Starting Over

After a great week of getting my house in better shape, and keeping the kitchen sink shiny, I had a setback. I woke up on Saturday morning with a mastitis (milk duct infection). Not only did I have the pain at the point of infection, but whole-body aches, as well. I got on the phone with the clinic and got a prescription called in to my pharmacy, and Aaron picked it up for me.

After a few doses I felt better, and Aaron and I decided to go ahead and go out to dinner with our friends, as planned. That was probably a mistake, because overnight I got feverish and my ducts were even more swollen than they had been on Saturday morning. At 3am Katie woke up, I nursed her, and couldn't fall back asleep because of the body aches, cramps (yes, this would all happen at that time), and a bad headache. So, I decided to do the dishes at 4am. I had noticed some bowls in the sink before I went to bed on Saturday night, and remembered the dishwasher had been running when I went to bed, and thought if I got the sink clean, it would give the family motivation to keep it clean while I stayed in bed on Sunday. Boy, was I wrong.

I got up on Sunday morning, as Aaron was in church meetings, and helped Katie, Aidan and Dallin get ready for church. I went into the kitchen to find that nobody had bothered emptying the dishwasher, and cereal bowls were sitting in the sink.

At 8:45am I realized that we were supposed to bring the nursery snack. Crackers would have been a good option, but we have a crazy nursery leader right now, and she specifically asked me not to bring crackers, because that's what people have brought for the past month, and she thought the kids would appreciate something on the list she had in the treat container (yes, she thought that asking the lady with seven kids to be the one to put work into the snack would be a good idea). Her list asked for a variety of foods, such as meat, cheese, muffins, whole-wheat bread and butter, bananas, etc. I didn't have enough bread in the house to send, so I decided to make muffins, and send some slices of cheese and some bananas for them to cut up. There are 17 kids in nursery right now, so I had to double the muffin recipe.

The muffins were coming out of the pans when Aaron came home to get the kids. They left, and I went back to bed. Yes, I left the dishes in the sink. I was sweating buckets from the fever, had a case of the shakes and really bad cramps, and couldn't stay up anymore.

I mostly stayed in bed the rest of the day. The kitchen continued to get worse. I came down for dinner, and things looked pretty bad. Aaron assigned Will and Brandon to get the dishes done and clear the table, but at about 9pm I still heard voices on the main floor (Aaron had gone to sleep already). I went down to the kitchen, and the boys were trying to figure out what to do with the dishes that wouldn't fit in the dishwasher. I told them to go to bed.

So, Aaron woke up early (early to bed, early to rise, I guess), and saw the mess in the kitchen, and woke up Brandon and William at 5:40am. He told them to do the dishes. I'm not sure what all they did, but here's what I woke up to this morning:

The dishwasher was just finishing up, and the chile pot was soaking in one side of the sink. There were cereal bowls, flatware, and cups in the other side of the sink, as well as the cookie cooling rack. The dishwasher was only about 2/3 full, and half of what was in it wasn't clean. There were kidney beans all over, the bowls that had had chile in them were still covered in chile, there was a cookie sheet taking up half of the bottom rack, and the swirly thing above the bottom rack was touching it, so I don't think it was able to do its job very well. There were cups facing upward in the top rack, full of dirty water (they hadn't been placed over a peg, so they had flipped), and a medicine spoon had been put in the silverware tray right-side up, so it was full. There were wooden spoons on the top rack, embedded in each other, so the one that had been covered in chile when it went in was still covered in chile when it came out.

The counters and stove were completely covered with yuck. There was hardened jell-o splattered on the counter, and chile all over the stove. The butcher block counter had an open bag of powdered sugar on it, a rolling pin covered in powdered sugar, a plastic mat covered in sugar and dough, and there was a dirty mixing bowl in the Kitchenaid. The entire counter was covered in flour, powdered sugar, and clumps of sugar-cookie dough. Every remaining square inch of it was covered in something that didn't belong there, such as the recipe binder, papers, and a calculator.

To top it all off, the recycling bag under the sink was coated in chile and tomato sauce, and none of the cans that were in it were cleaned out. There were also two empty milk jugs, one dirty chile can, and two can lids on the countertop.

I tell you, I wanted to give up. Even my note next to the sink that said to put dishes in the dishwasher and wipe out the sink had been soaked by water from the grill baster, which was rubbing up against it - don't ask me why that was even out, because I don't have a clue. I'll need to make a new sign, as it was too wet to keep.

So far, I have nursed Katie, showered, wiped my bathroom countertop, ran the washer twice and the dryer once, emptied and scrubbed out the crusty dishes that came out of the dishwasher, filled and ran it, cleaned the sink and my vinyl countertops, removed the dishes from the butcher block counter and put away the sugar, ate breakfast and drank some water. Oh, and I've vented to all of you. Thanks for listening!