With 45 minutes left until my noon session, I talk aloud to myself. “Ok, if we take ten minutes on each room—kitchen, living, dining—we’ll have fifteen minutes to write a progress note and get water.” I rush to the espresso knock box; it’s overfilled with espresso grounds, as is the compost bin of odds and ends of fruits and vegetables. I contemplate the walk to the outdoor disposal area—a four-minute drain to my kitchen chunk—but without emptying both into a plastic grocery bag and readying it for a future moment, I push myself out the garage door and down the steps to my next obstacle: which shoes to wear.
The new-to-me Merrell boots are my preferred vessel, yet my heebie-jeebies about small dark spaces holding frogs, insects, and other creatures my mind invents make the open-toed Birkenstocks the easy choice. If my hands weren’t full and I wasn’t in a hurry, the work boots’ comfort and protection from the spiky low-lying plants would be the obvious pick.
After banging out the grounds and overdue sludge into the area of varying degrees of decay—one I can’t help but cash a check of ten seconds of valuable time to admire, the scientific petri dish of life teeming there—I cut myself off and hurry back.
I use a left-to-right, reading-a-book motion when I organize and clean. This subtle action is a lifesaver, as it shows me right where I left off, and as my eyes scan from that point to the left, I see the progress made. Which I need. Chores—if they’re merely chores without reward or personal visual satisfaction—are a misery I would surely rather not endure. My other saving grace is the ticking time; a glance at the clock shows I’m already eight minutes in, but another glance to the other two rooms, my time project-manager steps in and I determine I will rob time from the other two as this one is needed another ten minutes at least.
A gooey, contained glob of dishwasher cleaner is one of the last steps—a satisfying lock-in-place, a “leaving the house for a week of vacation” kind of action. This action signals to my nervous system, much like a rider taking the saddle off a horse: your work is done.
Fast forward: knees crossed on the diagonal cushion at the elbow of our L-couch, I sit with Dave, who’s angled toward the Kraken vs. Blackhawks game. My work is actually done for the day. Uninterested in the 0–2 game being streamed—which keeps lagging and going blurry—I’m finishing up writing so I can plunge back into a historical fiction book club recommendation called Frozen River. Partially due to my limited phone usage and mostly due to my unbridled ecstasy at experiencing daily life from the vantage of a competent and strong female midwife in small-town Maine in the late 1780s, I’m rifling through it at whiplash-level speed. It’s awesome. And inspiring. And reading a book of this caliber, is inspiring me to find similar books so I can read like this all the time.
Kraken just tied it up. Guess I’ll tune in now. I’m so happy you stopped by today—thanks for coming. See you here tomorrow.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 