Home improvements, parenting and pregnancy have gotten the best of me lately. I mean, really. When I finish the day with skinned knuckles, dirty fingernails and an aching back – and my to-do list was still longer than my patience – I’m just barely hanging on. And when I woke up to a cranky kid and a kitchen with no appliances, well, it was more than I could take. I’m telling the whole messy story today at (in)courage.

Sometimes a difficult day comes out of nowhere, surprising you with its frustrations and challenges. Sometimes, though, it’s just the last day in a line of difficult days, days that have worn you down with their bumps in the road and unexpected troubles.

Today was one of those days.

I woke up to a house in chaos, which was no shocker given that I’d gone to bed in a house of chaos. As the calendar flipped to the warmest months of the year, my second trimester and the two weeks when both my babysitter and parents went on vacation (leaving me to work from home with a five-year-old who demanded to know, every few minutes, “Are you done yet? Can we play now?”), we embarked on the desperate frenzy of house repairs necessary to get our house listed before month’s end.

It wasn’t the brightest move, I’ll give you that. But at the time (and, really, even today) it seemed necessary and unavoidable. It was also the recipe for the perfect storm.

After days of decluttering and dealing with a handyman who didn’t show up, a mortgage banker who didn’t give straight answers and a husband whose work schedule prevented him from Fixing All the Things When I Want, I was done. D-O-N-E, done! I wasn’t sleeping well, my blood pressure was rising, and the tears were close to the surface pretty much all the time.

So when Sunday included a Tantrum of Screaming Proportions from my five-year-old (WHILE WE WERE AT CHURCH, thankyouverymuch), more cleaning and scrubbing that my poor arms were used to, and a kitchen with half of the new flooring but none of the baseboard and an unplugged stove, I couldn’t handle it.

As I trudged down my hallway after putting my [remorseful and once-again sweet] kiddo to bed, headed toward the computer to finish the work I’d avoided all weekend, I slammed my bare toes into some piece of something metal that had been unplugged from somewhere.

And I just lost it.

To read the rest of this story, join me at (in)courage.