Tonight the house doesn’t seem so bad. The floors are swept. The living room area is picked up and vacuumed. The mud room is overflowing with blankets from the track meet, that were dropped there as soon as everyone walked in the door. The downstairs carpet is pulled back where the boys stuffed towels against the cracks in the wall where the rain comes in. There are rooms and corners that have way too much clutter, where I don’t even know where half this stuff came from. For supper we had the beef, chicken, and leftover taco shells and toppings we were gifted after last night’s Lenten meal.

Everyone is here. Another baseball game was cancelled this evening. Again I was relieved, as that opened up an entire evening for everyone to be home. I’ve been in one of my cozy homemaker moods today, taking time this morning to do the dishes that have been piling up for the past one or two evenings. Usually this is the kids’ job, but I wanted to do it. I’d tried to sit down to work on homework this morning. Ideally it’d be me and the boys in the living room in the morning, everyone working on their various school things. Sometimes that’s how it is, but today I couldn’t quite concentrate knowing there were other things around the house that could also be getting done.

I did about four loads of laundry washing boys’ sheets and blankets. Something about having boys, especially as they get older, makes me worry about things like making sure they’re at least somewhat prepared for living with any people they might live with in the future, or just living somewhere else on their own. I want them to know how to at least do basic things for themselves. I tend to think one of my jobs as a mother is to teach my boys the concepts and skills of being competent in the areas of women. The thing about that is that women are different, and are going to come with their own backgrounds and personalities.

In other words, they can only learn so much from me. Another downside to this is that sometimes in the big picture of wanting to make sure people are learning things, now that they are older and sometimes doing more, I forget sometimes myself still to find joy in the doing for them. Like, I forget that it actually brings me joy to do their laundry for them, that sometimes it’s just nice to be taken care of so well to the point that you don’t even realize someone is doing it. Clothes just magically wash themselves. Blankets and beds just magically become fresh and clean. Somebody loves you no matter what.