try to be reasonable

Alouicious can't find his binder with his writing assignment in it. And he's hungry. Very very very hungry. He keeps flopping himself over on me and gazing soulfully and manipulatively into my eyes and then when I ignore him he gently whines that he is hungry and he can't find his binder.

Marigold is putting all my makeup on, singing and trying to open a bottle of perfume.Why can't she sleep past 5? Why? Why? Why?

Matt has been up for hours already working and being amazing. Except that I wish he would go get his hand looked at.

But really, the great news is that my mom and dad are arriving today, well, this evening sometime. And, of course, I'd like to have the house thoroughly perfect and have done a full day of school by the time they arrive. And I would like to have made bread and rehung the shelf in the bathroom and cut fresh flowers for their room and touched up the chipped paint in the dining room and living room and baked a large cake and been gracious and kind to my wonderful children through the whole course of the day.

But because I have created a Sisyphean impossibility in my mind, I am destined to be frustrated all day. I will flutter like a scattered and insane chicken, flitting from room to room, shouting contradictory instructions at bewildered and bemused children, "take these shoes downstairs and put them on and then bring them up and put them on the shelf!" or something stupid like that.

Matt, on the other hand, intends to do the work that is most important and let everything else fall by the wayside and so he will come to the end of the day stressed about things he has no control over, but satisfied that he did actual work.

That is the difference between men and women.

'Her question made me remember that the word 'idiot' comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by the malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: they are so obsessed with public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outline of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.'--Rebecca West, 'Prologue', Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

And now, to start the day out properly, I will get up and make breakfast and then sit around in my slippers till 10 when I realize the time, panic and assume the chicken routine.

Have a lovely Wednesday!