new things

Last night I did something which I can't remember ever doing...and I hope I'm wrong about that and that it's just my infamous memory failing me again. I sat down to spend time with my daughter and left the dirty dishes on the counter. This may not sound like any big thing to all the 'normal' people out there, but trust me, for me this is huge. I have a hard time (and that's putting it mildly) leaving housework undone. So after dinner last night when B looked up at me with her huge green eyes and asked sweetly "Mama, will you play with me?" I knew the standard answer of "As soon as I'm done with these dishes, honey" wasn't going to cut it. So I cleared the dinner dishes from the table and piled them in the sink, got out coloring books and crayons (and a couple Hershey's bars for the soul) and colored and conversed with my daughter for the next hour. And I only thought about those dishes three, maybe four times. Of course, as soon as D called her in the cartoon room to play Zelda I set straight to work on cleaning the kitchen. But it's the little new things that start to create a healing balm for the old, broken and cracked ways of doing things. Last night I felt a small tear in my patience close up and heal over.