So It Begins...

Sigh.

I walk downstairs at 8am with Ari plastered to my front. Having awakened at 6am to a hungry baby, I've already been up for two hours but it took all that time to prep the bottle, empty the dishwasher, have my morning cuddle with Ally and then transfer with Sascha so I could coddle a sick Ari for over an hour. This is the second time he's been sick this month and I've learned that the difference between a good stay-home day and a bad stay-home day in his mind is morning time with Mommy. Ah, the learnings of an emotional and sensitive child.

So anyway, back to that sigh. As I walked down the stairs I came into full view of the living room carpet...and the huge pile of kitty puke in the middle of it. Sigh. Our family has become quite familiar with "Bella throw up", as Ari calls it. He even likes to help me find the extra piles in the vomit trail, all the while exclaiming "yuck, gross". According to our vet, Bella may have irritable bowel disease...ergo, the cat vomit I clean up at least three times a week. After months of this, it's getting old.

I don't dare complain too much or Sascha will start in with his old mantra of "animal shelter animal shelter animal shelter" and since I have chosen the full-term responsibility of care for these two little animal souls, I really don't want to be hearing that. So I clean up the puke. In all fairness, Sascha handles litter box detail (unbelievably) so I really have no place being irritated with his mantra.

But that early morning throw up got me to thinking...I really need to just cleanse this place. I mean a full physical cleansing...which will, in effect, make way for the spiritual and emotional cleansing this home so desperately needs. People (and cats) have been ill, spirits have been low, piles have accumulated and chaos seems to be the order of the day. It is time.

And so I invite you along on this cleansing journey. I will go through this house, room by room, space by space and need by need. Restoring order, repairing brokenness and assisting the return of health and healing. Heck, I may even sage the place.

Yes, some of it will be mundane...there's only so much excitement involved with the sorting of outgrown clothes. But some of it will be transformative, if only just for me. It's my intention that I learn something along the way, clear the debris from my soul and make spiritual space for the projects to which I'm feeling called.

So check in every week to see what we've been up to...which piles have been eradicated; which closets cleared and the discoveries made. We may even find a way to heal our vomit comet that is Bella.

"If a home doesn't make sense, nothing does."

~ Henrietta Ripperger