Who's house is that? We pushed the sofa away from the wall for a poetry book club a couple of weeks ago, and never pushed it back again. Furniture in the middle of the room ... who knew? It makes for a cozy seating area with space for piano practice and the art table behind it. I still don't have a decent location for the piano books, but someday. Someday.
I'm operating on a hopeful mission to sort out and tidy every drawer and surface in the house. And also to keep the bathrooms/kitchen clean. My strategy involves doing it when I see it needs doing. In practice that means I was cleaning out the bottom drawer of the fridge on Monday evening while unloading our Bailey's food. The idea, borrowed from my friend Rebecca's blog, is to ask: Do I have five minutes? Usually these minor cleaning tasks take only a few minutes. And I almost always have five minutes. I also found five minutes, which stretched to a few more, to scrub mold off the grout in the shower one evening last week. Just what one feels like doing after tucking the kids in, let me tell you, but that's when I noticed the mold. Did I have five minutes? I did. We use baking soda and vinegar as cleaning agents, and as I scrubbed and scrubbed (using an old toothbrush) I found myself reminiscing about the Old Dutch cleanser my mom used to use, which would remove a layer of skin from your hands but sure got the tiles sparkling in a jiffy. Advice from fellow green-cleaners out there? Is the secret all in the elbow grease and the lowered standards?
If I'm talking a lot about the house, it's because this has been a housebound week, high on domestic necessities. My girl is still sick. We will be heading to see the doctor shortly.
I don't function well in housebound mode (and for the record, yes, my office is at home, but my office does not make me feel housebound). I don't function well on interrupted sleep. I get grumpy. It's fair to no one, but by 6pm, on a day when I've been doing nothing but scrubbing grout with a toothbrush, preparing meals, cleaning up from meals, entertaining sick children, worrying about sick children, and ferrying other children with sick child in tow to after-school activities -- by 6pm I'm liable to bite someone's head off. Usually my husband's. Because by 6pm he's around, that's why. And he's not a kid. Yup. Totally unfair.
I've been enjoying reading the latest issue of Brain, Child magazine, which has a piece on whether or not mothers complain too much about motherhood these days. Do we? Do I? Or should I really be complaining more? I wonder sometimes whether I get the balance right: truth-telling, accurate reporting of on-the-job realities mingled with gratitude. I do feel some discomfort about being a "mommy blogger" ... about presenting my family's life in some ideal package or inducing guilt in any other mother out there who doesn't have time (or the interest) to make homemade food or who drives instead of making her kids walk to school or etc. I think we're all trying our best. We have good intentions. We make mistakes. Life isn't perfect. And "mother" might just be the most judged and criticized role any of us could have chosen to take on, but that didn't stop us, so there's bravery right there.
And I'm rambling.
And it's time to go.Labels: chores, mothering, sick
