Today

This evening I went to an information meeting about the Billy Graham Disaster Response Organization. They are setting up a headquarters at our church, and recruiting volunteers. One part of their organization is "Samaritan's Purse." (You may have heard of them through Operation Christmas Child--shoeboxes of Christmas gifts.) Anyway--they are the "hammer and nails" portion. The other part is the Chaplains and Ministry Assistants. That's what tonight's meeting was about.

As my mother anticipated, all of the "trauma response training" was stuff I have either taken classes on, or experienced--or both. So, that part wasn't that informative to me. The rest was an orientation to their organization. I'm not sure it is really practical for me to volunteer for them right now (on a national basis--I am working for them here locally during fire recovery) since I still have little kids and it would be almost impossible for me to "deploy" to a disaster area for a week or two at a time. But, I got a lot of information about crisis response training that I might start looking into. It can only be helpful in the army life, right? Most of the information seems to be stuff I already have taken classes on, but it might be good to get the credentials. . .we'll see. . .

Now, on to the majority of my day. I finally felt comfortable to unpack all the stuff that we took with us during the evacuation. I also needed to restock the emergency box. I also had a ton of party decoration stuff in my kitchen because the Friday and Saturday before the fires, we had a surprise birthday party for my friend, and my neighbor had a sweet 16 party for her daughter. In addition to that, we had all the laundry, school stuff, etc that needed to be put away from the week before we left. AND--I am the room mom for N's class, so I have a bunch of Halloween party stuff everywhere, getting ready for the party on Wednesday. Plus, I have 18 picture frames to finish for the end of season awards for the kids soccer teams. So--I really really needed to get my house cleaned up. (I also haven't cleaned in about 2 weeks). So, we got home from the gym and I started working on it. Here's my observation:

Did you know that you can actually go BACKWARDS in cleaning your house?? It is truly possible. Particularly when you have a 2 1/2 year old hurricane child living in your house. The little boys had already eaten lunch, so I thought that the potential for messes was minimized. In fact, I thought that they might lay down and take a nap. Who was I kidding?? I took a basket of laundry upstairs and put it away. I came out of my bedroom to find hundreds of tiny pieces of Starburst wrappers--along with parts of the candies--all up and down the stairs. Apparently, some of the flavors don't interest J. much.

I gathered a bunch of miscellaneous shoes from around the house and hung them on the rack in the closet downstairs. Midway through J yells from upstairs "Mommy! I spilled the goldfish!" (Crackers--not aquarium). Ok--WHY are the goldfish upstairs? HOW did you spill them? They are in a container with a top with a TINY opening that only allows one fish out at a time--specifically for this PURPOSE! I threatened to eliminate all snack food from the entire house if he didn't pick up the stinkin' goldfish.

He came back a few minutes later, "Mommy! There are crumbs of goldfish everywhere." No kidding?? I can't imagine. So, underneath my desk (at which I am currently sitting) there are about 100 crushed goldfish ground into the carpet! He did, however, pick up the whole ones. He put them in the container and left it under the desk. Of course, I didn't know that until I kicked it over when I sat down here to write this!

The pillows on my couch are NEVER on my couch. They are always on the floor or being thrown from one child to (or at) another. Books. . .they are all over the floor too. They are slick, and when they are on tile and you step on them. . .you WILL do the splits.

I made the bed. J jumped on it until all the pillows AND the quilt bounced off. I put away everything on the bathroom cabinet--he took out all the brushes and hairdryers and drug them all over the upstairs. I finished N's halloween costume--J wadded up tons of newspaper and threw it all over the house and tried to attack R with the staple gun.

So, I spent about 5 1/2 hours cleaning up my house today. I never got to vaccuum the ridiculous crumbs and the kitchen floor is disgusting and there are still party supplies all over. I could have probably finished all of it in about 2 hours if I could just find a good boarding school that doesn't require students to be potty trained!!!