I had a super busy week. I mean I was booked up by the minute. On Monday I had a meeting after work and my husband tried to kill himself by accident, I was out of town Tuesday, I cleaned up my house a little Wednesday, Thursday evening was family math night, and I was hosting my cousin for dinner Friday evening.
On Friday morning, I surveyed the house it wasn't a good scene. It wasn't filthy it just was messy. I cleaned my car out earlier in the week and by cleaned my car out, I mean I took all the crap from the backseat of the car and put it in a pile in the corner of the living room. There was 1,000s if homework papers everywhere. It was not up to my standards. I needed to get home by 4:45 to clean and put dinner together. I can so do this, I thought.
So I'm at work and I pull my calendar and I realize my cousin's bridal shower is this weekend. I usually buy something scandalous and inappropriate for people when they are getting married (because I am scandalous and inappropriate) but I will be with my kids all weekend and won't have a chance to go to the store so I need to go after work. The pressure is on. I was trying to leave work on time because I needed every minute I had. Of course, I got caught up in a phone call and left 10 minutes late.
I went to this adult store on the way to the kids after school program. It's on a really busy street and I was trying to be incognito. You can't go into one of those stores without feeling like some kind of creepy pervert. I walked in and this 18 year old stopped me at the door and asked for my ID. Really? I have been old enough to go in this store since you were in the first grade kid. I am OLD - stop wasting my minute. I have limited time. This place was like a huge. I was very overwhelmed and it took me longer than I wanted to make a selection. Now I am really pressed for time.
I pick up the kids. Try to get home. Traffic sucks. I walk into my messy house at 5:10. I have 20 minutes to clean the house and make dinner. So I start prepping dinner and started cleaning like a mad woman. I only had 10 minutes until her ETA and I was not making great progress. In my desperation, I took a large trashbag and put everything in it. Homework papers, magazines, car crap, forks, shoes - everything. I went room to room. I then took this bag of crap and shoved it in an upstairs bedroom. I swept quickly and arranged the lighting so the house was kind of dim because I didn't have time to dust. I lit a candle and let out a sigh of relief. She knocked on the door just a few minutes later and I welcomed her in. Welcome to my illusion of a clean house, I thought. We are really slobs but want to put up this facade that our home is always clean. I do want to keep up that illusion. I want people to think I can do it all. For some reason I feel like my worth as a person -a wife, a mother - is reflected in how clean my house is. My house is only clean 10% of the time. That is my secret. My skeleton in the closet - or should I say, my trash bag full of crap in my closet. Speaking of which, I am going to go through that bag now and put everything back in it's place. I am sure it will find it's way to the living room floor again someday soon. I can't wait for that!
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