If You Cut Me, Do I Not Bleed? or Day One

Wow.

So that's a Monday, is it?

Excuse me while I die quietly in the corner.

Today was the start of the great Fifties in the Future project. Guess what, kittens? I'm <i>exhausted</i>. If I were German, I would say that I'm kaputt. But I'm not, so I'm just going to say that I have no concerns about my ability to sleep soundly tonight. Or for the rest of the year.

 Surely you all remember my brilliant list of eight million things to do every day - the potential Holy Grail of housekeeping schedules. And even if it isn't the Holy Grail, I'm pretty sure I heard someone banging a couple of coconuts together behind me as I went about the house. How did I stack up according to the list? Allow me to itemize:

3. Freshen up. Fallen at the third fence, eh what? Honestly, what constitutes "freshening up"? Today it meant slapping some night cream on my face, since that seemed sort of vaguely self-care-ish, and some mascara on my eyelashes, and putting a bow in my hair with my Nathan Cullen campaign scarf, which is being modeled below by some guy.

As you can see, it is EXACTLY the sort of scarf that makes an authentic 50s hair bow.

6. Complete a 10 minute exercise regime. I'm just going to say now that exercising is far easier to do when you're not nursing a baby. My dream of 10 minutes of gentle yoga very quickly became 10 minutes of half-assed calisthenics and barre exercises as the baby got his drink on.

7. Shower, do hair and make-up, get dressed. I skipped showering, as I had showered the night before. And the mascara I was wearing constituted almost all the makeup I own. So I scoured off the sweat with baby wipes and happily threw a clean dress on. Trust me, the clean dress was necessary. Somewhere between Make and serve breakfast and Clean up breakfast, the baby decided to try his hand at fecal finger painting. Awful pun not intended, but tragically hilarious.

11. Tidy the bedroom, including light dusting. and 12. Hang up any clothes that may be about or ensure dirty clothes are in the hamper. Despite our room desperately needing both of those things to happen, I skipped them. Baby was napping in the bed. Sleeping baby trumps all. ALL.

24. Handle the weekly chore for the day. You guys. YOU GUYS. Do you remember what Monday's chore is? Hint: It's deep-cleaning the kitchen, dining room and living room. More on that below.

28. Prepare a special dish for dinner. I'm just going to say that it would have gone more smoothly if my kids hadn't broken my bottle of foundation in the kitchen, and then brought it, drippingly, to me in the living room. All over my freshly-scrubbed floors. So I was a little late getting food for dinner on.

29. Freshen up before the husband returns home from work. Consider changing into something more festive if the day dress is plain. I brushed my hair. Does that count?

31. Greet husband "gayly". After swanning up to him, throwing my arms open and declaring "Welcome home, my conquering hero!", he has requested that I greet him Jody-from-early-seasons-of-Soap-gayly, not in the manner I did today. Presumably he wants me to attempt suicide when he returns home tomorrow, or knock up one of my friends.

38. Enjoy an evening of relaxation. I started the day's laundry at 10pm. I didn't have a chance before then. I choose to define "evening" in a fairly elastic manner.

Today's chore

MONDAY
Do a deep cleaning of the kitchen, living room, and dining room.  In the kitchen the appliances were thoroughly cleaned every week.  That's the stove, refrigerator, and any small appliances like the toaster.  Windows were washed in all the rooms and the floors were scrubbed spotless.  She would also do a thorough dusting in each room and replace any fresh flowers in the home.

 Wow. What a suckpile. Seriously. I hurt all over. And I cut my knee on some awful bit of misery when I was scrubbing the kitchen floor. So not only did I have to scrub up dirt, I had to clean up my own blood, too. Glamorous!

The living room was the last room I cleaned, and unfortunately for me, I couldn't come up with a meaningful definition of "deep cleaning" that didn't involve vacuuming the furniture. On the plus side, I let the kids do the vacuuming, on the vague principle that it would teach them good housekeeping skills - although it was really a cheap ploy to avoid doing it myself. I had reached the level of exhaustion where I would often swipe something on the wall listlessly with my rag, shrug, and declare that it was "good enough".

Some reflections on the day

• For the first time in my life, I am in danger of developing dishpan hands. I will need to invest in some rubber gloves, much as I loathe the feel of them.
• If you have someone who does your cleaning, you are not paying them enough. I don't care how much you're paying, there's no earthly way it's enough.
• If you clean houses for a living, you are not charging enough. Seriously. I might be the idiot who is doing this for free, but you couldn't pay me enough to scrub someone else's floors.
• I don't think I had ever cleaned the kitchen window. We moved here in October. Ew.
• The baby does not care for me doing all this cleaning, and not sitting around letting him use my breasts as chew toys.

So, onward and upward! Tomorrow is Day 2, and I hear the bathrooms calling my name.