woe is me

I had a resentful, feeling-sorry-for-myself sort of day yesterday.  I hate those days, because not only do I dislike the events of the day by the evening, but I end up disliking myself, too.

It started off with Josie waking up with a fever, which meant I stayed home with her and didn't get to go to mass.  Then I finally got around to hanging a bunch of pictures (4 months later than intended), which was satisfying, but not exactly fun. Before dinner I intended to do a 1-hour "speed clean" of the whole house... but it turned out the holiday season had been hard on my poor kitchen (especially one unfortunate episode involving the mixer spattering boiling liquid marshmallow goo EVERYWHERE).  So 2-1/2 hours later, I had cleaned the kitchen, and only the kitchen.  And that didn't even include inside the fridge or oven, guys!  And of course Faith was being particularly annoying during this cleaning marathon, in that special way only an almost-3-year old can do.  

And then as we were getting ready for bed (blessed, blessed bed), Jack asked why it had been so long since my last blog post. "What do you mean?" I asked.  "I did a long post the day after Christmas!" No. The internet apparently ate that entry.

This may or may not have led to petulant foot-stamping, tears, and whining that I was DONE with BLOGGING, I don't have TIME, no one READS it ANYWAY, and our house will NEVER BE DONE and even if it is someday it'll only be TIME TO MOVE AGAIN. (That last bit was especially relevant to the blog-eating Internet situation, no?)

The thing is, I'm not normally a "wallowing in my troubles" sort of person. I can't stand wallowers.  I even know all the right things to tell myself when I start to feel pitiful. "It'll be an adventure!" "It's a labor of love!" "Isn't it satisfying to get things done?!" But sometimes I get tired of cheering myself up.

I could close with an inspirational concluding paragraph about how I revived myself with prayer and learned a valuable lesson about counting my blessings. But that would be kind of trite, wouldn't it?  I do feel better this morning, of course. The "sorry for myself" feeling always goes away eventually. But I'm sure it'll return when I'm least expecting it, and I'll have to beat it back again.  It's good to remember I'm not alone in doing so, though, and that God will help me with the beating.