Girlie Piles

I'm stomping around the house, feeling pissy.

I have a lot of tasks that I can't seem to get to; posts I want to write, bills to pay. It's over 100 degrees out. There are a million things I'd rather do right now than the one that has the highest priority: cleaning the house.

I may have mentioned before that I hate housework and I resent being the only one in the family that is stuck doing it.

"I help around the house," my husband will protest when he reads this. That's true. He does. And he's way neater than Megan or me, who he accuses of leaving "girlie piles" of stuff all over the house. I won't argue that point.

Especially when we are having family over for the weekend and I have to spend 90 minutes removing the "girlie piles" before I can start dusting or vacuuming or mopping. (Not to mention the big MAN PILES my husband makes by moving all the girlie piles off the dining room table and onto the credenza, so if they were previously sorted into types of stuff they are now a jumble of stuff that must be resorted before they can be put away.)

And don't get me started on the bathrooms. Actually, I think I'm writing this because I don't want to get started on the bathrooms, which is my most-hated job in the house. That, and cleaning the fridge.

I wouldn't mind it so much if I was only picking up MY "girlie piles." But my daughter NEVER does it. Her bedroom is a disaster -- much of it because when I pick up all HER stuff, I leave it there. And there it stays. And then she creates more in the living/dining area of our tiny house. It makes me want to scream. (So Instead, I vent here. And still nothing gets clean.)

And then I feel guilty. After all, I am not the best role model. I have a very high tolerance for dust, grime and messiness. She learned how to leave "girlie piles" from me. And I don't actually require her to help much, either. How can I? She spends 30 hours a week in school, 16 hours a week in gym, 6 hours a week in Hebrew school... most nights, she's only home long enough to eat dinner, relax for a half hour and go to bed. She gets up at 5:00 a.m. most mornings to do homework.

It's the same thing with my husband. Like most salaried Americans, he works way more than a standard 40-hour week. He often has to work on weekends. He's stressed. So what if I ask him to put away the Passover dishes and they are still sitting on the credenza that I need to dust before my sister and her family get here tonight? So what if he went to a business dinner the other night and spent too much money that we don't have on a basket of food we don't need and I have no place for, because it included a bottle of champagne (when he could have bought THREE bottles of the same stuff at BevMo without the addition of a basket of pasta fixings???)

And then there's me. I don't work outside the home. Presumably, keeping it clean is what I'm supposed to be doing. I think I do a pretty good job of the shopping, the laundry, the bookkeeping and bills and cooking... not to mention time I have to put in volunteering (not so much now that she's out of elementary school). But yeah - I do spend a lot of time on email and twitter and blogging. But I look at those activities as business, even if what I earn from them is a pittance. I can't help but think it's an investment in my future -- as much as the time I now spend working out at the gym is an investment in my health.

But those things do take away time that I could be using for other things. Like mopping the floors.

I have friends who insist they LIKE housework. Aside from the fact that they are crazy, I sort of get it. I like it when the house is clean. I just wish it wasn't so tedious to get it that way.

My needs are simple - I just want to earn enough money to pay for someone else to come here to clean the bathrooms and kitchen and floor.

I suppose I should be relieved that my friend Karoli was not able to meet me for a drink tonight. We'll do it again on an evening when I'm not obsessing about the bathrooms. For a long time, I've been jealous of the women of the Silicon Valley Moms Blog for the community they have built up there. So I've been making an effort to meet other SoCal bloggers. Last month, I had lunch with the Queen of Spain. And earlier this week, I got to meet Sweat Pants Mom for a drink at an undisclosed Valley location. It's my own way of keeping sane until I get to spend some serious quality time with other like minded women at BlogHer in July.

In the meantime, as it's nearly time to get the kid from school, I'm going to whisk through the house and do a really half-assed job of getting it clean. Then, I'll come back after dropping her at gym and do the other half an ass. That sounded a lot funnier in my head, but that could be because I've got Led Zeppelin blasting on my iPod.

It's only my sister coming to visit, after all. She keeps girlie piles, too.