"Mamma said there'd be days like this."

..."there'd be days like this, Mamma said. Mamma said, Mamma said."

Had one of those days round here today.

One of those days that just leaves you wanting to cry, and not much else.

Nothing significantly monumental happened to make me want to melt into a puddle of tears on the kitchen floor. Just one of those days.

I suppose it had to come at some point.

The day started out fine. Until that little jerk wad Freddy Kruger showed back up with freshly sharpened claws inside Isaak's stomach. It was his day off and we planned to take a bike ride, but the poor guy was confined to the couch most of the day.

Later on after Odette got done working I told her I wanted to sign her contracts before she left for the day. I went over the terms with her multiple times before it was written up, and we were all in agreement, until now, when she decided that she didn't want to sign it. Except I couldn't understand why so I had to call a friend who speaks French to translate. They talk, we talked, we were all in agreement again, until two minutes later she changed her mind. Couldn't figure out what the deal was, and she refused to sign until someone who spoke French could be present with her, so on Wednesday we have someone from the embassy coming over to, again, translate, because I don't speak this language. And the meager effort I make to learn new words and sentences each day isn't good enough. It gets me no where. After an hour and a half of going back and forth and back and forth she finally left for the day.

I was beyond frustrated concerning this situation.

And now it was past dinner time.

And there is no such thing as convenient food here. There's no fast food joints. Even if you went to a restaurant it takes about 40 minutes to get your food. There is no "pre-packaged frozen just pop it in your oven and have dinner in a minute" kind of foods here.

Everything needs to be made from scratch. Which is normally fine on days when it's not passed dinner time. And my kids are hungry. My husband is sick. And I'm already ready to melt into a puddle of tears on the floor.

So, I decide to make rice and chicken.

But when I take out the rice....low and behold....there are bugs in it.
Right, of course there are.
Little.gross.bugs.
Just a crawlin' around like I invited them to be there. Like they were totally welcome and I had no desire to actually partake of the food that their tiny little crunchy bodies were walking all over! Gah! Gross!

But hey, welcome to the party! You can join the mosquitoes and infuriatingly annoying fruit flies that I can't get rid of either! 

And by the way, those YouTube videos that show how to get rid of fruit flies in "minutes"....is.a.filthy.LIE! Total rubbish! I tried it, and it doesn't work! Either the fruit flies here are way dumber or way smarter to fall for the tricks in these videos. Either way....I still have fruit flies. And mosquitoes. And now some other kind of bugs that crawls in rice!

Oye, there is just a parasite waiting to be born in us.

Then I had to scrub chicken poop off 30 eggs and bleach and rinse each one, bleach and rinse over twenty tomatoes and egg plants, and two pounds of spinach.

I then did school work with Sydaleigh, put the girls to bed, did the dishes, and at 9:30pm finally sat down to cry from exhaustion and frustration over my bowl of Cheerios.  

But, it's okay. By the grace and strength of Jesus He held me together and I didn't unravel and come unglued. I let out little tears of frustration over the day that He caught and carried away.

And He reminded me, "Mamma said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this, Mamma said. Mamma said, Mamma said."

And there will be. There will be more. I'm sure of it. I don't have to live in Africa to have days like today....well, except for the whole Freddy Kruger in the stomach, having an employee, speaking in French and having bugs in my rice. Those are new Africa things. But other than those...I've had these kinds of days before. So, it's okay. It's not ideal. But it's okay.

It's nothin' a little Jesus and a little cereal can't fix. :~)