How Many Emotions Can You Have at Once?

How many emotions can one person have at one time?  I think my personal best is 322.

In the movie HOME, sweet little Oh creates the term sad-mad.  It’s when you’re really sad and mad at the same time.  This became a favorite of mine because it’s so true….our emotions aren’t one track.  I can feel happy and be bawling at the same time.  Sometimes I am excited-scared and other times I’ve been confused-organized or adventurous-wary.

This past weekend I was glad-sad.

One of our daughters is going on a grand adventure to Washington state.  She left on Friday and we don’t know when we will see her again.  She will be approximately 2,173 miles away for the foreseeable future.  That’s an estimate.  It could be 2,174.5 miles.  Not that I’m obsessed or anything.

It’s making my mom-heart so sad and I am going to miss her like crazy.  She’s a delightful girl who loves to spend time with her family.  She cheers us all up and spreads joy.  We all adore spending time with her!!!

But she’s also been itching to try this adventure for a long time, so off she went.  She was so excited to go that it would be hard not to find a little glad place in my heart for her.  See?  Sad-glad.

Since her last day here was Friday, we took the morning off of school and work and just hung out with her.  We played some games and ate and laughed and studied the atlas to see how long it would take to get to her if we just couldn’t stand being away from her.  We talked about how different the weather is where she is going and what kinds of things there are for her to do there.  It looks like she is going to have a wonderful time.  I am truly happy for that…..kind of.

On Friday afternoon she left.  Tears flowed.  I wished I could make time stand still.

I’ll be going to Washington for a few days next week to help her settle in.  I am looking forward to being where she is and feeling more connected to her new environment.  That should help some of my mixed emotions.

Since we took off Friday, we had to do school work on Saturday.  Saturday is usually our house cleaning day, so doing school cut into my plans.  It really takes all of us the entire morning to get this house even close to clean.  Once we finished with school we would only have a couple of hours to clean.  This meant I had to make some tough choices.  Do I kinda, sorta, surface clean all of the bathrooms?  Or really deep clean one of them and hope the others don’t make us ill before next weekend?

I chose the latter.  One very clean bathroom that has been scrubbed to the point of shining is what I went for.  So while the boys did the other jobs around the house (sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, etc) I tackled the boys’ bathroom.  I mean to tell you I went after that place like a Secret Service agent sweeping for bugs.  No dirt, slime or nastiness was going to escape my bottle of Thieves Cleaner.

There was one spot that gave me attitude….the window.  I wanted to clean it (since the last time anyone cleaned the outside of that window must have been in the 1700’s), but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get to the outside of the lower half.  It was blocked by a screen that seemed impossible to remove and there appeared to be no way to tilt it down.  The windows in our living room tilt down for easy cleaning, which is exactly what I kept screaming at the bathroom window in the hope of it feeling jealous and letting me know its secret.  No dice.

After an hour of trying and pushing and contorting myself to try to see up into the sides seeking a magical latch, I asked on Facebook.  No one knew.  I asked my husband (always a last resort since he has the tendency to hold these air-head things over me until death do us part).  He Googled it.

The dumb window has a hidden channel on the side of the screen and when you push the screen SIDEWAYS (who thinks to push a screen sideways?!?!) it slips into the channel giving it just enough room on the opposite side to wedge it out.  Then and only then can you clean the outside of the window.

I finally finished the bathroom and was exhausted from the effort.  I mean, taking an hour and a half to clean a 2×3 window takes its toll.  My body still had energy but my brain and emotions were mush.  I was tired-wired.

After putting all of my cleaning supplies away I went to help the boys finish their jobs so we could call it done and sit down to rest.  I didn’t allow myself to think about the other dirty bathrooms.  Nope.  I just pretended they were clean and moved along.  We spent the rest of Saturday relaxing and hanging outside in the gorgeous fall weather.

Sunday after church I ran down to the big city to attend a Young Living class my friend was teaching.  She put together a wonderful local beauty school and I wanted to learn more about how she does it so I can host one of my own.  It was amazing….she did a beautiful job.  Then I ran a couple of quick errands before heading home.  I can’t wait to have my own beauty school in my little town!

All in all we had a lovely weekend.  My daughter is off on her grand adventure, one of the bathrooms is clean and we are managing to stay caught up on school.  I’d say that’s happy-happy.

Have a great week!