You guys, I don’t want to come across as an obnoxious braggart, but today I took a load of fresh laundry out of the dryer, folded it and put it away, all while it was still warm. It’s going to be a rude awakening for my clothes when they get worn, since they’re used to waking up slowly in a wrinkle-remove sauna cycle each morning, before we just jump into the day.
If I asked the last ten people in my phone’s text history what one thing they would like to wrangle from the universe, I would be unsurprised if 9/10 said “more time.” We live in a society that prides itself on how busy we are. Even while we decry our busy schedules that keep us out of the house 5 nights a week, we secretly feel like they’re proof we’re not falling behind. We’re proving ourselves to be good parents, interesting people, multi-faceted hyphenates who can easily fill out a hobbies and interests section of any form that comes our way. And yet, we say, ad nauseam, if only we had more time.
No matter who we are, we have a list of things we would like to accomplish this morning, today, this week, before we turn 40, before the kids grow up. Bucket lists. It’s an equal playing field. Working parents, stay-at-home parents, single professionals, students balancing part-time and full-time jobs. We all wake up with lists that we will not accomplish today.
Last night, my daughter was up several times with a stomach ache. This morning, she still felt sick, and added to that, we were both tired. I felt conflicted. It’s only week 2 of school and I was 85% sure that once she was up and about for a while, her stomach pain would pass. We’re fairly experienced on that front. I hadn’t brought my computer home over the weekend. To work from home, I’d have to fetch it. I searched through a laundry basket of clothes that hadn’t gotten put away last week and now held the also-rans of my closet, unchosen in the first round. I need to find time to do laundry, I thought…
And so, I didn’t work from home. I took the day off. I texted my multiple bosses. No one seemed alarmed. My daughter felt better before lunch, but we both just took the time.
My ambitious plan for my unanticipated day off, of course, included a list that would ultimately fall short. But 5 out of 5 beds have clean sheets, and 4 out of 5 beds are refitted with their clean sheets
(for the 5th, the cat claimed the sheets before I could get them on the bed, and if there’s one rule in our house, it’s that, like a sleeping baby, you don’t disturb a sleeping Tres.) I daydreamed about putting sheets out to dry in the summer sun (a simpler time fantasy that would probably prove frustrating in reality) but to do it justice, I did harvest some garden produce.
I went through the dozens of nail polish bottles that accumulate in a house with three girls and I threw away anything that seemed more viscous than liquid. I went through approximately eight months of Birchbox samples and divided them into lip, face, hair, and lotions/perfumes. The top of my dresser has been sighted. I felt like a shipwrecked crewman, Land ho! I knew it was there, but it’s nice to have confirmation.
And look at this! The right-hand counter by the kitchen sink! Absolutely clear. (Immediately after this, my daughter tried to put an empty snack bowl on this counter. I told her no.)
I did not clear out my children’s sure-to-be-too-small fall wardrobes. They will definitely still be sporting highwater pants for the first few weeks of cooler weather until we begin to weed those out by trial and error. Our shoes are still a haphazard pile in the entryway. And the two dozen bags that seemed essential to summer – daycare bags, pool bags, concert picnic bags, sleepover bags – are all still sitting nested within each other, spilling out into the living room.
But it’s amazing what a clean counter can do for a tired psyche. Tomorrow it’s back to it but in this moment, I feel as zen as if I had actually spent today watching clean sheets rustle in the summer sun.
Who knew Monday could be a friend.
“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?” — Dr. Suess