Showing posts with label cleaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cleaning. Show all posts

Thursday, April 15, 2010

WHO ARE YOU?

When I was growing up, my mother wanted to have a cute little girl dressed in pink and doing ballet - someone just like her granddaughter, my neice, who was a year older than I was, and was blonde, petite and blue-eyed with ringlets.

Unfortunately, instead, she got me instead.

Tonight a friend and I were discussing her Type A... well, perhaps Type A++ compulsive need - perhaps obsession - to have every part of her life to be clean, organized, and in alphabetical, color and tonal order.

She said she envied people like me who can "let go."

And it made me realize once again how many years it has taken me to get here - to be able to "let go."
 
To not have to have things immaculate.
To not worry about things I have no control over.
To not try to be someone I'm not.
 
And not envy those who seem to remain 'focused' and intent and get things down but at the cost of high blood pressure, tension, and the inability to relax.

To paraphrase a very old expression, I don't think anyone of their deathbed is going to wish they had spent more time cleaning the kitchen floor.
 
So I'm okay with less than clean floors (heck, I have two dogs - they're pretty DIRTY floors regardless of what I do), dust on almost anything, a bathtub that is non-gracefully degrading into a permanent yellow shade, and a porch that is rarely (if ever) swept.

Because I have a good relationships with all three of my kids, I have low blood pressure, and I can take naps almost anytime I wish to. And with my dogs.

I'm okay being me.

Friday, April 9, 2010

LEVELS OF JOY

Most of us have an inner child.

Some of us are born old souls.

However, please let me describe the ranges of age displayed by my 28 year old daughter in about six hours today:

Age 2: Sheer and complete joy when told you are going to a movie.

Age 6: The frustration of trying to get both shoes on while someone is waiting for you.

Age 9: Pride at being able to purchase a movie ticket on your very own.

Age 13:  Beginning to cry when mommy won't give you enough to buy popcorn also.

Age 15: Embarrasment by your mom picking you up outside the mall after the movie ends.

Age 18: Telling your mom the movie's entire plot to the point of being annoying.

Age 14: Trying to defend the disaster that your apartment is in, and mom has been cleaning the entire time you've been at the movie.

Age 10: Putting away, with loud and violent protest, five items mom had left for you to take care of.

Age 4: Dissolving into tears when being told what must be cleaned up before tomorrow.

I feel as though I have aged years.