Sorry Attempts at Nothing

Many, many years ago, when the Earth and I were younger, I remember my mother answering one of my moans of boredom with an emphatic, "I wish I could be bored, but I don't have any time."

Naturally, I knew what she was talking about, but to this day, I still suffer from boredom. Maybe I never learned my lesson--the one she must have been trying to teach me with her subtle sarcasm. There's work aplenty to be done, but that place in my brain that surveys said work and determines which tasks to complete, and in which order, seems endlessly stuck in the laundry/dishes/dinner loop--the essentials.

Yes, the foyer has shoes and paper and backpacks sprawling across the floor. I see the steadily growing piles of things on the kitchen counter. Weeds and grass have overtaken the flower beds, and I probably don't need to mention the garage. I mean, come on, that's what garages are for, right? And even if I wanted to park a car in there... well, never mind.

The point is, I haven't gone blind. I know there's work to be done. And I could lie about it and say that I'm too busy playing with my kids, or writing magnificent books for all the world to love, but I try not to deserve getting struck by lightning more than once a week. And since it's Tuesday, and I can't remember what other tall tales I might have shared earlier, or whether I might need to exaggerate the truth later on, I'm not going to press my luck. I see the mess. I ignore the mess.

I don't always mean to, though. Take the yard for instance: nobody wants to walk through knee-high grass to weed flower beds they can't see anyway. And it isn't my fault the lawn mower died again. I'm not a mechanic! Mercy me, think of my nails--if one breaks, I'd have to cut them all and start over. Know how many horse-pill-sized multi-vitamins it takes to get my nails to that perfect length? Trust me, it's a lot.

As for the messy foyer: I could spend a half-hour cleaning it up, straightening the shoes and papers and back packs, vacuum up the dust-dogs (I swear, they're huge) and even polish the wood floor to make it look less like the forbidding entrance into the underworld, but the minute school lets out and the troops come home, it's disaster all over again. Remember that guy who had to push the same boulder up the same mountain every day for all of eternity? It's like that. Same thing goes for the connected living room, which spills into the kitchen and dining room, and back into the foyer, like a big, round dog-run. Or kid run. Honestly, whoever designed this house was clearly an idiot. Cleaning this place is like baling out a ship with a single bucket, during a rainstorm, and with a hole in the bucket.

For the sake of this blog-post, my brain is that bucket. Goodly thoughts of cleaning are often leaked out through that hole (which we can label: Attention Span) and my mind then reverts to a certain stack of library books, conveniently placed within reach of my comfy chair and a nice reading lamp. It's a great rut, and a lot cheaper than say, shopping. So long as I don't forget that the real world is waiting for me beyond the printed pages, all is well.

So, yeah. The Mess. I've gotten very good at blocking it out. Walking through my house might sometimes resemble navigating a mine field, stepping over this and that, dodging the skates, scooting around the trumpet, but maybe keeping all that mess around is actually healthy. Maybe it can cure boredom--which we all know leads to all sorts of irrational behavior. Like, say, wanting another child. Messy houses could be the next form of birth control. Well, maybe. But only if the house is so messy that Mom and Dad can't find one another in it.

Yeah, okay. Forget it. I'm not making excuses, exactly. Yes, I know where my vacuum is. I even dust it off now and again to, you know, clean... But I try not to get carried away. I wouldn't want to be the neurotic kind of person that spent so much time cleaning that the world revolved around shining floors and (gasp!) organized closets. This might be considered a personality flaw to some, but only to those who don't understand that I fully intend on cleaning up The Mess. All of it. You know, some day. In between trips to the school and library, before the next great "Have To Read" book comes out or after the really disappointing sequel to the last "Had To Read".

And of course, only if I'm not busy writing.