A Chocolate Chip Cookie Kind of Day

Do you ever have one of those days?  Where nothing seems to go right, you get super frustrated, and you consume a ridiculous amount of chocolate chip cookies and/or coffee?  (So much for clean eating.) This is what remains of my afternoon snack:

Let's just review today at the White house, shall we?

• Approximately 452 pieces of puffed rice cereal are currently strewn on the floors of my kitchen and living room.  Also, there is a cereal pile on the recliner.

• Someone who shall remain nameless threw a pair of pants at me in anger (it wasn't Jeremy).

• Splatters of spaghetti sauce from last night's dinner make for some fancy artwork on my stove top.

• It took me until about 90 minutes ago to get almost (not even all) of the dishes from dinner last night clean.  This is because of an unexpected delay due to dishwasher user error.  Apparently one of our pans does not fit and makes the door not latch which makes the dishwasher not start.  This was discovered when Jeremy got home from work yesterday.  Lesson learned.

• Turns out that refinancing a rental property is harder than refinancing a primary property.  And so is talking to the mortgage lady with children screaming (literally) in the background.

• Two full baskets of dirty laundry are sitting on the bathroom floor.  

• I had to apologize to Micah for losing my temper.  And then I had to explain what it means to lose your temper.

• I wanted to do something extra fun for school today - take a walk, have the kids pick out Christmas music, write pen pal letters to cousins in Texas...yeah, none of those things happened.

As I see it, I have two choices.  Either wallow in the frustration, or try to find some joy in it.  Here are my feeble attempts at joy:

• The cereal is still on the floor because all of the kids are quiet during nap/quiet time.  Vacuuming might wake somebody up, and THEY ARE ALL QUIET.

• That someone who threw his pants at me is now wearing them.

• Two large containers of spaghetti sauce DIDN'T end up on the stove and will make some tasty future meals.

• Right now there are only two dirty dishes in this house.  Also, the dishwasher PLAYS A SONG when it finishes a load.

• The kids are no longer screaming.  See the reason the cereal is still on the floor above.

• The dirty laundry is not loose on the floor.

• Micah accepted my apology which resulted in a great conversation.

• We still got through our Classical Conversations memory work.  And my kindergartener asked questions about the French Revolution.

How do you find moments of joy through frustration?

P.S. If you like this post, you may also like the post #RealLife.