I’m not sure where to start. I’m at my mom’s house and I’m supposed to be “helping” her clean out her screen porch so my brother can move back home. Yep, you read that right. My brother’s moving his family back in with my mom again. I like to call my mom’s property “Camp Chaos: if you’re crazy, you’re welcome.”

My mom says I can type up a quick blog post instead of helping her but I know that’s a bad idea because by the time I get done typing this, the baby will wake up, it will be lunch time, my nieces will be hungry and the whole process of feeding, changing, playing, rocking and yelling at the older kids will start all over again AND still the screen porch will not be cleaned out. This is why nothing ever gets done around here. Sometimes I just want to go to the nearest Home Depot and hire a bunch of immigrant workers just to do silly things like clean cat boxes and haul trash out of my mom’s property. It’s that bad. We are all losing our minds.

Of all times to have no time to blog, now is the time I have the most I need to blog about. I miss those old days when I was bored at work and I’d type out every little feeling that floated across my brain. Now I have to be a grown up and hold it together. I don’t have any time for venting or even just recording events for posterity. It makes me sad.

So here’s a quick run down so I can get back to helping my mom:

My brother’s birthday was last Thursday. This last Saturday we had a big family breakfast in my mom’s yard. I thought it was such a fun but bad idea. My mom’s place is messier than it has EVER been (which says a lot if you know anything about how messy my mom’s place is). The thought of extended family coming over to eat breakfast on the lawn next to the fifty some cars parked in the over-grown lawn, the giant inflatable pool that deflates daily and floods the over-grown lawn, the five-hundred-and-one chewed up kiddie toys that the dogs think are treats, the trash, the cans and bottles that are supposed to be getting recycled but only ever manage to get recycled all over my mom’s yard and whatever other crazy mess resides in plain view and brings the value of my mom’s whole neighborhood down… You name it, it’s probably on my mom’s lawn.

But nothing stops a good party when you’re related to me. The relatives came, they gathered in plastic chairs under the shade of the trees and umbrellas. They sipped coffee and chatted while my mom, CC and Auntie Kedge worked inside beside unpacked boxes and piles of garden tomatoes that are ripening faster than they can be eaten. My dad operated the grill as usual and the fare was better than anything you’d ever get at any fancy buffet. There were homemade cinnamon rolls, fluffy scrambled eggs with cheese, pancakes and bacon, kielbasa (of which I got none), orange juice and fruit salad… We may not always keep a nice house around here but we never miss a meal. Which might explain the family tendency for rotundness.

So that was that. I have other things I want to blog about like my Grandpa having cancer and how out of control I feel when I visit my mom and I can’t do anything to help my brother and his family and their desperate situation…. I want to say it’s just tough times but I think it’s always tough times around here. I think this is just how it is and we have to make the best of it because in the meantime, my nieces are growing up and this is their childhood. Maybe I’ll spend a little less time blogging and a little more time yelling at them. Just kidding. I’m going to try and yell less.