Yes the clock says 11:49 PM and I should definitely be in deep sleep dreaming away. But don’t you know those days when you feel so tired, be it physically or mentally or emotionally, and all you want to do is to take the time out and relax? Yes, today or rather the last few days have been those kind of days.

If there was one thing that I was really happy about last year, it was the revival of this blog. This year, I haven’t been able to write anything here so far because of all that I wrote in my previous two posts. So, in a bid to relax and also to let out all those trivialities of life that one lets bother oneself, here I go conversing with you just like I would with any person close to my heart.

The house remained in a state of disarray of sorts till the last few days since my priority was to do the basic cooking and dish washing and then take rest and keep my children engaged with activities other than watching TV whenever possible.

As I visited the doctor for my face pain, the first question that the receptionist asked was if I am working. If I had answered yes, I would have been given a medical certificate advising rest. In the foul mood that this cold and pain had put me in, I wanted to ask her if there was someway housewives/homemakers/SAHMs too could get vacation when they are not well. But I didn’t.

While I have been trying my best to get the house dusted and cleaned up, I feel, yet again, that I should somehow find a way to reduce the amount of things we have. Be it toys or dress or books. The lesser the things that we have, the easier to maintain, isn’t it? But, while the realist in me knows that there is no way I can ever embrace minimalism fully, I think it’s time to at least start thinking about it every time we add one more thing to the house. It doesn’t matter even if it is only something as simple as a whole lot of plastic shopping bags.

But, coming back to the main point, I have still not been able to fully dust the windows, deep-clean and scrub the bathrooms and do a thousand other things like that and that is really getting on my nerves.

Then there’s my little one and his naughtiness. As he happily pours a litre full of milk one day, a 100 ml of orange juice the other day, half a cup of tea today and so on, I realize that I have to just wait for him to outgrow these naughty acts and no tactic or approach of mine will make him fully stop them. Did I tell you that he really enjoys doing all those mischief? But it is no fun cleaning up those messes and, everyday, at the end of the day, I feel tired of mopping a dozen times with different rag cloths and cleaning liquids.

But did I tell you the great positive thing that he has started school and is really enjoying it? He has also started talking a lot more and we do a lot of story-telling sessions and play with a select few toys together.

But the ranter in me now wants to focus not on the school but on the lack of sleep that he is facing post the start of school. The excitement is getting on to him. The boy who slept early is now sleeping at least a couple of hours late and is still waking up early. Because of this, my kitchen chores too get affected and I get to wash the final lot of vessels only when all I want to do is to make the children sleep.

The daughter is enjoying her school as always and she also now has a lot more friends to play with. I play a lot of board games with her nowadays. But, hey, this is rant time, isn’t it? So, while I dreamt of happily playing with her exclusively during those two hours the son is in school, she ended up throwing one of her tantrums and crying spells the last couple of days. Her crying spells always leave me wondering when will I ever learn how to handle a child throwing a tantrum. It leaves me more stressed out too.

I realize that it’s not just that but all the other trivialities too that get me stressed out and it affects me the most only when I am not well-rested or when I have not had a quality relaxing me-time for a while now.

And, yes, the insecure-mother in me starts thinking about how things would have turned out to be if I had remained a working mother and not a stay-at-home mother. Did I tell you that that’s another stress-inducer in itself and I might as well not write about it now?