I have so much going on in my head it's hard to know which thought to extract and make into a blog. Actually, what's hard is extracting a thought and making it sound cohesive and sane. I can start with my blog name. "The Struggle Juggle" The Struggle Juggle is how I often refer to my life. My juggling act currently consists of, but is subject to change without notice, (unless I manage to keep up with blogging and you keep up with me, then perhaps, notice you shall have) two whirling dervish daughters, a soon-to-be 7 year old and a 4 year old, my husband, a strange little calico kitty we rescued from our yard who loves to play catch with squinkies and the apocalypse house and all that name implies that we live in. I don't believe you need to have any of those things in your life to relate to or to take pleasure in reading my blog. Perhaps your juggling act is similar and we can ease eachother's burden from time to time with anecdotes, advice, cocktails, etc. etc. etc. Or perhaps yours is completely different and you are juggling schoolwork, friends, work, a lovelife (what is that again?) and in that case, I'll just live vicariously through you while you laugh along with me, learn from my mistakes and move toward a future that contains as few struggles as possible. In any event I hope you enjoy hanging out with me.
Now for my house name. Since I grew up here and now my girls are growing up here, I've always felt that I should give the house a name, you know, like they do down South. A nice, proud name, I never got around to it, because I never could land on a suitable name, then it named itself by falling apart. 'Apocalypse House". There is always something going on here and it's always something unexpected, out of the ordinary and extraordinarily costly. The latter is a major problem being that I'm a stay-at-home mom and my husband is not Bill Gates. I've been living in this house since I was born, with a short stay in an apartment for about 2 years when I first got married. Then after my father passed away, we decided if we were going to live in some one's basement, might as well be my Mom's. Good idea/bad idea? Then when she wanted a place w/o so many stairs, we bought the house. Good idea/bad idea? If you ever buy a house from a family member, my strongest advice would be to do it the same way you would if it weren't family. We didn't. No inspection, no nothing and BOY was that a mistake! Also Mom just took what she needed and moved around the corner to her nice, neat apartment. So we still have all her stuff from 30+ years of living here, plus all our stuff. Lots of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. We've already had two dumpsters and still could fill 2 or 3 more. Upside - my girls are sleeping in the room I slept in and growing up in the house and the neighborhood I grew up in. I just can't figure out how with four less people in the house and less furniture, how my house seems so much smaller than it did when I was growing up? Unless it's cleaning time, then, then it's much bigger! Speaking about cleaning, it's Friday - every Friday is Black Friday at our house. The big black garbage bags come out and away we go! Somehow though it's always here, the clutter and mess, sweep it up, it comes right back. That's when I really miss having a dog, to eat up all the fallen crumbs, to play vacuum after every meal. Maybe in the spring time we'll get that puppy we've been imagining. "Sick puppy" has taken on a new meaning at our house. The girls want a dog, I do too to be quite honest and hubby does as well, though he's been kind of quiet on the whole thing. (Mainly because he'd be out there tomorrow getting one if pushed just ever so slightly, so better to be quiet.) So, we've enacted a new house rule, we are trying to live as if we had a puppy. If we find something on the floor that does not belong there and would in essence make a puppy sick should said puppy eat it, we call out "sick puppy!" and clean up the item. Until we can maintain a clean floor - no puppy.
Looking around right now, it doesn't look good. Oh girls! "Sick Puppy!"
Plus a puppy would only add another struggle to juggle.........
