month of beauty: 'til I cried

I spent the whole day trying to organize two bookshelves. Really—it took ages. Taking off all the books, sorting tons and tons of old homeschool Stuff, organising all our information books into categories (Science! History and Geography! Art! Pretty labels, even!), and sitting and looking at old folders of work and art by the kids.

And I now believe anyone who's trying to tidy up should put aside a whole extra day for looking through all the things they unearth when they're tidying up. It's a gold mine, I tell you. 

I found my girl's portfolio from preschool. She looked so cute, and so happy. And I saw just how much work I made my kids do in their first year of homeschool. Wow—it's a wonder they weren't ready for University by the end. And I found umpteen workbooks that I bought in the beginning, when I thought workbooks were the only way to homeschool and I thought workbooks would fit my kids. I found a whole bunch of books that my kids stopped looking at years ago—colouring books from when my girl was 5, and old maths books with those gold stars in them that we haven't used since the Pleistocene era. I even found an Usborne book called "Educating and Entertaining Your Preschool Child." That's like finding a jar of peanut butter in the pantry with a use by date of 1964.

Anyway, the house looks disastrous, as houses always do just before the tidying up is done. Isn't that always the way? You've worked all day and the place looks like a bomb dropped, and then, quietly, voila. Job is done. 

We aren't at that stage yet. We are at Bomb. Dropped. But that's okay. We're okay. I'm okay. Not overwhelmed at all!

So tonight, at dinner, my beautiful husband sat in the middle of the debris, having cooked us an amazing dinner (garlic mashed potatoes with seared mushroom, spinach and veg topping. Yummo).  And he told us the story of his day. 

While I'd been cleaning (and resting) and cleaning (and resting), he'd been out trying to pay some bills, do the grocery shopping, get the car fixed up for registration and find just the right salsa at the fruit and veg shop. It was super fiddly and complicated, and it took him ages to get everything done. 

But when he told the story, it wasn't all doom or gloom. In fact, it was hysterical. We had sound effects, we had the animated gestures, we had his impeccable timing. The guy should have been a stand up comic. He, and everyone who knows him, knows it. 

He had my boy spitting out his drink. My daughter couldn't finish her dinner. I was laughing so hard the muscles in my upper chest started to ache. I was weeping with laughter; bent against the chair, crying and smiling, both. He had us all in the palm of his hand. 

What an insane delight this man is. 

He finished his story. I had a drink. My girl began to eat again. My son just grinned.

Then my husband looked straight at me. "Hey, are you writing a blog post today?"

"Sure am," I said.

He gazed around at the crazy mess all around: books in mounds on the floor, things in wild piles, bits of paper not yet picked up, the desk over by the window looking like it might cave from the stuff stacked on top. 

And with a totally straight face, he said: 

"I wonder what your thing of beauty will be?"

Too funny. 

Brilliant.

"That's easy," I said straight back. "It's you."

photo by my girl