Futility

I've been thinking about priorities lately. Reading books like Organized Simplicity inspires me to start up another round of un-stuff-ing, freeing my mind from the mental clutter as well as the physical tripping points. Increasing demands upon my time require* that something must go, and it's always a balancing act to keep my perspective grounded.

I want to spend more time with my children. Time invested in their lives is really the best spent, whereas all the busy-work of running the household has a peculiarly fatalistic quality to it: catch-up vacuuming and laundry is only marginally more time-consuming than the everyday variety. So I tell myself, and yet I really can't let the dishes and laundry slide too much. And ultimately, it just doesn't matter.

Ha! No, I'm not just being calm and accepting of less than perfection. It literally doesn't matter whether I think I'm caught up or not, because before the dishwasher or washing machine finishes the cycle, there will be more dirty dishes and soiled laundry. Just like Almanzo's fleece from Farmer Boy, I can never really keep up. And yet I keep trying.

The little incident that sparked all this introspection? While lately feeding the baby, I felt a suspicious warmth seep across my lap. I had just settled another load in the washer and graduated the last batch of soaking stains from the bin, and there was the momentary adrenaline rush to consider whether I should make a mad dash for the laundry room, strip all affected articles and stuff them in the washer in time to join the last cycle. And then I decided that it just didn't matter.

The leak was of the clear variety, not the yellow kind. It won't show. It doesn't stink. It will dry and the clothes will be good for another wearing.

People keep asking how life is with four children. I think this will be my new equilibrium - not waving the white flag of Surrender, but clutching the pragmatic handkerchief of Enough.

* Or is it requires? Is it the demands themselves (and therefore plural), or the increasing-ness of them (and therefore singular), at work here? I think there's an exchange in a play somewhere or other (Gilbert and Sullivan comes to mind, but that's not it) where this dilemma comes up, and a character deftly turns the matter aside by winding up with something like, 'Why, what a singular quandary,' and that's that.