Foibles

Growing up I was the usual, including being admonished for being messy. I've carried that yoke all my life - through single-dom, through marriage, through being a divorcée, back to being married. The yoke hasn't been any easier to carry as I get older. I've just learned to carry the criticism with more grace or absorb it with less visible emotions.

By far, I would say, keeping house as a married woman is the most difficult. There is a strong point of view of many people that the house should be spic and span no matter that the wife/mother/woman-of-the-house may have put in an eight hour day at a paying job, plus the commute, plus the seven hours of parenting (home work, face washing, teeth brushing, and playing with the children). (I just finished The Nanny Diaries. Apparently not all of us have these problems.)

Getting CU-2 to do the math, you have 10 hours left in the day. (I know. I know. CU's back to school tomorrow.)

While I wish, some days, that I had the extra hour, I'm looking at 9 hours. Many doctors report that people should get on average 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night to feel good, be more productive, and avoid getting sick.

So, here's the coin toss. Walk through the house and tidy the kitchen (putting away the clean dishes from the time saving washing machine, and reloading the dishes, putting out the garbage, picking up the remainders of toys, and school supplies left by the walking CUs, and generally trying to put things in their place (or find a new place for things that come into the house), followed by the living room (straightening, sweeping, picking up), followed by choosing to put the stuff on the stairs (that is perpetually ignored) or running it up to the CU's bedrooms. Well, I could do that for a two hours, or sleep. If I don't do it, the mess piles up on itself. If I do do it, I cut into valuable sleep time, and that's if I can sleep. (My own personal anxieties come into play here.)

Any one reading this would know this routine all too well.

So, what triggered the latest bout of public remorse? Correspondence with our contractor. Apparently the slow down on the project is directly related to the state of our home during construction. (It doesn't seem to matter that 1. they saw what they were getting into, 2. they were told to talk to us if they had any problems accessing places, they were to say something. They didn't. That they also left the detailed work on every room for weeks, which left us with stacks and stacks of unsorted piles seems to be par for the course.)

Anyway, I'm feeling public admonishment and it's bring a wave of sadness. Getting emails from the contractor are about as much fun as getting them from dear XDH.

I'm just not feeling competent today.