of material I don't know what to do with all of them. I could make a very colorful quilt, but that would just be another thing on my project list. In another corner is our recycle bins. We recycle religiously. Unfortunately, the recyclables usually fill up and over flow before we take them into town. The county recycling truck goes by our house every week on it's route. But we never remember to put our bins out. Next comes the laundry room. Not only do we do our laundry here but we also store things in there. Clothes that don't fit the kids, pieces of a computer we don't use, the carpet cleaner....Oh yeah and baskets of clean, folded laundry. I took care of some of this mess today. The kids and I dropped off 4 boxes of clothes, sheets, blankets, etc at Goodwill today. Wow what a difference!! The bathroom looks pretty good. There's a small pile of books and magazine, because, yes, I read in the bathroom. Seriously though, who doesn't?!?! The only "problem" with the bathroom is the corner full of my photographic equipment and props. I don't have a studio, so all my stuff gets stored here, in a large Rubbermaid container. The bedroom isn't bad either. The bed, recently, started making itself every morning. That alone makes the room look SO much better. The clothes I wore yesterday are hanging on a chair. The closet is scary. Boxes of pictures and school stuff the kids have brought home over the years. Wrapping paper. Clothes that REFUSE to stay on their hangers. Shoes. Stuffed animals from when I was little. Yep I still have stuffed animals. One of them I have had my ENTIRE LIFE. The second bathroom is full of duckies. No i don't mean there are rubber duckies are in there - physically. But the shower curtain and the wallpaper and wall art art yellow duckies. The wallpaper is peeling and needs to be taken down. Really, the whole bathroom should be redone. The kids are a little old for yellow duckies now. The kids clean their own bathroom, so most of the time it looks like a war zone. My son's room - yikes. He's 14 so there's the whole young teenager thing going on in there. Plus, he has a ferret, which adds his own.........scent. My daughter is a little pink princess. You see pink everywhere in her room. You also see everything she owns......on the floor. Poor kids have inherited my lack of organization. However, they are happy, healthy and loved. You may see an occasional visiting mouse, but our house is not over-run with rats or bugs (although it does seem to be a popular haven for spiders, but I've heard that's good luck?) It's certainly NOT perfect. FAR from it. I have done my best to make it presentable, and I am trying to improve my habits. Today, the day of the party, my anxiety is bubbling up. but I know it's not going to be perfect. So I am trying to battle the anxiety down. Later, I will have friends over who like me for me, not for my housecleaning skills. We will enjoy each other's company, and some cold beverages around a bonfire. Everything will turn out just.........perfect.

What the.......?

Ok. Per doctor's orders we have completed the 1 full month of no dairy for Madison. Our instructions were then to slowly reintroduce dairy and see what happens. So May 1 we did. She had a piece of cheese. Day 2 she had 1/2 of a yogurt. Day 3 she had a glass of milk. So far, she hasn't had any adverse reactions at all - no vomiting! I should be celebrating, I know. Yay, no milk allergy, right? But if it wasn't that then 1) what WAS it? and 2) why did it go away when we took dairy away? OR could it still be milk allergy......is there such thing as an allergy that builds up? Could she be allergic but only have a reaction if she has more than a certain amount,, or if she has dairy products every day for a certain amount of time? I'm so confused. If she isn't reacting to dairy anymore, then the doctor most likely won't order the blood tests. She'll say "well, she's ok now, no need for testing". That means we won't know for sure. We will just wait until it all happens again and start over again???? Aaaargh sometimes doctors frustrate the heck out of me. I want to know WHY she was throwing up almost every night for a month.