So I was thinking about the laundry mountain, which I conquered Tuesday night, and the dish mountain, which has been growing since that time. Oh, don't get all bent out of shape, all we've eaten at home is turkey sandwiches, pizza and cold cereal, and we do rinse.
There was a time, a little over a year ago and for the five or so years previous, when I would have seriously berated myself for things like this. I used to say my work belonged in Bad Housekeeping Magazine. (That also reminds me of the magazine my dad calls Better Homes Than Yours, which I think may be a design of conspiring individuals to make women feel bad about themselves. Same goes for Martha Stewart, and don't even get me started on women's fashion magazines.) Now -- eh, not so much. Sure we have dust, and we have some dishes piled up, and the bedrooms could all use a good vacuuming. But the laundry is clean and folded, your feet don't stick to the kitchen floor, and you can usually pretty much find whatever you need. It is not like we are slogging around in used paper napkins and mouse turds and dirty socks up to our ankles. My husband is the Elders' Quorum President now and he has seen AND MOVED THE CONTENTS OF houses like that. (Their version of packing involved handing out garbage bags to the elders present. Ewwwwwwww.) My house is just not bad at all, thanks. It helps to have nice white tile and birch-colored Pergo instead of yucky green carpet. Even dust looks better on that stuff. I think I'm normal, and I think it's liberating to just say, my house is not going to be spotless. So you see, I'm not gonna stress about my house.
Yesterday at work I started thinking I must be unknowingly high on crack because I could not find two papers I needed -- a sheet of changes for a publication I'm working on, and a copy of a grant proposal. I still cannot find them. So when I was about to blow my top I left. Just left. Looked at some computers at Best Buy and all the crap (crap that I love) on sale at Pier 1. Nobody around here needs a high-on-crack writer with lightning coming out her ears. I was gone for an hour and then I came back and conducted a wonderful interview with an incoming freshman on whom I will write a spotlight article for our home page. Ah, much better. Moral of the story: I am not gonna stress about work.
Even DH is picking up on the no-stress vibe. He is up in Yosemite during the days this week (that's right, he's home at night, all you creeps who were planning on robbing my house and scaring me and my kids) and he is actually not leaving until about 7:30 AM, and coming home by 7:30 or 8 PM. In the past his field days have been more like 5 AM to 9 PM. Psycho! He confided in me that he was starting to hate field work. I told him maybe it was because he intentionally kicks his own butt every time he goes up there. Hm, there's a concept.
This is California. No stress.
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