Mundane Entropy

"Have you ever been on a listserv where somebody writes something dumb and then somebody else responds and is like, "Wow, that is so dumb. Why would you send that to everybody on the email list?"

Yeah, that happened a few days ago, and it's kinda similar to when somebody hits "respond all" to say, "remove me from this list!" and then you get like, dozens of people doing the same thing. GUYS! This restaurant in SLC next to the FHL just closed! Um, why would I want to know that? I'm in Germany! Oh hey, I liked that restaurant. Me too! I used to go there once a year. And on and on and on.

"Yeah, that's happened to me. What I always think is this: 'aaaaand... it's not more of a waste of time to comment what a waste of time that was?"

This is basically how I feel about my life a lot of the time. Hear me out. I want to write away some of my frustrations with this day, but so much of it will be *exactly* as stupid as responding to a dumb email. Detailing how frustratingly, painfully, mind-numbingly exasperating certain parts of my day were, well... is it even worth the time/effort of recounting it?

I guess the only thing that can unequivocally be deemed less worthy is writing about the internal debate. hahaha. Meta me strikes again :-D

***

I've written about this before somewhere, but I really believe it to be true. There's like, an internal person and an external person. My internal person is feeling great. She's happy, well-balanced, really full of energy and light. So please don't get the wrong ideas from the frustrations I'm going to be venting in a moment. I am not depressed. And I'm not in denial.

You don't believe me.

Oh well. Whatever.

***

I started my day by getting up at 6 am. That is really early for me. And for anyone who goes to bed at 1 am. I am trying so hard to want to go to bed earlier, but it's really hard. Both Danny and I are NOT larks. We are both addicted to being together. Last night we were doing something really fun - some family history research on his Scots. His idea. It was so fun! We didn't crack anything exactly, but we did sort of prove that what is there, unsourced, in FamilySearch, is plausible. One of the sons apparently did not immigrate because his wife did not want to come. So basically, if you didn't immigrate in the 19th century, you lost your ties to the church and presto, your 2nd cousins 7x removed will be researching your lines in an effort to find family names to take to the temple (that's what it's like for Danny's side. I can spend literally about 15 minutes searching and find a whole branch of my Czech side to work on. But we were researching his family, which is really fun).

Ahh I love writing and thinking about this. It's so fun.

But it's not what I came to this computer for.

I woke up at 6 am, called my dad. The train was late. I got to go back to sleep. Yay.

I started getting ready for the day, making breakfast for everyone, etc at 7:30ish. I texted with my Czech friend for a while. Had some top secret news to be revealed in three weeks (a new calling, shhh) to discuss a bit.

"Mom, can I have screen time?"
"No, we are about to leave to pick up Opa."
"When are we going to leave?"
"In like, 8 minutes."
"Oh, but can't I have some screen time for those 8 minutes?"
"No!"
"Well, can I bring the kid phone in the car to play on while we drive?"
"Sure, whatever. You have to find it"
"Okay!" rushes away to get it.

"Hey mom, can I have a ride to Ben's house?"
"I thought you were going to ride your bike?"
"No..."
"Okay..."
Okay, well now we are late. My dad's calling me. "Hey pop, sorry. Yeah. I'm at Ben's house. Don't worry, we are all in the car. Yes, I'm on my way. Be there soon." He hangs up a bit quickly. Sigh.

We talked a little bit about my new calling on the ride down to the physical therapist, halfway to the train station.

10 minutes late to his appointment. I'm so sorry. I should have been ready earlier. No worries. Okay. See you in a bit.

Poopy diaper. Sigh. Pull over, change the kid. That diaper is probably still in my car. I contemplated littering. I would never, never do that. Instead, I litter inside my car. It's a disaster. Cheerios everywhere. Little bits of papers and underwear and camping chairs and shopping bags full of clothes to donate to Good Will or x specific person - so much stuff. Crammed. Air conditioning blowing on my face. "Cora, please feed Joey some cheerios. One at a time." So he doesn't cry. I feel so bad that he's stuck in his carseat. But my dad can't drive and my mom doesn't fly. She takes the train. So that means I am the bus.

Pick up mom. Everybody has to poop. Potty break at the train station.

"Auguhg!"
"He elbowed me!"
"What is going on!?"
"He ELBOWED ME REALLY HARD."
"He didn't give me a turn! Not one turn! And now the phone's dead!"
"Here's a charger. Stop hurting each other! Jeez!"

"Moooommy? Mommy? Can I have some water?"

"Moooommy? Can I have some screen time affer we get hoooome?"
"Moooommy? Can I tell you somefing? I need to tell you somefing. Mommy, I need to tell you somefing!"

My mom is tired, hot, and so happy to be home. She wanted to talk/monologue about the book she read. The book sounded interesting; I wish I had read it so it could have been more of a discussion. Oh well. I enjoyed listening to her opinions for the next hour and 15 minutes. We did talk about my new calling for a little bit in there, but not much. We only mentioned the Annoyingly Sad Family Drama during the last 8 minutes of the drive, and I made my position known:

"This is sad to me. I'm sorry you're hurting. Please don't tell me about it."

Hopefully that's what came across.

Okay, now we're done. Everyone's in the car.

There's no food in my house.

Swing by the grocery store.

Listening to an audiobook that is pretty lame. Mr. Lemoncello's Library. It is basically a wannabe Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with books instead of candy. I like candy better, in this one exact particular case :-D (and that's because the book was so good, ironically).

So yeah. Looooooong.

Running around in circles. Mom, mom moooooooom can I have this? Can I have that? "Go get the potatoes. No, not that bag. It has a big hole in it. Go back and get another one."

"Don't hit your sister!"

"Stay together!"

"Mom, I only want Muenster cheese!"
"What?"
Man at the counter: "I...very much doubt that. But it's over in the self-serve area."
"I think you'd like that kind." Points at colby jack.
"Can I try it?"
Man gets three samples.
Jane runs away across the store screaming, "I don't waaaaaaaaaant cheeeeeeeese!" Disappears down an aisle. I shrug. The store is pretty empty, and it's small. "John, go run and get Cora."
Two minutes later I have to go after both of them. Joey wants cheese and holds out his hands for more.
"Nobody is going to make you eat anything you don't want to eat, Cora!"
"But I don't waaaaaaaaaaant CHEEEESE!"
"Okay, okay, okay."
The chicken was on a craaaazy sale, lower than I've ever seen it in my life. .99/lb for chicken breasts. Max 20 lbs. I buy the max. I'm sending Danny to get more later. I will can the chicken. One afternoon of boring misery = a SIGNIFICANT amount of convenience later, for canned chicken. I have canned chicken 4x before and I have a pressure cooker canner. Is my Foundation audiobook ready? All the ones I've tried so far are kind of...blegh. I need an audiobook. The Egypt book I'm reading is great. The art book is great. But they aren't audiobooks...
"John, Dan, you each run and get a box of cereal."
"Yaay!"
"John, go get a box of Triscuits."
"Okay!"
"Dan, go get a gallon of milk."
Waiting for them to package my chicken.
Man next to me, "Wow, you don't even have to shop at all! You just send your helpers to do it for you!"
"heh." Weak, weak laughter.
Some meaningless chitchat with that guy.
"Mooooom I almost got the giant size!"
"Well, why didn't you? The smaller sizes aren't really big enough for our family."
"Oh! Okay." Rushes off.
"Mom, can I have goldfish?"
"No."

etc. etc. etc.

Oh. Crap.

"Alina! I'm so sorry! I forgot that Jane was at your house!" I am like an hour and a half later than I thought I'd be.
She laughed it off, and I don't think Jane was actually that annoying, but...still...
She had to rush to do stuff for girl's camp. Not a lot of talking.
A lot of hitting and punching and yelling and complaining.
"Moom can I have screen time?"
"Help me get the stuff out of the car!"
"I don't WANT to help you get it out!"
"Do you want to do laps on your bike?"
"No..."

Texting Danny rapidfire: "can you please get some chicken from Fareway on your way home?"
"Sure!"
"Can you please come home for lunch?"
"Yes!"

Danny walks in the door, everybody's running around, trying to sweep, standing right in front of me blocking the fridge as I try to put stuff away in it, begging and crying for screen time, or for this thing, or for that thing, baby is crying - it's just around and around and around and I'm getting really pissed off.

"Kate, go take a break."

I go to the pantry, sit on one of the buckets of flour, put my head in my hands, and pray for calmness and help.

***

Breathing in and out, I notice that the little person is still pretty happily blowing bubbles on my insides. My outside self is yelling too much and pissed that my kids are mostly disasters between disasters and more disasters. But my pissed off ness is not at all like my anxious-ness. Anxious would be like this:

What should I I mean what should I know I should but what I don't hmmm I guess I but what...I should..I should be doing...I really don't know but what. Um, ugh, what is what I don't what...

^ that. That is anxiety. Me sitting on the bucket in the pantry, hands shaking, not knowing what to do next, the only thing that makes sense is curling up in the fetal position on the floor and crying. Which makes no sense. At all. And I know it, but that doesn't change aaaaaaanything.

So I welcome the anger. It's like this: "What the heck. Does nobody else notice that there's like, six pieces of garbage between the car and the garage door? Can nobody else pick it up and put it in the trash? I would have done it but literally every time I am walking here, I'm holding something in BOTH of my freaking hands, including a PERSON! Why is there a pile of junk over there? Ugh! Does nobody else get that if we moved things around a teeeeeeny tiny bit, it would be organized and not super ugly and then our paper towels wouldn't have to be on the ground? I am really, really annoyed that nobody else seems to notice or fight this stupid stupid stupid endless entropy. WHY are there crumbs on the floor AGAIN. This is never ending. What the heck, stop yelling at me! STOP YELLING AT ME."

^ that. That is PMS-y anger. It's always about chores and stuff, too. It's kind of weird and stupid. Very predictable. And I was a little hangry, too. I felt much better after lunch.

I got like, half an hour. It was not uninterrupted. But it was some time. I worked on the outline for my CGSI presentation with my friend Marek. I can't wait for it. I also looked at some comments for my land records book.

***

I can't wait for school to start again. :-)

I love my five kids. Summers with five at home mean that I have very little time to pursue anything besides housework. It's mind-splittingly obnoxious. Because it's unending.

Jane is starting to "get" how to be helpful. The other day she cleaned the entire kitchen by herself.

"Wow! Jane, I came into the kitchen and was like, 'It's so clean!' You did a great job fighting the darkness!" (we just read a Wrinkle in Time together)
[holds out hands to the kitchen] "I love you, kitchen! I love you, kitchen! I love you! I LOVE YOU!"

I laughed so hard.

***

Somehow, I feel much better.