when housekeeping comes knocking.

It's been one of those weeks.

Everywhere I turn there are messes, ranging from a 3.5 to a 9.7 on the Richter scale.

How did this happen? I ask myself. We have one kid who can't even really run around and get into things. I could count Jason as a kid, I suppose. [Easily, actually.]

Still... I'm here all day.

I frown looking out through my dirty window. I can't even cut it in the domestic world! How would I do in the professional world?

Then I remember. I did it in the professional world. I wasn't the best teacher there ever was, but I ran classrooms. AM. PM. I planned, I documented, I tested, I stocked, I filed, I decorated, I celebrated, I communicated, I danced, I restocked, I disciplined, I deadlined, I collaborated, I copied, I cut, I conferenced! I oversaw a staff. I been there. I done that. Grueling? Yes. Exhausting. Yes! Mentally paralyzing?

You mean like the way it feels when I fall into my computer chair, fatigued from just looking around at my house for fifteen seconds?

N to the O.

You mean like this: Commence dishes.

Clear them off table

Note stack of last week's recipes.

Remember that I need to make notes on some of them

or I will forget what I need to add when I make that lasagna again.

Observe pile of newly clean dishcloths.

Quickly sort.

Recall that I really need to run up and do a load of jeans

so I have something {clean} to wear tomorrow.

Jeans in. Notice whites {are still} in dryer [for three days now].

And oh, I need to change the sheets.

Pull them off bed so I won't forget again.

Stop by computer to email Brother Hansen the numbers for the month.

Sight an urgent email from my sister about our upcoming trip

so
I stop to look up info on that aquarium place.

Got to check on those theater tickets, too.

Janie is awake from her nap. Hello, Princess.

Oooh. whew. Sure smells in here.

And those dirty dishes
[now dirtier]
greet me with an ugly sneer
[a mean nasty one with food in the teeth]
as we arrive back downstairs where I started.

Save me.


Never a dull moment. Hardly a normal moment either, it feels like. Because you are never off the clock.

Is that why people say that being a stay-at-home mom is the hardest job around? Sometimes I wondered if that was just what stay-at-home moms said to make themselves feel better.

But you know what?

It works.