There Are Days…

Being a stay-at-home-mom, part-time writer, part-time blogger, house-frau and part-time everything else is a pretty cushy gig if I do say so myself.

It gives me time to be a good mom and wife to my family. It lends me the ability to sit down when I want to and write a story about some kids doing something outstanding in my community or overshare about life in the sticks as I do irregularly with this very blog.

The one area I stink at is the part-time house frau gig, I mean it. Believe me, the writing (or anything else at ALL) trumps any house chores I might have.

I am not a good housekeeper. There I said it.

I blame some of if on the fact that my vacuum sucks. Literally. It’s a sorry excuse for a household appliance. Not only does it weigh as much as a Sherman tank, but dirt rolls around on the floor never actually going up the tube part when this Kenmore comes a calling. It’s pathetic. Vacuums are so damn expensive. I’d hate to use hard-earned money on another one so soon after this one came into our lives.

And I can also blame my lack of good housecleaning skills on HCADD — household chore attention deficit disorder. I diagnosed myself and sadly I have not found a cure as of yet.I start a job — any old job around my humble abode, say cleaning toilets and then I get sidetracked. Completely.

An example, if I may.

My son has been asking about his favorite comfy jeans.

“They’re in the wash,” I explain to him, keeping the part about the fact they have been in the washing machine for three days now and I will have to re-wash them again, to myself.

I had good intentions about getting all the dirty laundry washed, but then I went on to something else. And then it was 8:30 p.m. and I didn’t feel like trudging down into that cold basement to put the clothes in the dryer. Do it in the morning, the little voice told me. And then, well I woke up late and plum forgot about the clothes. And then boom, I remember again, but now I am attempting to make a nice dinner complete with a rice pudding I wanted to try that took up way more time than the recipe said it would.

So there you have it. Wet clothes. Rewashed numerous times. Son without his favorite jeans.

In other areas of chores, I am a wee bit better.

Beds get made, only because I hate an unmade one. But lately I have been hightailing it upstairs five minutes before the kids get home from school to make them before they start asking what it is that mommy does all day.

I go from room to room making mental notes of what I need to do:  Pick up the crap still on the living room floor nearly one month after Christmas. Clean out the kitchen sink of breakfast dishes before it’s time to make dinner. Take the pile of laundry from daughter’s room to the basement and throw in the wash. After I rewash the load already in it. Dust off the wood and windowsills.

And lately I realize how dusty my house is. We took in a nice little black cat — a present for my daughter’s sixth birthday. The cat is sweet as pie and gets along with everyone very nicely. And Checkers, our 14-year-old Dalmatian has taken quite a liking to her as well. Who knew?

But “Kitty” picks up everything. She is a walking dust rag and if I wasn’t so embarrassed by just how much dust there is on her, I’d think it was funny.

So hopefully having the new cat around will help boost my house cleaning skills.

Or I can just tell people that Kitty is a black cat with tan spots that change daily depending on which part of my dirty house she’s been in.

I go through fits and starts, peaks and valleys, ups and downs when it comes to cleaning my house.

I waver between being empowered to do it myself because I am like how hard can this really be? To thinking damn, I’ll forgo tennis for a year to have someone come in here weekly and do it for me.

But then I always come back to the fact that I am a 44-year-old wife and stay-at-home mother of two living in average sized house and I should darn tooting be able to handle it.

OK. I am exaggerating about this. Just a tad. My house is respectable. Lived in if you will.

You can’t eat off the floors or anything. In fact I would recommend against that, though my kids won’t listen to me especially when it’s the last Oreo that fell on the floor. Five second rule. But ew. Yuck.

I just know I could spend A LOT more time on cleaning it if I wanted to. And there are times when I do want to.

Now is just not one of them.

In the meantime, I’ll write. A dirty house gives me fodder for my blog, so all is good right?

Erg.

Well, I am off to frost the, wait for it…. HOMEMADE CAKE I just baked for my husband’s birthday today. With real homemade buttercream frosting.

I may not be motivated by dust bunnies, as I am sure you gathered. But seriously, HOMEMADE CAKE people.

Enough said.

Happy Birthday to my very own sister as well. She lives on the left coast in LA. Sadly, she isn’t getting a homemade cake from me. She still owes me snickerdoodles from Christmas.

I think it’s neat that she and my husband share a birthday because they are way older than me.