My life is a mess. Literally.

When I say that foster parenting is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, I don't say it lightly. Oddly enough, though, it isn't the Big Feelings, the constant appointments, or even all the hoops that CPS makes me jump through that gets to me. Over the past twenty months I have found ways to deal with, or at least accept, all those things.

No, the thing that thing that gets under my skin the most is the mess.

My life used to look like this:

Now, it looks like this:

Call me neurotic, but there is something about the constant landscape of toys, legos, books, papers, shoes, crayons and other kid detritus strewn everywhere--and I do mean everywhere--that gets my dander up.

It takes daily effort to keep this . . . .

From looking like this . . .

Baby Brother's favorite movie of all time is the Cat in the Hat, which involves something called "The Mother of all Messes." I've got one of those. If only I had Thing One and Thing Two with a magical vacuum that sucks it all up, too.

While the mess is driving me nuts, the truth is I've intentionally let the house go. It was the only way to carve out enough time for things like going to the pool, taking walks, playing in the park and going out for ice cream.

Someday, I hope my life will return to a more ordered state, one where, when I put a thing down, I know it will stay where I put it until I pick it up again. Until then, I'm just trying to make it through the mess, one day at a time.