I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think the problem we are currently suffering from (besides a two year old with a stomach virus…won’t even go into that) is too much space.  Can that be possible?  Our house is about 1700 square ft.  When I first walked in (all by myself last Saturday), I couldn’t believe how gi-normous it seemed.  I just sat right down on my couch and cried.  I didn’t know if I was crying because I was so glad to be back or sad it was over or overwhelmed to face the days ahead or because the Republican National Convention was going on or WHAT!  Maybe I just didn’t know where to start.  So I cried.  Sitting in my clean, large house on my clean empty couch.

Now, just days later, the words clean and empty cannot possibly describe one square inch of this little hole in the wall.  No one remembers where anything goes, including me.  And I can’t imagine where everything came from.  How on earth did all these tubs and bags and boxes fit into that pop up camper and van?  We had that thing packed to the gills.  And now I am resisting the urge to put all things away in labeled plastic tubs forever and ever, because after three months of crawling into the van to get things out or to put them away, I am kinda used to those stacked up tubs.

There are other strange urges.  Like last night when I poured the water off the corn I had cooked for dinner, I felt as though I should be saving all that hot water for dishes.  What a waste of hot water!  Just pouring it down the sink like that.  But if I was going to save it, then I would need to bring in the washing tubs I used all summer for dishes and laundry.  Speaking of which, I can’t figure out how people who wore the same thing all summer long all of a sudden are creating piles of laundry that I cannot possibly keep up with.  I keep taking things out of the dirty clothes and telling people to hang them back up in their closets.  And my family members are like, Closets?  Hangers?  What are those?