Saturday morning and it's time to clean up. The more children you add to a household, the more opportunities for instant disasters and chronic mess. This morning, for example, I came downstairs to discover the kids were "cleaning" the puzzle and games cupboard; translation: they were taking out every single puzzle and game and opening the boxes to inspect for missing or broken pieces and parts, and dumping some into plastic baggies, and ... well, you can imagine this was not the kind of cleaning project I had planned for the morning.
To their credit, everything got stuffed back into the cupboard.
I am now sipping a cup of coffee and pondering all the things that need doing ... and feeling weak and wishing I could instead read the paper. But the truth is that I like a clean and tidy house. I like to walk into rooms that are organized and free of spilt crumbs and feel airy and uncluttered. A place for everything and everything in its place, is something that runs through my mind on these mornings. Which is not the scene right now. I'm wading through diapers that need folding and laundry that needs doing and a dining-room table still plagued with loose garlic bulbs, not to mention a multitude of other neglected areas (toilets, anyone?). During the week there isn't time to do this work, just barely time to keep head above water and say hello to Kevin.
I did have a writing morning yesterday, and in fact used it to write. I started another story in the Nicaragua collection. It's slow going and feels personal rather than political. This project has changed so much over time, and undergone such a variety of incarnations that I no longer believe automatically that I've landed on the shape in which this story belongs; but I'm comfortable with this form and take great pleasure from it: stories rather than chapters. Whether or not it's the form this story belongs in, it is the form that I most enjoy exploring--to read, and to write.Labels: chores, short stories, writing day