Martha Went Home

I am not a neat freak. (Shut up CK) I accept that. That said though, neither am I a slob. I like to call my homemaking style "benign neglect". We're not being buried in trash, but you can sometimes (most of the time) write your name in the dust on the television.

My husband? IS a slob. Like a serious Collyer Brothers style house keeping when he's in charge.

I know this. I mean, after all, we've been married for about a hundred years. In theory, he also knows that I get majorly stressed out when people are coming over and the house is a mess. More of a mess, I mean. Not the haha yesterday's mail is on the coffee table and there are dust bunnies under the china hutch! messy. Really messy. Messy like a sink full of dishes, the dining room table piled with school papers and dust bunnies forming a zombie-style Apocalypse in the hallway. Messy like the laundry is over flowing and the shower looks like a science experiment. Messy like the camera crew is going to show up with Neicy Nash at any moment. I cleaned the house Friday morning before I left for home, but still. It's a bit of a wreck.

So what does my husband tell me last night at 10pm? That one friend is coming over for help with his resume and another is bringing her car to have the A/C looked at.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

My unpacked suitcase is still on the bedroom floor. There are two baskets of unfolded laundry stacked on the desk and Jack has decided the dining room is a reasonable place to relieve himself and so the carpet needs shampooing and...and...and...STRESS

I think it's a girl thing. It's not so much that I notice if other women scrub their baseboards and dust their ceiling fans, it's that I think they'll notice if *I* DON'T.

Do you girls do this? Do you make yourself insane thinking that the minute your back is turned that someone is going to run a finger down the lampshade and then NEARLY DIE OF DUST POISONING and then they're going to sit down to a cup of coffee with another woman Nescafe commercial style and dish that you never vacuum under the sofa?

Why do we DO this to ourselves? It's not like other women don't realize that we're busy balancing a full time job with a full time home. It's not like we're not all trying to run circles around life and produce a Betty Crocker Dinner in a Martha Stewart home while looking like June Cleaver and staying as cool as dammit?

I get it. I get that you'd rather watch TiVo'd episodes of Chopped than organize the bookshelf, I understand that you spend seven hours a week driving kids to this game and that meeting the other practice.

Why don't we give ourselves a break? It's unreasonable to expect perfection. It's silly to believe that we can do it all and do it perfectly.

So here's what I think we ought to do.

Not go on strike, exactly, but rather go on...break. Let's all take a day or two or a whole week and just not give a shit if the Avon lady drops by and you haven't washed the windows. Let's sit on the couch this afternoon and finish that book that we started reading in July but haven't finished because the floor needs mopping instead of believing that we're bad mothers and terrible wives because you can't eat off the kitchen floor.

Wouldn't you be happier if you could look at the cobwebs in the corner of the garage and then shrug?

I would be.

I will be.

If y'all need me, I'll be over there googling maid services.