Sometimes {What a difference a year makes}.

I sat down recently to go through my draft folder and maybe finish up a post or 2.  I found quite a few half-written, yet emotion-filled posts that were so enlightening to read through.  My last few years have been a whirlwind of emotion - both joyful and deeply sad.  Revisiting these emotions are so therapeutic for me, which is probably why I have always been a journal writer - drawn to spilling my emotions into written words, learning and growing the whole way.  So I thought I'd resurrect a post or 2 for a nice trip down memory lane!  Here's one from exactly one year ago - March 21, 2014...

In life and in photography!  hehehehe

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Sometimes your husband works eleventy billion hours per week and you're left doing everything yourself.

Sometimes you have 3 dogs and no fenced in backyard and you have to walk them around the yard 3 times a day while leaving your 3 kids in the house to avoid bringing them out into the freezing temps.

Sometimes your kids decide that their superheroes should go swimming in their milk-filled cereal bowls while you're out walking the dogs around the yard.

Sometimes 2 of those 3 dogs don't like to pee or poop while on a leash, so they use your brand new carpet instead.

Sometimes your car makes a really obnoxious high-pitched squealing sound, but your husband is in the middle of his eleventy billion hours at work and can't take the time to pick you up from the repair shop, so you just sit at home with a broken car.

Sometimes it takes you two hours to sit down and write an email to your grad school adviser to assure him that you will, in fact, finish your Masters courses this summer ... while you wonder how that will be humanly possible when it has taken eight times longer than it should have to simply write your email.

Sometimes you just need to take a shower, so you throw your 2 year olds in your (empty) bathtub with some bathtub crayons and you have to get out of the shower with soapy hair in order to break up a fight over who gets to use the blue crayon.

Sometimes your life feels like life will never slow down.  Like it will always be a constant circle of chaos.  Like the work will never slow down and life will be a constant stream of pseudo-single parenting.

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And that's where it ended - inevitably interrupted by the very thing that I was lamenting about at the moment.  

I have to admit, I'm glad those days are over.  Brian is in a "slower" period at work, which means that he's only at the office 50ish hours per week, and working from home another 15 or so.  Yes.  I know.  That doesn't sound slow.  But it is, and for that, I am grateful.  

The boys are a year older, and oh, what a difference a year makes!  Don't get me wrong, threenagers are total a-holes.  BUT, it's more attitude than anything.  Two-year olds are mischievous.  Three year olds can be trusted to a certain degree.  Gone are the days of superheros swimming in cereal bowls (mostly).  Now, they'll ask me if they can do it and yell at me when I say no.  But at least they won't do it.  That, my friends, I can handle.  

And the dogs?  Now we have a fence and laminate floors and little to no peeing and pooping in the house.  

Life is still chaos, but it's better.  It's the kind of chaos that I can handle. 

And maybe even thrive on.