Confessions of a Would-Be Auhtor and Halfhearted Housewife

Confessions of a Would-Be Author and Halfhearted Housewife

cleaning house

A Clean House Retro Wall Sticker by Abode Wallart

How to order the day has long been a puzzle to me. Probably it is for many an artist (or a wannabe) who has the responsibility of the home even of a single body. It's been a long time since I began worrying this problem and it sticks to me like a burr to this day, decades after I first noticed it.

I'm what people like to call a morning person. By the end of an afternoon, I'm generally out of steam, so to speak, and unlikely to have energy for any kind of self generated activity either mental or physical. When I was middle-aged, if I had to, I could call up reserves. There was no other way I could have been teaching. I recall thinking in those years that I've give a good part of my life if only someone would prepare a meal for us. I'd have given that myself, it was not near the end of my day that had begun before six a.m.

Nowadays, alone except for my dog and cat, I still try to decide whether to let the bed lie unmade, the dishes sit in the sink, and put off the marketing so as to get to the blank page, or to the ones needing all sorts of editing, cutting, tweaking or rewriting ... etc.

Habit has a grip on everybody, and I find that the years of making sure we would all have a hospitable home to come back to at day's end has made it all but impossible for me to settle to anything before the basic household chores have been done. On days when I wonder what I'm doing, (thinking I might have something to say that's worth writing down) it still comes into my head that maybe I haven't got priorities properly sequenced even now.

Of course, part of that comes from being of a generation that was ashamed to have anyone drop in unexpectedly and find chaos instead of reasonable order in our house. I've never been a neatnik, but I do try to keep the throw pillows off the floor, and in smoking days (long past now), ashtrays emptied. I compulsively stack the unread New Yorkers and catalogs I intend to examine later instead of leaving them in a sliding shuffle on the coffee table. The problem is that however short my list of must-dos at the beginning of the day, I can't wait to get to the computer.

Well, now the bigger problem seems to be how to deal with the time after the dog is fed. We've worked out a kind of deal that if he keeps pestering me to be fed in the afternoon, he won't get dinner until five. This saves me from the worst annoyances till about four-thirty. Whenever I give in, though, begins the problem time for me. It seems that the workday is over once I get to the kitchen in fading daylight.

The trouble is that it's too early to think about my own dinner. If I plan to cook something that will take time, that’s okay, but mostly I don't. Mostly I will reheat leftovers or simply put a chicken thigh in the oven to roast. A mere half hour or so is all that's needed to prepare even a decently balanced meal for one. Even if I'm hungry by six, the evening stretches too darn far. There's no point in going to bed (even to read) before ten or so because I have enough trouble falling asleep even if I'm physically tired.

If I go back to my computer to try to make some progress on whatever I'm laboring over, I'm not fresh enough even to proofread.

Our children gave me a device so I can watch Netflix. Given the sad state of TV offerings where I live, that has been a real savior for me. I watched a 1940s movie last night and reinforced my conviction that movies are better now than they used to be. I watched NOVA and was enthralled. I watched a silly cozy BBC mystery and was captivated again by the wonders of English horticulture.

What I didn't do was to vacuum the carpet. I didn't polish the brass (that really needs it because Thanksgiving will be celebrated here next week.) Ditto the silver in the china cabinet. I did the laundry, and then I even folded it and put it away, but dusting has almost disappeared from my vocabulary as well as my chore list. So now I try to feel better for bothering to mention all these things on paper.

Somehow I get the feeling that my sins are growing more and more obvious, rather like the picture of Dorian Gray. How long can I get away with all this?

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Confessions of a Would-Be Author and Halfhearted Housewife

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