The Dust Settles

The holidays are far behind us now. We’ve moved and everything that is going to be unpacked has been unpacked. We finally installed the child locks on the kitchen cabinets and drawers. We’ve even argued with the post office about what street we actually live on and what our mailing address really is. Yesterday we celebrated the busiest anniversary yet (our fourth), scarfing down frozen pizzas and Barq’s root beer (in stemmed glasses of course!) during the 30 minutes we were together between when Chris got off work and when he left for his first ever graduate class. In the midst of it all, we spent time on the phone hearing the details of our new niece, Jessica, who was born yesterday afternoon.

Now that we have made ourselves at home, we’ve come to the “maintenance” stage, where we need to establish a regiment for cleaning floors and bathrooms, reorganizing the pantry, and scrubbing down the stove-top. I’ve checked off all the residual Christmas to-do items from my list, introduced ourselves to the neighbors, and demonstrated my first-ever Stampin Up! workshop (a fantastic success!). 2007 has started out very busy, and I never thought I would catch up with the things on my to-do list.

Well I don’t quite know how to word this, but I think today I have nothing emergent to do. Thanks to a late night and a 10pm car ride, Leah slept until 9:00 this morning, allowing me to wake up first and eat celebratory cinnamon toast crunch by myself. I found it strange that after she was up and fed, we didn’t zoom about doing one errand or another. In fact, we didn’t even get dressed. The refrigerator was stocked, thank-you cards created and sent off, bills paid, etc. The baby was playing happily with her toys, and I found myself looking around for something important to do. My book! I needed to read my book…was that it? I guess what I am trying to say is that I was all caught up (*shudder*). There was nothing for me to do. Monday, of course, would render an entire new list of things to do. But what do I do with myself today?

I suppose if you try, you can find something that needs to be done, like dishes or laundry, or scrubbing bathroom tiles with an old toothbrush, but why would anyone want to intentionally find something to do? And, of course, you can always follow-through on good intentions such as working off that holiday weight and writing congress as a concerned citizen. I dutifully emptied the dishwasher and started a load of laundry, but that was it. My husband came home for lunch at noon, and was surprised to find the baby and me happily tickling each other, both of us in pajamas.

The error of my ways, however, was the aforementioned load of laundry. You see, when you start a load of laundry, you’ve committed yourself to transfer it to the dryer in about 45 minutes, and then to put it away once it is dry. In addition, there are always a few straggling socks that don’t make the load, so you feel obligated to start a second load, darks, requiring a third, and so forth. (Not to mention the desire for scientific efficiency, which requires that no machine be idle for more than five minutes)

So what began as a simple, no-stress, nothing-to-do day, has now become laundry day. I haven’t mentioned that putting away laundry is my least favorite thing to do. Now I’m staring at baskets upon baskets of clean clothes, all colors of the rainbow, fresh from the dryer, determined to find something better to do than put it away. (Hence, I’m writing this blog post). Chris will be coming home from work soon, so I better get dressed. In the meantime, I think I’ll start drafting that letter to congress.