forgive me, St. Francis

It’s 10pm and what I SHOULD be is headed to bed in greedy anticipation of the Elizabeth Strout novel I haven’t had time to list on my Currently Cracked page. Instead, I’m in the throes of total mommy guilt and dismay.

I got so righteously peeved at Megan’s bedtime fit over losing the little bag with her front tooth in it — the one that the Tooth Fairy, in her Benevolence, had acquiesced in allowing her to keep for an extra day so as to show her best buddy; the bag that of course I had TOLD HER AND TOLD HER was likely to be misplaced if she insisted on toting it around with her from place to place all day, and with ALL. THIS. STUFF everywhere that never gets put away, no WONDER she couldn’t find it — that I went on a wee rampage after lights out.

I cleaned up the entire sunroom/playroom. Which has been the stage over the last two days for a lot of imaginative play. Among other opportunities for strewage, she and her next-door BF have been playing Animal Doctor, which means every single box and basket has been emptied of its rightful contents and pressed into use as an infirmary bed for a stuffed animal. And out of cardboard bricks they built a vehicle, virtually to scale, that took them and both their little sisters “on an imaginary trip in an imaginary car to an imaginary place.”

In a full-on vent of exasperation, I stacked the bricks in two boring pillars. And began razing the veterinary hospital, heartlessly dumping the infirm and sick onto the floor along with their toilet-paper bedding, determined to put all the dishes and dolls and puzzles and blocks back into their rightful boxes and bins and baskets.

And then saw the casts fashioned of yarn, wrapped tidily and tightly around broken limbs. Realized the smaller animals were two to a bed, due to conditions of severe overcrowding at the hospital. Several had bottles propped to their mouths; others, strong enough for solid diets, had bottle caps with beads in. Head injuries received pillows; blankets were dispensed for the chilled. They’d clearly taken in strays and hopeless causes, paying no heed to the status of their insurance.

And I lost all heart for my storm, wishing I’d left it whole, this wonderful thing they’d created over the last two days. I’d completely wrecked it by the time the scope of its design broke through my ire; it wasn’t as if I could put it back. But part of me wanted to do exactly that.

Instead, I went about the process of picking up every last perler and puzzle piece and Lite-Brite peg, fluffing pillows and re-positioning furniture, I suppose because I had to pretend that it was important enough to be completed.

perfect party

It had all the makings for a major stressaster.  You know, where you’re so freaking stressed out that even if it all ends up going just fine, it’s still a disaster.

We were anticipating 6 or 7 families, with a total of 30-some bodies, to arrive beginning at 4:30 on Sunday for a grill-potluck.

We’d had overnight guests, so some of the mid-morning after their departure was spent picking up toys and tidying.   And since I know good and well that if the kids will be home all day any significant cleaning the morning of a party is destined to be an exercise in futility, not to mention annoyance, because anything accomplished will surely need a major touching up anyway, I didn’t bother with bathrooms or mopping. Closer to doorbell time would be soon enough.

And since I wasn’t making much food, just an appetizer and a dessert and a fruit salad, and I got most of the choppin’ and slicin’ done in the morning,  it seemed perfectly reasonable to head out for a ride a bit after noon.  Couple hours on the road and I’d still have almost two hours to clean, assemble and bake, and shower.  Piece of cake.  Put the MPM in charge of the beer tub and the outdoor seating, toss some silverware out, stack plates, line up wine glasses, major swab on the bathroom, mop, quick vacuum.  Easy pie.

Or, alternately, arrive home a tad late at 3p to a weepy child with an earache and a low tolerance for discomfort, and a dire need for attention and snuggling.

Yuh.

The dessert got in the oven and the appetizer got made, but as the minutes ticked by and I sat with Megs on my lap, I realized the bathroom that had been waiting several days for an attentive scrubbing was going to wait yet another day.   And that I should not be surprised if a guest, finding a foot or perhaps two irrevocably stuck to my kitchen floor, called out for help, only to have their would-be rescuer trip over two empty milk bottles and slam into the kitchen stepladder on the way to faceplanting in an unwashed cat-food dish. And that I myself, in biking togs and full post-sweat helmet-head, had little hope of being any cleaner or lovelier before guests arrived.

And as I waited for the stress to sweep over me, it dawned on me that there wasn’t a single person who would be coming through the front door that I cared about how they saw me or my house.  And I mean that in the very best way possible:  that every one of our guests was someone that I was completely comfortable with.  Good friends, and a rumble and muddle of little ones, and a sprinkling of teens, I could wallow in unqualified acceptance and utter lack of internally arched-eyebrow judgment.

And what a lovely, lovely feeling it was.

Interesting to think how rare that is, at least in my entertaining life.  It made me chew on the fact that although I do think I’m generally willing to have others see the “real” me, I’m a far ways from being immune to feeling that my home reflects on me, and thus how others think of me.  And I want them to think… what?  That I know how to wipe my switch plates and dust baseboards and make my bathroom shine?  That I execute such chores with some frequent periodicity?  The former is true; the latter, certainly less so, at least at this stage of life.  But really, what is it that makes us feel so bad if our house isn’t just so when company arrives?  I’m still mulling on it.

In any event, I think every person who came on Sunday enjoyed the evening as much as I did.  And I have utter faith that not one of them thought less of me for the grubbiness of my bathroom.

And just so’s you know, I cleaned it first thing today, before breakfast, because it really did need it desperately.  And because at that moment, no one needed snuggling more than it needed scrubbin’.

And then I wiped some switchplates too.  Just for the heck of it.  Hey, time to plan another party, quick.

did I mention we had live entertainment?

hmmm, a girl at the grill. is that legal?

fun for children of all ages

Shaving my legs and cleaning my house

The periodicity of both of these activities has lengthened significantly in the years since the arrival of my first, and now second, child.

Oh, to be sure, I’m doing vastly more picking up and tidying, not to mention logging way, way, WAY more hours in the kitchen and laundry room. But I’m talking about cleaning, real cleaning, under furniture and over fanblades and around lightplates cleaning. This kind of cleaning is so rare in my life as to be at risk of appearing on an Officially Endangered list.

Shaving my legs, something I used to do almost daily, has now been relegated to an as-necessary status. And, given that a) my hair is relatively fine and b) my husband just really doesn’t care (something of a blessing), “necessary” ranges from um well seldom in the winter months to, oh, once a week in the summer. It’s a sad fact that most of the guys I ride with have shaved their legs more recently than I have at any given time. And yes, I wear cute boyshort swim bottoms for One Reason Only and it’s not because we live a block from the beach and I’ll be headed out with my kiteboard any minute now. Duuude!

The parallel between housecleaning and shaving (surely you must have been wondering) comes from doing the task incompletely. In either venue, if it all gets done frequently and well, the occasional miss goes quite unnoticed. But good god! I think, as I move the couch to vacuum, surely I cleaned this room more recently than that incredible dust collection indicates. Perhaps I did – but if so, maybe I missed moving the couch the last time. Or two.

And, glancing down at my freshly-shaven legs (without fail this occurs when I’m already en route to my razor-worthy destination), I’ll see a small but righteously forested patch right there, that tetchy place by the ankle, or the tendon ‘hind my knee. Hmm, I wonder; how long since I made a clean swipe there? Last time? Time before? Last summer?

And there we are. With so many more-worthy things vying for my finite time and attention, the endless tidying and sweeping and other chores will continue to consume most of the time and energy that I care to devote to the notion of a pristine somewhat sanitary house. And my showers will continue to be hurried and sometimes public affairs, with this or that head sticking in for a view of Mommy takin SHOWAH! as the spray goes forth onto the floor. It’s all good, and it’s all right, for now.

But I’m definitely thinking a disposable razor in the glovebox until the era when I can reclaim that bit of my life: time alone in the shower with my soap and my soul. And my Schick.

sweepings

I sweep my kitchen floor every single blessed day of my I’m-a-mommy-now life. Often twice. It never ceases to amaze me how much crud accumulates thereon, and for some time I’ve had the idea of archiving the contents of my daily dustpan. Andy Warhol had his Time Capsules; I’ll have this microspecimen of each day’s detritus.

Maybe it’s that I just want to have a record of the astonishing volume of STUFF that manages to find its way onto my floor. And thereby proof that my compulsion to sweep isn’t a compulsion at all, it’s just a reasonable response to the fact that if I didn’t wield my trusty Vileda daily, before long my entire family would be buried in crumbs and dust and dried up scrambled eggs and stickers off bananas.

I’m tempted by the notion of weekly pillboxes, you know, the ones with SuMTWThFSa compartments. They make some really big ones – for, one assumes, either the supplement-crazed or the heavily pharmaceutically dependent – that I’m thinking would work fine.

But then again the simplicity of Warhol’s system rather appeals: an open container to just huck the stuff in daily until it gets full; seal it up and be done. (Until it can be auctioned off for gazillions, if of course you’re Andy.)

I suppose there’s a teeny issue of assorted and unappealing decay processes. Perhaps a hermetic seal, like one of those infomercial food-saver thingies? I do think it should be a see-through container, to achieve an effect like one of those cute beach-in-a-pop-bottle things my friend has her son make every year when they go to coastal Maine, where you rotate it to see the shells and little pieces of fishing net and glass worn opaque and smooth appear out of the sand.