Sunday, May 31, 2009

Roominating

I sit here in my tiny house looking about me and what do my eyes behold? Mess. Leftover chaos from our weekend cattle drive that really became a overnight campout with lots of bovine neighbors and mosquitos, dishes from two days of craziness and ten loaves of home made wheat bread, papers piled up because I've been too busy with everything else to really go through them properly, and miscellaneous bits of "stuff" providing proof enough that I share my tiny home with tiny people -- not of the same type/class as the fictitious Borrowers, but just as . . . permeating. Anyway, I sit here looking about and the thought occurs to me: "You know, if I were smart I would spend this precious time when all of my children are asleep and my husband is gone with church responsibilities and I would clean up tonight so that I can start my week off with a tidy home." But of course, at that very same instant, my psyche counters "WHAT?! It's SUNDAY!!! You're not supposed to work on Sunday! Besides, you have ALL DAY tomorrow to clean . . . how often do you get to type uninterrupted and unpressured? In a word . . . NEVER!!! Take advantage of the quite and solitude to do some writing -- You could update your friends and family to what's been happening in your life lately -- that counts as service, right?!"
"Wrong!" says my better half -- (and no, I'm not talking about Tim)"You know that if you go to bed with the house messy you'll wake up feeling stressed out and behind. It will put you in a bad mood for the whole day and you also know that "if Mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy!" So just suck it up & get to work! You could probably have this all tidied up in an hour!"
"An HOUR?!!" screams . . . the other guy (the bad voice simply MUST be male -- no woman would ever come up with such nonsense) "Have you even LOOKED at this place?! I mean, it would take an hour just to get down to the kitchen counters! We're talking DAYS here!"
"Shut-up you moron!" It's really getting heated now -- Better Half (B.H. for short) usually doesn't use such language. "An hour of uninterrupted work tonight would accomplish as much as an entire DAY of work with the girls awake or Tim home! Right now you have nothing to distract you -- no calls to make, no school to conduct, no baby to feed, no one to take potty, no dinner to cook -- NOTHING!!! Now, get off that computer & GET TO WORK before it's too late!!"
Gotta go - B.H. can be very convincing.