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| This floor is dirtying my nightgown. |
"Fast, cheap, and good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good it won’t be cheap. Fast, cheap, and good… pick two words to live by." - Tom Waits
That's one of my husband's favorite quotes. And it happens to be attributed to one of my favorite songwriters. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, in terms of general housiness and productivity.
My trifecta, however, is more noun-related: Baby, Household, Writing. I cannot have more than two awesome nouns at a time. I've tried it. Repeatedly. It doesn't work.
On days where I feel on top of the mopping/scrubbing/folding and manage to teach my kid her colors/take a blanket tent nap (with her, of course), I feel like a really great Mom/wife/homeowner. Too bad my laptop doesn't get opened and zero projects get attempted, let alone completed.
Then there are times when the house is immaculate- or at least mildly sanitized- and I've blogged, essayed, scripted, emailed and filed. But Nora has watched five back to back episodes of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Including commercials. Extra commercials, in fact.
The best of the three options happens when I play on the floor with Nora for hours on end, and follow it up with some stellar writing once she naps. Dual job-wise, I feel invincible. Food and homestead-wise, I feel hungry, dirty and cluttered.
(All bets are off on days when Nora and I are at work, however. On those days, my home actually gets messier and my documents begin deleting themselves word by word. Nora and I would be cool with each other on work days, if not for the fact that I wake her at least twice to run errands and pick up kiddos. I'm pretty sure she'd rather we not talk on work days. But then again, we don't get paid to clean our house/write an opus/snuggle stuffed frogs...and her braces aren't gonna fund themselves. So we must resign ourselves to a few grumbles. Besides, the trade-off is that she gets to be with her favorite big kids in the entire Chicagoland area. Some things are worth being woken up for.)
The other day I thought I could beat the system. Nora "helped" me fold an impossibly large number of laundry loads (I am still not entirely convinced that people are NOT randomly dropping off clothing to be laundered and then spirited away while I towel-nap. Who owns all these socks?) and clean the floor. (Her contribution was removing cat hair from the Swiffer while I mopped- and then holding dirt and furballs up to me with a disdainful "yuck." Then she'd empty out the Tupperware cabinet and throw bibs around.) But the house was decently clean. So we made Valentines. Really sparkly ones with extra stickers and purple crayons. We followed that up by opening the Little People playhouses across the floor and arranging a township's worth of plastic pilots, squirrels, princesses and backpack-clad kids on appropriate seating. Then we fed them tea. She had a multi-food group lunch (and so did I!) and then settled down for a big ol' after lunch nap.
And I opened my laptop. I knew that I'd have at least the next two hours available for some quality writing time.
A fact which apparently crippled me.
I got nothing done. Less than nothing, actually. I may have even killed some brain cells with the stupidity of the few sentences I managed to eke out. They were the worst sentences ever to be typed and then immediately deleted. If I could have deleted them multiple times, I would have.
They were that bad.
And I wasn't surprised. After all, I was taunting Fate- who had VERY CLEARLY laid out the rules of productivity. Choose two.
Most days I wish I could just choose Nora twice.
The real low men on the totem pole are the cats, though. They used to be in the triple rotation, with special treats and five page manifestos for the cat sitters. And even though I still adore them, I fall back on this idea that- at heart- they're wild animals who prefer to fend for themselves. (If only they had thumbs!)
At least they're not the plants, which haven't been watered in months.
Prioritizing is hard.
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7 comments:
I can only imagine how hard it is juggling your life! Mine is hard enough with just husband, house & pets! I am sure you don't need me to tell you though, that the time with your daugther is worth not having a clean house & washed hair :)
Girl, you could be writing from inside my head. Except that the inside of my head isn't nearly as eloquent. Or funny.
Balancing all three can feel a bit like trying to keep up in some elaborate choreographed number. Sometimes I feel like I'm rockin' it but mostly I feel like I missed the rehearsal.
NOt so sure this title fits - sounds like you are the OPPOSITE of Lazy
Right there with you! Full time work-at-home job (this job pays the mortgage and other bills so it's never optional, sadly), very messy house and a strong desire to cook and eat healthy meals, and an amazing wonderful sweet little 7 month old son. I have a part time nanny, a very helpful mother, a somewhat helpful husband, and a generous forgiving boss. Even with all that help I never feel like I can do justice to all my responsibilities and me-time is in very very short supply. Hard to believe that I ever thought I was busy before my son was born!
That pretty much sums it up. I've come to the conclusion that I'm the only one who cares about the housework, so I choose writing and family.
Nikki
I seem to be in excellent company yet again. Gotta say, I was half expecting people to be all like- STOP TYPING AND JUST DO YOUR JOB.
Which, of course, no Mom (or nice person) would ever say to another human being/nice person/Mom.
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