I look at my kitchen, that I spent quite a bit of time cleaning yesterday.  Twice.  I look at the family room floor, that was cleaned up yesterday.  Thrice.  Toys strewn everywhere.  I Look at the load of laundry in its purple bucket that has been sitting, waiting for someone to fold it, for three days.  I hear the loud playing of my 2 oldest upstairs, while I hear the banging of the crib against the wall of the youngest as she performs her naptime ritual of jumping up and down and talking for 5 minutes before she lays down to sleep.

I am so grateful.

Having a disease like multiple sclerosis, you learn that everything about your body is unpredictable.  You can go to bed one night feeling fine, and wake up and not be able to use a hand, or see, or walk well.

Last night I went to bed with what is referred to in the community as “cog fog”-my brain just wasn’t functioning.  I was having trouble with words, remembering what I was doing, processing what was being said to me.  Its been going on for several days.  In fact, Sunday I went grocery shopping, and I locked my keys in the car.  I haven’t done that in 10 years.  I hit a low point that day–I had to write down what I needed to do in order to get my keys, because I was afraid I would forget one of the steps(we don’t have a spare set, I didn’t have a cell phone, I had to walk to the library and wait for them to open in order to look up my car insurance on the internet so I could call the towing service on the library’s public courtesy phone).

This morning, I woke up with mental clarity.  I woke up not feeling like I hadn’t slept. 

I am grateful I can see the mess.  That I can walk to clean the mess.  That I can reason I shouldn’t have to do this several times a day. I can think about how if the oldest 2 were in public school, part of the mess wouldn’t be here. 

I am SO grateful for homeschooling.

This mess won’t be around forever.  Someday, I will have a quiet home that stays relatively neat.  And oh, how much I will  miss the mess then and wish for it.