Some Chaos Amid the Chaos

I am finding myself struggling to keep up at the moment. Between home, work, children, family and life the hours in the day never seem to be enough to get it all done.  I decided this weekend that I would catch up with housework, decluttering and chores and spend some time tackling the to-do list – mums bus pass, dentist and optician appointments and helping dad-in-law to pack to go home to Pakistan later this month.

So with the best of intentions, when my best friend suggested she visit, I happily agreed.  We spent an afternoon catching up and herding the combined nine children between us. I made them lunch and she kept me company as I worked my way through the laundry process (one wash in, one wash out, wash on line, collect dry clothes and pile up for the big folding assembly belt and uniform pile for ironing).

She offered to take us out for dessert and we trooped with our flock to the nearest dessert place which happily was empty at that time of the day.  We had the usual rigmarole of the kids getting overexcited, trying to order more than they could eat and then refusing to sit down. Then when the ice cream and cookie dough came they all attached themselves to the £1 to machine like limpets and started begging for pound coins.  Most of them wasted their desserts and tried to eat my besties one.  Being the enormous-hearted person she is, she fed most of it to them.  She is a better person than me, I would have told them all to go away.

At this point none of this mattered.  She ordered me a latte and fed me strawberries from her dessert and I sat in bliss.  Like the calm in the centre of the noisy children storm.  Give me a small skinny latte and I am your grateful friend sitting in my happy place.  Clearly it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

We had a lovely afternoon, she showered affection on my girls in buckets and our boys played computer games together. It was a lovely afternoon.  Even after hours together we didn’t manage to catch up about everything.  She is probably one of the only people who I can talk to about motherhood, work, life and faith and she just gets it. Completely.  I can’t tell you what an enormous blessing that is, to have someone hear you, understand you and have a common experience understanding about things with you alhamdulillah.

I never did catch up on housework.  Sunday I was blessed with two lots of guests so that was the rest of my weekend.  I think I am going to change to doing all housework on weekdays and just enjoy my weekends.