Weekend Chores
I didn't write a blog post yesterday. I'm not entirely sure why. I always write a blog post – every day. Even writing those words sounds like a lie now. Life just seems to keep getting in my way at the moment – no matter how hard I work, or what I try to do, I either end up where I started, or slightly worse off than I had been before. Meanwhile everybody else seems to be slowly making progress. I'm sure it's not true, but it often feels like it.
I caught myself looking at Facebook the other day. I can't really kill my account because of childrens and community groups – and I suppose that's how they get you. At least the various algorithms that govern the timeline absolve me from seeing the political, bigoted, racist or ignorant posts from people I used to know or go to school with. It's not all of them – far from it – but it's more than I'm comfortable dealing with.
Today has been filled mostly with chores – at least until lunchtime. We haven't had a chance to go grocery shopping this week yet, so I walked the mile-or-so into town to buy soup and some bread for everybody. We've been reduced recently to buying only for the next meal – partly because of money, and partly because of time.
Somebody remarked a couple of weeks ago that they can't understand how I'm always washing clothes. Let's do the math.
We have two daughters still in secondary education. They have several sets of school uniform, two of which will get worn during the week. Our youngest also has swimming kit, and a full PE kit. Our middle girl has hockey kit, rugby kit, and PE kit. I put on clean clothes every day, because I cycle to work – without doing that, I would be a smelly mess within 24 hours. My other half probably gets through three sets of clothes during an average week. Now Miss 18 is working, she gets through seven or eight pieces of clothing in a week. Then you have towels for showers – the kids all shower or bath perhaps three times a week – the same for my other half. I shower every morning, and again when I get in if we're going out anywhere. Can you imagine how many towels we get through? And bedding? Five beds remember.
We live in fear of the washing machine erupting into flames. We have piles of clean folded washing EVERYWHERE, and we tell ourselves that this is normal. We have a rotary washing line in the garden that is always festooned with clothes – it has actually buckled under the weight of the clothes in the past, and been repaired.
If you made it this far through the blog post, you probably deserve a medal. A chocolate one, like they have next to the counter in coffee shops. I wish I was in a coffee shop right now – writing about the people sitting nearby – wondering what their lives are like. I bet their dining table isn't completely covered in folded clothes...