...and again with the housework...

Little Moo is sick. She's been sick since Monday and such a stoic that we went out for a while yesterday before I even realized that she was feverish again. I vowed to keep her in one more day, although she's much perkier and her fever has barely returned. So we cleaned according to the teachings of Carol Channing in "Free To Be You And Me:"

Your mommy hates housework,
Your daddy hates housework,
I hate housework too.
And when you grow up, so will you.
Because even if the soap or cleanser or cleaner or powder or paste or wax or bleach
That you use is the very best one,
Housework is just no fun.

Children, when you have a house of your own,
Make sure, when there's house work to do,
That you don't have to do it alone.
Little boys, little girls, when you're big husbands and wives,
If you want all the days of your lives
To seem sunny as summer weather,
Make sure, when there's housework to do,
That you do it together!

She's been asking me recently if I don't like to do housework ("hate" is a word that we avoid in our house and she's kindly leaving it out of her question here) and my answer to her is "sometimes." The truth is that I am the kind of person who is desperately organized, but not terribly neat. I don't mind cleaning, but I always feel as if there are so many things to do that are more important than a spotless or organized house. There's the writing or research I do for work, the various projects around the house, whether it's applying for kindergartens or cooking. Then there's the endless stream of video editing, marketing, planning, soundtrack-making, and communication that goes into running even the smallest of performance projects.

When I was a kid my mother told me that being with me was more important to her than a perfect house, which was what she'd grown up with. Her mother was always deep into some housework project that kept her from relating to my mother and her sister. That attitude rubbed off on me, too.

Besides, like I've mentioned before...or maybe I haven't, I'm an idea person, one who runs off with tangents only to discover that the thing that distracted me is the point of a whole new string of things that I just have to follow for a while. So here I am, typing, while the little piles of swept-up dirt on the floor of the dining room just sit there.

Meanwhile,  I'm cleaning the floors and neatening up in the dining room which is more of a task than it sounds. This is especially true because our child, who doesn't have a room of her own, spreads her toys out all over the place. Each room has a play area in it, but there's no real storage for her stuff other than some wicker baskets and pirated areas of the family bookshelves. Someday she'll have her own space. Someday.

Back to the little piles and the never ending stream of other messes.