I made it through the day yesterday doing as little as possible. I rested a lot and didn’t put my expectations of myself too high. It seemed to work as I feel a little better today. Not so crushed or in such a fair amount of pain. I am sore. I am tired. But this feels manageable today and it has to be.

You see, because life always wants to see how hard it can push me, I got a call for daycare yesterday. From a family with 2 children they want to place periodically over the summer and then full time in the fall. I need the extra income in a major way. The parents are both educators and I had a nice conversation with the father yesterday afternoon on the phone. He wanted to come by last night and meet me but I had to pick Nick up from martial arts and then Nick had D.A.R.E. graduation so it wasn’t possible. The father was busy this morning; I’m busy again tonight so we scheduled an interview for tomorrow (Friday) morning.

Now I feel this tremendous pressure to scrub my house top to bottom in one day. But instead of freaking myself out completely and making me feel worse I have gone around with a legal pad and listed out everything I want to see spruced up. The next step was to prioritize the list. First I went through and decided what would be okay if it didn’t get done. Those items went to the bottom of the list or even to tomorrow morning right before the father gets here. Then in going through the remaining items I have decided what the drop dead items are (there are only 3) and those are at the tip top of the list. They will be tackled first when I have the most energy. Then the next block of items prioritized by what I want to see done most and so on. I will rest as much as possible and I have promised myself that when my husband gets home at 3pm if I still feel terrifically overwhelmed then I will ask him for help.

It’s a catch-22 sometimes with daycare. Of course parents want their children to go to a clean and organized home. But in order for a daycare provider to have a super clean place they need to be cleaning throughout the day while your children are there which means that your children aren’t getting attention, the house is. I do a lot of my picking up while the kids are eating or napping but I just don’t have the time to deep clean unless I want the kids to run amuck and then they just make bigger messes anyway. I know - I’ve tried.

So know this. If you go to a daycare provider’s home to interview and the house is picked up but looks a bit neglected on the deep cleaning chores - dusting, mopping, wall washing, etc. - that provider isn’t necessarily a lazy slob; they’re busy with the children. Playing with them, teaching them, loving them, creating with them, etc. A Daycare center has a cleaning service that comes in after hours and does the deep cleaning for them. A home provider has a family to take care of and do things with too. And they don’t likely make enough money to hire their own cleaning crew although it would be nice. *sigh* Most parents should understand the whole concept as many of my daycare parents bring their children to me when they need to clean their house as they claim they can’t do it when the children are home.

So I’m off to neglect the children and clean my house today Wish me luck with the interview tomorrow. I probably won’t blog again until after he leaves so I can fully obsess about every little speck during the wee hours of the morning. Have a great day!