The Truth is Messy

Last night I sat down by the fire with my cup of hot tea to try and warm up and also just to try to feel better.  I always come home in the winter cold, tired and wanting to use the bathroom all by myself.  Cold and tired I deal with by sitting in Shane's recliner (big ugly) with my feet against the fireplace.  Using the bathroom alone....well, one day my kids are going to turn 18 and want to move out.  Come to think of it, I doubt they'll want to be in the bathroom with me when they're 14, so I guess I just need to see it as endearing that, for now, they want to be with me the second I get home for every second that I'm home.

Anyway, I sat down with hot tea.  Peyton jumped in with me, hit her head against the mug spilling hot liquid over both of us.  I yelled at her for it, as if burning herself wasn't consequence enough.  She burst into tears, hurt more by my short-tempered response than by the spilled tea.  I spent the next five minutes apologizing and wiping tears.

The moral of this little story?  Life is messy.  I know.  I make a big fat mess of mine, daily.  Have you met me?  Let me introduce myself.

I shared that story with my class today during an art lesson.  We were painting the color wheel.  My students wanted their pictures to be perfect and some were even reluctant to try for fear of doing it wrong.  Um.....what?!?!  I'm handing you paint and you are afraid to start mixing?!  I think their pictures should be somewhat messy because mixing primary colors into all the other colors should be messy, whimsical and all about the exploration and discovery of it all.  So what if your paper is messy? Let's get messy! (Also, can you please move the paints that are teetering on the edge of your table because two different cups of red have already landed face down, and did I MENTION THAT IT'S SO HARD FOR ME TO LET YOU GET MESSY!?  'CAUSE YOU'RE MAKING A MESS OF MY STUFF!)  Whoa.

The difference between last night with Peyton and this morning with my students is, I think, two things.  One, I have more patience at 8:40 am than at 5:00 pm.  Two, my students aren't my own kids and therefore they get a more thoughtful, patient, professional response.  How backward is that?  All the screaming I did was only in my head.  In truth, I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Accidents happen.  It's alright.  I can see that it wasn't because you were being careless."

Life is messy.  But it's also redundant, tiresome, boring, mundane and redundant. Go read this article.  I read it when I got home from work today and it rang so true for me.  I think social media might be killing us slowly, painfully, one fabulous post after another.  It's making us afraid of our messes.  It leaves me wondering when everyone became a runner.  And why is everyone feeding their kids such healthy food?  Yes, your meal looks amazing.  Your kids are adorable.  Your tropical vacation during a month that no teacher can take a vacation has me seeing every shade of green.  Don't get me wrong.  I've posted those things too.  I'm not judging (yes I am). It's just not the whole story.

So the truth is, my kid had an epic meltdown in kindergarten last week when instead of going to the iPod station as she'd been planning, she was reassigned to read in the classroom library. She fell apart.  We spent the evening talking about what it means to be able to adapt in life when things don't go as you expected them to.  It was good.

Also, Libby just asked me, "Mom, what would you look like if you weren't wearing a bra." I'll spare you and the rest of the internet my answer.