after the bomb went off

I’m really beginning to enjoy the minute by minute practice of doing housework and laundry. When I am able to set aside the resentment over doing x or x or x YET AGAIN, I can just settle into getting things done little bit by little bit. I’ll never be a flybaby. Control journals (just the title of that- CONTROL journal) aren’t my style as much as I really tried hard to fit that mold, and chore schedules just make me anxious and ashamed when instead of doing a 15-minute room refresher I decide to take a nap or make another cup of tea.

This morning I looked around briefly and said to myself: maybe this is why I was cranky this weekend. I’ll start with the laundry
and that was it. No more I wish my house was as clean as my (childless, petless) mother in law’s. No more why can’t my house be cozy and lovely like my (again, childless) friend Mary? This is my house, and the table is perpetually dirty. There will always be laundry to wash, and every day the rugs will need vaccuumed. I can clean the table, or the rugs, I can wash the laundry. I can meditate in the only way a mother of two active toddlers can-by losing myself in the oatmeal-glue on the table top, the spaghettio stains in the t shirts, in the dog hair on the rug.

Or, I can dance in the kitchen with my kids instead. We can tip over the laundry baskets and use them as a fort. We can admire that Jack can, with no practice or awareness, do a perfect Downward Facing Dog.

And some days there will be time for both.

There is no enemy here. There’s just us, this day, this moment-and what we do with it is our choice, and ours alone. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to put laundry in the dryer and then go jump on the couch with my children. (don’t tell my husband- he is strictly anti-furniture jumping)

• adventures in being where I am
• oh god
• for reference-crawler
• Happy F-ing Februrary, folks