Chaos reigns supreme.

We have had other incidents where I thought the clean up would be the end of me so this is not the first time I faced a clean up with dread and I am sure it wont be the last. We have had a double mattress standing against the wall at the foot of our bed for a little bit. It is quite tricky to get it back under the bed so it was being ignored. Today we could ignore it no more. Lion was being a sticky beak in mummy and daddy's bedroom and as he walked past the mattress he leant on it. The mattress knocked a picture off the wall, it flipped a couple of times in the air and landed on Lion's head backing side first. It stopped flipping. The impact caused a fountain of shattered glass to cascade all over the room. Sounds pretty doesn’t it? It wasn’t. The bed wasn’t made so glass was all through it, there was a pile of folding waiting to be done in the corner so glass was on that, Lion has been having trouble sleeping lately so there was a pile of his bedding on the floor for him to come into our room to sleep, glass was all through that. We were just about to leave the house to take wolf to work so I just closed the door on the room and left it for after bible study. The glass wasn’t going anywhere and personally I didn’t feel like diving right into it, I needed time to distance myself from the event and process hwat order I was going to tackle it in. When we did come home and I got the boys down for a nap I decided I needed a reward system for a job this size. I would set a goal and when I achieved it I would have a reward. So I put this on the table. One piece per goal achieved.

After a time of cleaning to got to this... and then less.

Some might say if I got that many rewards then I set my goals too low. Some might even think that my goal was just to walk past the table as often as possible so I could grab a piece. But it was all legitimate. Picking up the largest shards – reward. Retrieving the photo – reward. And what was left of the frame – reward. Taking everything not covered in glass out of the room – reward. First load of washing in the machine – reward. Next load gathered and waiting – reward. Blankets taken out and shaken – reward, reward, reward, reward. Well there was more than one blanket and the only place I could shake them without flicking glass all over the lawn is over the back fence (we don’t have neighbours over that fence) and I had to climb up into the cubby for that, holding a glass encrusted quilt and shake it out without falling off the ladder and without catching it on the spiky chiney apples or the barbed wire cow fence that is just on the other side of our fence – reward, reward, reward. Vacuuming – reward. Oh look there are some rewards left – reward.

So it’s done. All cleaned up. Lion didn't get hurt and yes I am thankful for that but I needed a couple of lovely friends to point that out to me today. I was just so frustrated that I had a room full of glass shards to clean up. He was a little confused at my instructions when it first happened. I had seen it happening in slow motion and had moved closer but stopped when I realised I would stand on glass if I kept moving.I was just over a metre from Lion who was sitting on the floor. I couldn’t reach him without moving my feet and couldn’t see where the glass was and wasn’t. He started to move “DON’T MOVE” I said nice and firmly and with not a bit of panic in my voice:) He sat stock still. “But stand up” just a little confusing for a 3 year old.