Day 71--New Possibilities on the Horizon

Today was the first day in a long time that I've had so much work to do that despite the fact that the kids were in school and I had no major interruptions on my day, it was physically impossible for me to do everything I needed to do.

And, we did our taxes today.  So, it was fun times all around . . . or not.  Actually, it wasn't a bad day--it was just an extremely busy, task-oriented day, which is kind of disappointing because there were President's Day sales that were calling to me.  I had to ignore the call :( 

In the midst of all of this, we learned that we now quality to hold two mortgages, which was not a possibility when we first put the house on the market a year ago.  So, we also spent time today talking to lenders and to our realtor about putting our house up for lease as well as for sale.  I don't know if it will be any easier to lease it than it has been to sell it, but at least it's another option to put out there.

Days like this are the hardest kinds of days to meet my goal for this project in many ways.  It feels like there just isn't enough time in the day to make Barney a priority.  This afternoon, he was up to his eyeballs in taxes, and I was up to my eyeballs in grading.  I thought I would go pick up happy hour from Sonic and then get the kids so he could finish what he had started.  But, I just kept setting a stopping point for myself, reaching it, deciding I still had more time, and then setting a new stopping point for myself.  Before I knew it, happy hour was over, and Barney was picking up the keys to go get the kids.

I did stop and go with him, and then this evening, I fixed the kids' dinner, cleaned up the kitchen afterwards (which was a feat--Olivia liberally tossed bits of scrambled eggs into all corners of the eat-in kitchen somehow whenever we turned our heads for a second), and handled bath time.  During those times, Barney worked.  During the rest of the time, the kids' playtime, Barney played with the kids while I worked.  To me, this all was an act of love because during my times with the kids, I was taking care of our responsibilities rather than just playing.  Barney got to spend the "fun" time with the kids while I was the bad guy for making them pick up their rooms, put their plates in the sink, and to eat more bites of dinner before being excused.  But, to be honest, I'm not sure that it counts towards this project because Barney would never see it that way.  To him, we split the time we spent watching kids vs. working evenly. 

I'm not complaining about this, even if it sounds that way.  I understand that some things that are priorities to me simply are not priorities for Barney, so when I clean the kitchen, it really is unlikely that it will seem like an act of love to him.  I like to think though that if I quit making the bed every day, quit cleaning the kitchen after meals and straightening the house every morning and evening, he would notice and would not like what he saw.  It just seems to me that it generally lifts moods and just feels better to be in a clean space rather than a dirty one.  But, I don't know; just because I count it a deliberate act of love when he cleans the kitchen maybe doesn't mean I should when I do.