Too hard

Wanted to say, re my post below on my latest rash of domestic disasters, that yes, I am laughing!!

This post has gone all rambly on me. I make my point in the last bullet point, down the bottom there...

I always laugh at my catastrophes - well mostly - and I put everything up on the blog to be laughed at/with.  It is my greatest wish that you smile or grin or at the very least nod, okay, I'd take grimace...

Yes, well, when the creddy card was refused at the petrol station, Miss 4 had been kicking in classroom doors and one of the chooks went awol for 24hours, I wasn't laughing at the time.  That one was just a bit overwhelming, it caught me in the middle of an already busy week and I was stressed.  Looking back at that day now I grin and roll my eyes and wonder why the hell it always happens to me.

I've been wanting to do a post about making the changes I'm making at home, changes on the blog, why I'm doing them and you know blah, blah, blah.  But I've been putting it off and that generally means its probably pretty boring and if it bores me then it'll bore everyone else (I have an extremely low boredom threshold and consider myself a good litmus test).

Anyway, bullet point list, we shall summarise why I'm going all homemaker at home and plastering it all over the interwebs.

• I'm at my happiest when I'm giving myself lye burns making soap (note: never get hot lye in a cut on your finger, it makes you say fark a lot more than is seemly), baking bread, planting things.  When I need space to breathe and be calm I water the garden - or have an inspect if its been raining.  So I'm not trying to change the world, save then environment, or pay off the mortgage in twenty five minuets - I'm just doing stuff I enjoy.
• These things have much potential for disaster, and given that I have no patience it just seems to extrapolate from there.  A voice in my head is almost constantly screaming NO, STOP, DONT USE THE OLD YEAST, but I never listen.
• I am very goal orientated and it gets my goolies jiggling (or something, hmm, not quite what I meant to say, but oh well) when I achieve things.  So when I post blog posts at 5.59am, add tertiary education to my already packed life, or decide we MUST have a preservative free breakfast NOW, please be aware that it is an inherited trait and makes me a pain in the neck to live with (just ask my first husband :))
• This blog used to be a lot about how my children crapped in their pants at MacDonalds.  They're getting bigger now and the crapping, whilst it does still occur, is not nearly as bloggable.  It was time to move the blog on as the kids grow and I grow (fatter mostly).

• Finally, and the thing I want to stress most, is that on a lot of other homey, crafty, gardening blogs (and tv for that matter - yes I'm pointing at you BHG), all this domestic stuff looks dead easy.  And its bloody not.  
• Its all bloody hard work, and to make perfect bread each time takes practice and experience, as does knitting anything at all, or crocheting, or looking after chooks.   Its a hell of a lot easier to buy a box of OMO than to find washing soda, lux flakes and borax and mix them all up and keep in a shoe box - you know what the OMO will do - but the other stuff may not work in your water, turn your washing grey, or strip off the inside coating of your washing machine.
• And as for gardening.  I heard this sad story of a family who put in big vege gardens, it all failed in the first year (a drought year) and in frustration they ripped the lot out and grew the grass back. Gardening is very hard and very frustrating.  For example, all the pumpkins I've planted are refusing to have girl flowers, and the two that I have hand pollinated rotted off, and now the powdery mildew has got them, and it wont stop raining.  I know however, that it will work eventually, because I've grown damn fine pumpkins before. So I keep going.  But I do know where that grass growing family were at.
• Do it yourself projects that look easy are not, unless you are a mechanic, a chippie or gifted with your hands, have a shed full of well kept tools and have fixed things all your life.  Our chook pen is a joke - a rusting joke, an eyesore.
• Er anyway, where was I? Yes. Hard work.  We're told and shown this domestic stuff is easy, when it isn't and I think people feel bad or not-good-enough when they don't get it right first time (or second, third, forth...). So I want to blog about all my disasters, so that everyone can see how I struggle and my frustrations and hilarious failures, so maybe they'll keep persisting with whatever they want to achieve.

That's it really.

:)