The To-Do List is Making My Head Spin

 

This blog post is representing evidence of two things, both of which you'll have to forgive, or at least avert your eyes if the spectacle gets too strong to behold. 

First, above you see my first attempt at.....of course I have to do this, wait for it.....monkeying... with PicMonkey, a new free photo-editing site. For those of you not in the know, PicMonkey is created by the same folks who created PicNik, another very beloved photo editing site. Google just very recently eliminated from its list of applications, which caused great hue and cry on the interwebs. PicMonkey looks like a very fun and encouraging replacement for all of the bereft PicNik fans.

Second? My house is beginning to derange me. 

One ominous sign is that I made a collage of ugly stuff. I mean really? This is a blog with mostly lady-reader types. So OF COURSE a photo-collage should be chock full of fuzzy puppies, whimsical crafts, hip vintage goods, and interior design eye candy. But I've featured a rotten floor, bare studs, and piles of busted up sod. My head is clearly not in the right place. 

I bought a house that needs a lot of attention. I've been able to do a lot in the almost year that we've been here. But I'm at a point where I feel as though I'm only making tiny little inches toward any kind of goal, and in the meantime, my family is living at ground zero of the entire mess. 

Up above in the collage we have 

1. My bedroom with the mystifying black goo. We now have clean subfloor, and we also have drywall. But we do not have plastering and sanding done in major parts of the room. 

2. This is the one wall of my room that still looks exactly as we had to leave it when my sister and I ran out of time during our commando construction marathon last summer. Now, my bedroom is still a work in progress, and I usually only step into it past midnight every night, throw my clothes on the pile, and fall into bed exhausted. Hardly the lady refuge of which I dream. 

3. My bathroom floor is still a mish-mash, at one end plywood subfloor, the rest this brittle and cracking sheet linoleum. I think this flooring is beyond cool but also beyond salvage, with nail holes, rust stains, and cracks all over it. I need to get something far more functional and cleaner in here. 

4. The garden project that began with such promise has been stymied by too many working weekends and too many rainy ones to count. I feel like I'm making progress at the approximate rate of one thistle per week. Considering that I also planned to scrape and paint the house this summer as well, if this weather continues perhaps I should just begin a moss farm on the siding and be done with it.

I also have a kitchen that needs fresh paint and trim work, a garage with a broken entry door, and a bunch of home dec sewing projects that I could be working on. Add into that cooking, cleaning, and laundry for four boys, a full time job, and it's no wonder I often come home, survey the pile, and sink into the sofa after dinner with a glass of wine and a heavy sigh. 

I am overwhelmed. 

I am temporarily down about it, but not out. I'll keep trying, but if my readers and friends have any tips or ideas about helping prioritize all this stuff, it will help until I get my suspenders snapped back up into position, and I find my backbone again.

I promise the next collage will be brilliant, and so will my mood.