The living room floor needs to be vacuumed. No, really. It does. It isn’t just a Rebecca-thing, a Rebecca-always-has-to-have-her-floor-clean thing. It Needs to be vacuumed: we had nachos yesterday afternoon. It is football season, after all.
The laundry situation is Out Of Hand. No, really. It is. We went camping this weekend, you know. And if you’ve ever been camping, then you know how camping generates a laundry need unlike anything else. But the piles are so deep and so exhaustive that I don’t really want to begin. I need to begin. My family needs for me to begin. I Don’t Want To.
The bathrooms need to be cleaned. They haven’t been cleaned in I Don’t Know How Long. I don’t know. I really don’t.
I have a test to create. A big test. A Real Doozy. This will be the first test my students take for my class this semester, and I think it’s going to be a real Eye-Opener. It will be, if I can just get it out of my head and down on the page.
I’m tired. Dog-tired. Worn-out-it-might-feel-better-to-just-cry-for-awhile tired. I went camping this weekend, remember? And I’m just burning my candle at both ends of late, and we all know what that leads to: darkness. Where one can sleep. Which sounds good….
But instead of staying home this evening and tending to All Of The Above, I went outside with my children after dinner. We played on the playset and swung on the swings, and with the toes of my right foot I was able to reach the last maple leaf on the branch of the tree that hangs over our backyard.
And after one of them was in bed and the other two were on their way, I joined Vlaardinger Boeks for our bookclub. And no, I had not read the book. And no, I did not even get the book from the library.
But yes, it felt good to be with these friends, these familiar souls, these ones who knew me when I was teaching ten years ago and have listened through all the transitions of the last ten years of my life.
I shouldn’t have gone; I have Far Too Much to do.
But oh, it’s good, isn’t it? to be with the ones who love us, to be with the ones we love, and to be reminded again again again of Who We Are, and Why. An evening well spent.
And now laundry. And then the test.
Thank you, Vlaardinger Boeks.
