A Day to Nest or, "The Secret Lives of Pregnant Hoarders"

I know Sunday should be a day of rest.  But today was busy, in what a very good, cathartic way.  Let's start off:  our morning began with Divine Liturgy.  My kids, as much as I LOVE them, are not "model students" when it comes to Church behavior.  We are seemingly and single-handedly the most disruptive family, ever.  This wouldn't bother me if our Church community wasn't 80% children.  Surely with those numbers, there's gotta be another family to look down my nose at, right?  RIGHT?  (...c'mon... anyone?) Nope.  Well.... a good lesson in not judging others, that's for sure!

God is using my babes as a learning tool towards downright, flat-on-my-face humility.  It could always be worse, though.  If I were in any other church, my flesh would undoubtedly be freshly skewered each week by the burning gazes and hisses of the more severe yia yias and babushkas (grandmas), unaccustomed to small, loud, misbehaving kids and their clueless, convert, "McWorld"-generation parents, attempting yet failing to get the knack of this whole parenting thing. Lord have mercy!

Yes, humbling indeed.  Especially as I sport a large stomach that announces, "Hey, more fun is on the way!  Stay tuned for four times the shenanigans!"

I really only have myself to blame.  I don't know what else to do except beg God for mercy.  Period.

So after church, we came home.  I might have burst into a flame of emotion in the privacy of my room.  Might have.  Then I ate some food (always helps, eh?).  Then I washed the van for the first time ever, ordered Job to mow the lawn in the dead-heat of the day (while the kids played in the sprinkler).  Gave both he and Joseph buzz-cuts (finally!), made a vegan strawberry freezer pie, finished a pair of trousers for Joseph (since I've never sewn him anything) and fed everyone dinner.

With such an unexpected surge of energy, one might assume I was in full-on nesting mode... the kind that typically leads to labor onset.  Too bad I'm still a good 7 weeks from my due date.  But 7 more weeks of this, and I might actually have some good progress on house cleanliness/ de-cluttering/ sewing projects.  Good thing too, I'm such a border-line hoarder-- my house needs a good go-through.  It's maddening.

In fact.... FUNNY STORY.  Two weeks ago I was going through boxes in the garage.  I found an old box on a high shelf, and managed to pull it down.  Inside? A voluminous collection of jelly jar lids, disposable coffee cup lids,  hoarded party napkins, old plastic water bottles, straws, among other strange kitchen junk items (WHA?).  I remembered all of it from our previous home... and how I went through a phase years ago where I was saving certain random items in small, strange collections.  When we moved, we must have just absentmindedly packed it up and left it in the garage. 

You can imagine how horrified I was at finding such a weird assortment of previously stashed junk, formerly "precious" commodities.  I eagerly sent most items to the garbage/ recycling, and a few things to Goodwill.

"Oh well," I told myself, "look on the bright side:  At least you're making a bit of progress."  An ever-so-small bit. Yes, at this rate, I'll take whatever I can get.