
Once upon a time, when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, Saturday was set aside for chores. Washing and scrubbing and cleaning, oh, my!
Drummed deeply into my brain was the rule "you cannot go anywhere until all your chores are done and everything is clean."
(My brother spent Saturday morning just laying on the couch watching cartoons, but he was the boy and boys did not clean/wash/scrub, as that was "woman's work.")
However...this also drummed something else into my head that I cannot break:
as chores - cleaning and laundry and scrubbing and straightening - all must be done BEFORE one leaves the house, I cannot come home and "get busy" with housekeeping matters. (I also cannot delegate, but that is a different rant)
I go in late every day but Thursday, so I do cleaning and laundry and straightening oh my four mornings a week, but Thursday is off the table. That is the day I get off early, so I can go run errands -- I try to save them all up for my Thursday jaunts. Most of the time it does work, but not always.
I was getting stuff done on Saturday mornings for a while there as well, but our schedule somehow morphed into going to the commissary on Saturday morning instead of Saturday afternoon, taking any possible Saturday cleaning off the table.
So in my traditional manner of borrowing trouble before it arrives by itself, I am worrying about next year. We are dissolving at the end of this school year, and our school will no longer exist. There are current openings aplenty in the system, and theoretically we get "first dibs" on the spots for next year, but I have yet to see any of the "other jobs" out there that would permit me to write my own schedule.
Flailing around, looking for answers -- but it is a real challenge to search for answers when I am unable to even formulate the question, much less articulate the question.
What do I want/need?
Do I need to learn to come home from work and embrace the whole cleaning lady thing?
(possible need, not a want)
Do I need to learn to delegate?
(probably, but I have serious doubts as to my ability to do this one. I have never mastered (nor even attempted) the ability to ask the cute guy "can you do this chore?" and I was not even particularly good at telling my kidlets to "go do this chore right now"
The Jesuits were right, you know
All the crap drummed into our head as a kid is there forever)
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I am also struggling with one of my goals/tasks/items on my KateGoalSheet. To be honest, I am scoring a total fail with this one.
Total fail.
It sounds "simple enough" to anybody else -- neither an onerously hard task, nor a particularly time-consuming one...but I cannot seem to do it. It contains enough emotional minefields to blow up the country of your choice, doncha know?
It makes me cry.
And cuss.
And feel sorry for myself.
Kitchen floor: on five days per week, for three consecutive months, I will sweep the kitchen floor. On one day each week, I will also mop the kitchen floor.
Sounds so innocent, does it not?
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.