Today I am reflecting on the forces of the universe, how the stars all align, the seasons come and go, and how there is some unwritten rule that your best intentions are going to get kicked in the pants by cruel changes of circumstance. Some call it “Murphy’s Law.” I like to call it bad words in my head. Let me explain, with a lovely model I have invented called the IF, THEN, BUT Theory:
| If . . . | Then . . . | But . . . |
| Your children are temporarily entertaining themselves, | You might think it would be a good time to get on the phone and call the friend you’ve been thinking of, | Then you will be trampled by a herd of deranged possessed toddlers who demand your immediate attention. |
|
You begin to feel ambitious and, heaven forbid, a little bit social, |
You might decide to host a large dinner party at your house and send out all the invitations, |
Then you and everyone in your family will get the flu, and then you’ll be two days away from the party wondering how in the world you’ll get everything ready because you haven’t even showered in four days, much less cleaned your house. |
|
You and your husband have been working very hard to get your budget issues under control, |
You might actually get to the point where you have eliminated all your debt and barely started your savings, |
Then you’ll have a chimneysweep come to your house who says “Dear God!” out loud several times, and then you find out that you should have all burned to the ground by now, and it will cost you over $3000.00 to replace your fireplace. |
| You feel unusually productive one day, | You might change all the bedding in the whole house: strip it, wash it, replace it, and congratulate your self for your domestic feat of champions, | Then all THREE of your children will pee unlimited fountains while they sleep and all the beds will be ruined that very night. |
I’m just wondering if the stars line up like this on other people’s side of the universe or if I’m just the unluckiest* person on the planet. Show me a little IF-THEN-BUT action in the comments, because misery loves company. 🙂
*And by unlucky, I mean more blessed than half the human race with a warm home, beautiful family, and the love of God, but still just a little grumpy lately.
Diapers and Divinity 
This happens to me daily. Really.
Today?
If you realize that the mountain of laundry must be done now,
then you haul laundry downstairs and start a load,
BUT your washer decides to flood (I think it’s broken) the basement right before the rinse cycle.
If you ever start to feel comfortable with your savings…
You will want to purchase something nice that you’ve been waiting for years to get or maybe even put money away for retirement…
Then your furnace will decide to let you know it’s never been maintenance-d and give out. And you have to shell out just about everything you’ve saved over the past 3 years.
Know and understand the feeling so well–
If… your son calls from BYU to announce that his laptop you bought him last Christmas has a problem and he was told that it will cost more to replace than to repair,
Then… you finally bite the bullet and go by yourself a new laptop and start downloading everything,
But…he calls to say he picked it up from the repair shop and IT’S NOW WORKING FINE.
By the way, I meant “BUY”–I guess I just get so irritated and my brain doesn’t function when I think about the whole thing ; )
The peeing the bed thing, I sympathize.
IF your baby hasn’t had a diaper change in a while and it’s just pee,
THEN you go ahead and help him out and change it,
BUT IMMEDIATELY after you change him, he has a major poop.
Happens every time, it seems.
IF your shoes make a “schluck, schluck” sound every time you walk across your kitchen floor,
THEN you mop it,
BUT a child always manages to spill something sticky on it within an hour or so, resulting in more mopping.
Yes! The diaper thing is my kids too. My babies will only poop right after being removed from the tub.
I’ve given up on being productive. I just stand around waiting for children to call out my name for help. I never stand around very long.
And we’ve never been close to eliminating our debt. Ever.
But I do like a good party. (and a bad one too) Need some help? I’m available on Fri!
Murphy and I are well acquainted. He lives at my house and eats my food.
I hear you on the phone calls. I don’t how many times I have ended up locked in my bedroom or closet trying to finish a phone conversation while my kids screamed like banshees–when minutes ago they had been quietly occupied without me!
IF you are finally not pregnant, nursing & have no kids in diapers,
THEN you will decide to wear something “nice” to church,
BUT once you get there, someone (your kid or one in your Primary class) wipes their sticky/chocolatey/snotty mouth/hands/face down your sleeve/skirt/top. And you remember why you hate these 3 words–Dry Clean Only.
Check … check … check … check ….
Yup. All four have happened in the past three days. Except they didn’t pee. They threw up. And it’s not our fireplace. It’s drainage issues.
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUTT
If you finally figure out after 4 kids that it is easier to train a baby to sleep through the night earlier rather than later…
Then you have a baby only waking up once per night at 2 months old (it took many moons with the others!)
But…he gets pneumonia and shoots that all to heck and now he is 9 months old and still waking up several times a night…
I haven’t slept all night in 8+ years…does it ever end???
If your husband is finally out of school and making money so you can give nicer Christmas gifts than cards with 25 cent candy canes attached then crazy things will happen in your life forcing you to pay daycare expenses for your children and begin to wonder if you can even afford the candy canes…
Really though, that sounds like a nasty string of bad luck and I think it’s perfectly okay to be grumpy for a day or so!
If
You try really hard to get out of debt,
Then
you finally pay cash for your house and your cars and manage to live completely debt-free for five whole years
But
your teenage son gets into a whole raft of trouble, causing you to take out a brand new mortgage on that paid-off house.
Somehow
we still manage to feel incredibly blessed!
If you think you’re done having kids, then you might start giving away some of your baby stuff to your fifty thousand pregnant friends. But then Heavenly Father will gently (or not-so-gently) nudge you and let you know that HIS plan is for you to have another baby. Right now.
We’re really excited, though!! With that nudge came a nice little desire to give in to His plan! 🙂
If you finally lost 20 lbs and you start feeling really successful at the weight thing…..
Then you tell all your friends and family that you are losing weight.
But you forget that it’s only God who grants His grace to be successful at anything and that you are “boasting in your own strength” so you immediately. without effort and without wishing to, gain back the 20 lbs and 5 more to boot.
(when will I learn to give credit where credit is due)
Yep, I think that is about right for the stars in my universe as well! You always summarize life so well.
I can relate all too well. Murphy has it out for me some days.
If … your 3 year old wakes up dry for an entire week,
Then … you think it is safe to let him wear underwear to bed instead of his pullup,
But … he chooses that night to climb in your bed and you don’t wake up until after he wets.
Too many times to count, and not always in the parenting corner (being I only have one presently)!
When pregnant,
If you stop IV therapy because you don’t throw up as much anymore,
Then, you will start making delicious foods again
But, you will come down with a stomach virus. For 2 weeks. Once again, you hate food.
OR,
If you finally feel better by twenty weeks
Then, you begin to exercise (walk) again
But, you start to have pre-term labor contractions. No more walking.
Can’t tell I am pregnant?!?!
I hear you, sister.
If the kids are finally off to school in the morning and the little one is watching his favorite movie, THEN you might think it’s the perfect opportunity to finally go to the bathroom, BUT within milliseconds of the start of relief the phone will ring and the little one will begin pounding on the door.
And…
IF your house is neat and tidy and beautiful THEN no one will come to your door, BUT as soon as the kids get home and destroy it someone will undoubtedly drop in.
Yes, this could go on and on. If you work hard preparing a beautiful dinner, then you’ll be excited to place it on the table for your family, but someone will ALWAYS complain about it.
I guess I’m “unlucky” too.
I don’t have anything to contribute. My life is fabulous. Wait…do you hear something? Sounds like FATE cracking its knuckles…
I love that Charrette added a “somehow” to the chart. She’s awesome like that.
(And I hope you and the fam are feeling better!)
I don’t have a great one because all my bad luck is self-inflicted this week. Wait, I know. If you decide to plan your daily tasks around your toddler’s very regular naps this week, he will suddenly decide to follow a completely different schedule and screw up the whole darn list of things to do.
I love your blog. Recently stumbbled here. 🙂 Loved reading the other comments too.
If you feel completely burned out on all the meals you usually make for your family…
Then you might decide it’s time to try some new scrumptious sounding recipes…
But after hours of searching allrecipes and finding a list of guarenteed-to-please five star recipes, buying ingredients, and preparing the meals, they all get the BiG ThUmBs DoWn from the family.
Maple…I can totally relate to that one…very frustrating, because you are so excited when you are making the “new dish”. You can even picture every saying “yummy mummy”. You get excited about ading another dish to your “regulars”. Then all that comes crashing down, when, as you so rightly put it the kids give it the “big thumbs down”. *sigh*
Here’s my one:
IF you get a chance to go the library
THEN you rent a bunch of books and magazines
BUT you find you read one chapter from one book, and then don’t get around to reading the rest
IF you know that you need to bring a plate of food to an event
THEN you start picturing what lovely homemade delights you can make. (usually labour intensive, but very delicous!)
BUT as time runs out, you start changing your mind about what you are bringing and decide on making something simpler.
Now you have no time to make anything, so you stop by the shop on the way to the event to pick up something store bought.
I thought I was the only one with mountains of unread library books!!! 😀 My list of “to-reads” gets longer and longer and longer…
I have so very much lived that chart, and I would be very grumpy about it too. I guess I should be grateful that my biggest current frustration is a proliferation of Halloween events and ward events and events at my kids’ schools that are all keeping me from having the time or energy to be the housekeeper/cook/laundress/organizer/seamstress that I’d like to be.
Can you get by without using your fireplace while you save up to repair it? Can you get by without using it at all until you move somewhere else, and pass along the cost of the repair as a discount on your home’s sale price? Is the repair not covered by homeowner’s insurance because it already existed?
Okay, I came up with my own contribution to the chart:
If you would like to someday be able to move to a different home, you might try to keep up on the maintenance of your current home and make progress on the massive task of de-cluttering it, but you will be defeated by the fact that you don’t like to hire maintenance workers who will interrupt your children’s naps, and by the fact that you live with children and a husband who either don’t share your goal to not live here forever, or at least aren’t willing to do what it takes to keep the house sale-able.
Oh, and here’s another one that I’ve lived lots of times:
If you would like to be healthier, you might decide to start exercising, but you will be diagnosed with a health condition that makes exercise challenging or dangerous, or you’ll become pregnant and develop high blood pressure that requires you to lie down as much as possible and avoid exertion. (Every one of those babies was SO worth it. As for the health challenges, I like to think they’ve helped me develop great strength of character.)
I so relate to this 100%. Especially the sheets and peeing. Oy vey.
How about this one:
If you finally think that you’ve gotten the hang of living with a 20% paycut for the last year (and are grateful that your husband still has a job, and are really happy to have 80% of a paycheck), then you will do something like chat with the car insurance guy one day and find out that your 17.5 year old son has been DRIVING WITHOUT INSURANCE for the last 18 months because the insurance company forgot to ever add him, and so of course your insurance rates go through the roof. Which is ok, because you needed a new roof anyway… 😉
Okay, the comments on this are about as good as the post. Here’s mine from two days ago—
IF you usually have a raging headache at dinnertime and have been completely lazy about making healthful meals for your family, THEN have a day when you don’t feel too bad so you work like crazy to make a really great dinner and the work has the unfortunate side effect of forcing you to go nurse your migraine instead of eat said dinner, BUT you can’t really sleep because three of your three children are crying and whining and throwing a fit because dinner is disgusting and they cannot believe they are being forced to eat such horrible, horrible things!!
Ah, love those kids. And vegetables to torture them with. And daily opportunities to practice patience. 🙂