Feast, famine, fuck it.

I was so proud of myself Wednesday. I made a to-do list in my happy-green little planner (which is the first one I've bought that I really use, when I remember) and by the end of the housewife day (they officially end when the kids come home from school), I had done:
7 loads of laundry, (check!)
cleaned the kitchen (check!)
vacuumed (check!)
swept the porches and the sidewalks(check!)
watered the garden (check!)
mopped the kitchen (check!)
And cooked a not-too-shabby dinner.

And did I feel good about my productivity? Yes, yes I did. Smug? Maybe. Feeling unfuckingstoppable? You betcha. Have an extra glass of wine as a reward? Well, if you insist.
I even made a list for the next day; the stuff I didn't get to on Wednesday.
Thursday:
Dust and polish
Bathroom
Mop big scary room downstairs.

Yeah, notice all the checks there? Me neither. Apparently, all I've got in me is one big day. Yesterday, I just...couldn't...do it. Still had that extra glass of wine, tho, as a balm to soothe the disappointed ego.
It's just too easy to sit right here. Clicking things, taking umpteen pictures of myself and finally settling on an almost-cute one. I hope nobody notices that my shirt was a little low-cut and pulled over. Call me Elaine. But it's a good pic, and that just doesn't happen very often. Also did some major facebooking, pretended to research something for my book, stalked the artist Wyland for a while, made a horrible loaf of bread, and that's about it.
And today? Suffice it to say my girlfriends came over this morning. Chuh, like I"m going to do anything other than my hair.
Ding! Must go. Housewife day is over.

Shit. I was afraid this might happen. I've lost it; lost the mojo. Lost the will. Lost the drive. Lost the plot. Literally. I can't write! I don't know what comes next! Dunno how they get from the A I need to create to the B in the next chapter that's already written. Poop!
See? I can't even write a decent blog anymore. What do I do now? Give up and join the Stepford Wives that populate my neighborhood? Coz then I'm going to need a makeover; some fake french nails and a shorter haircut that goes all spikey in the back like WhatsHerFace with the 8 kids and husband who likes jailbait. Gonna need baggier capri pants too. Shirts that cover suspiciously large underwear. At least four more kids. A CriCut, whatever the hell that is.
Maybe they'll like me then. Maybe I won't stand awkwardly off to the side at every "neighborhood" event (Read: Ward activity that some big-hearted person invited the gentiles to) smiling like a moron and waiting for someone to talk to me. Maybe they won't suspect that I like my cleavage, that the only recipe I'm trying to perfect is one for a dirty martini, that I really hate Richard Paul Evans, that I think scrapbooking is enough to make me gouge my eyes out.
Ok. Going to go read my whole damn manuscript, again. See if I can crawl back into their heads so they can tell me what they've already done and how they felt about it.
Sigh.
Or maybe I'll just go run some errands...I'm low on gin.

Wait. What's that on the floor?

Good Lord. What the hell kind of shit-bomb hit my house over the last 2 days?! I swear, I swear; I went camping Thursday. When I left, the house was clean. Giant mound of laundry conquered, floors sparkling, sink empty and scrubbed, no newspapers on the floor or empty cups scattered hither and yon. I got home Saturday evening; same. So nice to come home to a clean home, right? So now it's, what, Tuesday? I CAN'T SEE THE FRIGGING FLOOR. Mt. Everest of stinky drawers and sheets has arisen in the laundry room. The weiner dog tore apart his bed. Again. It smells like something might have expired with an evil chuckle in the pantry. There's something suspiciously sticky on the wall in the stairwell.
I keep my house in what I'd like to describe as a half-assed state. As my husband so sensitively put it earlier this evening: "You know, you can clean a house like no one I've ever seen. You are really good at cleaning, and I mean that in a good way. But," he says, "you suck at keeping things neat."
I nodded. I know. I start things; I get interrupted and have to come back to them later. Only later never seems to happen. I set something down, fully intending to put it in its rightful spot in just a minute. A week later, it's in my way and pissing me off. I have too much crap. But, most of the time, I get at least the major things done, like vacuuming, I clean the kitchen every day, the bathroom doesn't smell. At the moment, this place is driving me around the curve. I've suddenly snapped and can't take it anymore.
So: tomorrow I am not going anyfuckingwhere. I am taking the girl to school, I am coming home and brushing my teeth, I am checking emails and downloading the Bob and Tom Show podcast, I am getting OFF facebook after 30 minutes and I am cleaning this mo'fo. I am chucking shit. I am dusting. I will fold. Floors will once again sparkle. Dammit, I just might even *gasp* iron.

And then I'll do it aaaaalllll again next week.
Hey, ask me again why I drink so much.

My Laundry Room Scares Me.

It's the last day of summer vacation. I was hoping to finally spend a whole day with my child, enjoying some relaxing time just absorbing who she is, riding a bike somewhere, making gluten-free zucchini bread (now THAT sounds appetizing, right?), feeling my heart thud when her lovely face shines with laughter, frantically trying to cram in all the reading and workbooks that she was supposed to do over the summer in order to seem really really smart tomorrow...and yet...we're busy today. She's at Mimi's, of course; that escape for her to the land of Whatever I Want, the place I'm so ambivalent about. I love that she has such a close relationship with my parents, I do. I appreciate that I get a night off every week. I'm glad that she has a soft place to fall when her mother gets overbearing and demanding. But. I had such plans today...

And, of course, with school starting tomorrow I have exactly ZERO excuses to not get stuff done around here. Now I'll have seven whole hours every day to myself. I have ambitious plans; I'm going to finish painting the house. I'm going to weed the roses. I'm going to fix it so that the front porch doesn't look like the Clampetts live here. I'm going to finish that little book I started four years ago. I'm going to see if I can shed this inner-tube from around my hips. And I'm going to clean out the laundry room. The scary, overflowing laundry room. That will involve ironing. It will also involve getting rid of crap, which right now is the biggest obstacle on my path to serenity. So. Much. Crap. Where did it all come from? Why, from my flibbertygibbet sprees involving buying stuff because it's on sale. From not putting stuff away. From my mom and my mother-in-law being convinced that they don't need to take anything to D.I.; maybe Vanessa will want it.
I've managed to avoid dealing with all this because we've been so busy the last 12 weeks. Now it looks like I have to swallow my fear and that choking, overwhelmed feeling that I don't know where to start, that I'll do it wrong, that I'll get rid of something that I'll then discover we really need, that there's something else I really should be doing instead but am not sure what that is so I'll just get on facebook.

But not today.
I'm going to go get my child.