Hi, My name is Barbara and I am a messaholic.

Oh my goodness. I thought moving to a house half the size of our house in the States would be easier. It is easier in the sense that there is not enough room to collect all the junk you don't really need but have. However, it is harder to hide what a mess we make! I so love to have a clean, orderly house. Living in Ireland you never know when someone is going to "call" for tea (or as we say "drop by"). I wish I could say my house looks like a "Southern Living" or "Better Homes and Gardens House. But sometimes, life happens.

Well we have been running for 3 days straight and so you can only imagine what an untouched house looks like in 3 days with a 6 year old, a toddler, and their mama that gets something half done and then off to the next thing. It looked like a corn flakes and scrambled egg bomb had gone off in the kitchen, and I won't describe the rest of the house. I started working on the house this morning as we are on school holiday at the moment. I got so busy that by 11 am no comb had touched my hair and no brush had touched my teeth. I had on what I call my Santa Clause pajama bottoms, with a regular shirt on, and Ludie's shoes on while hanging out the laundry thinking that only the sheep and my kids would be the ones seeing me.

Then it happened. One of my friends pulled in the driveway! Gasp! Oh well, no where to run, no quick change, mouthwash or anything. Well a true friend she is. She helped me finish hanging out the laundry, and came in and waited patiently while I put on regular clean clothes, rapidly brushed my hair and teeth and put on a kettle of water. I have no idea what she thinks of the house or of me, but she was wonderfully pleasant. If she comes around again, I will know that she is a true friend.

PS I came home today with the wind whipping and the rain going sideways. So I took down the laundry off the line and put them in the dryer as my wise friend had taught me, and then proceeded to hang them up on the radiators around the house. I would have left them out but even though the clothes pins are "gale force clothespins" I did not want to have to climb the hedge to pick up my child's underwear out of the sheep field the next morning, that is if the sheep did not eat it before I got to it.