In past entries I`ve focused on body image when talking about not believing your own bullshit. I can now relate it to how clean, or not so clean, my house is.
A couple weekends ago my house was a disaster. The kind of disaster that arises from getting ready to go back to work after being off for a year. You know, where you focus on things like your back-to-work wardrobe and getting scheduling and daycare stuff sorted out, and finishing the oh-my-goodness-why-did-I-procrastinate list of things to get done before going back to work, which soon becomes the holy-fuck-I`ve-procrastinated-what-the-fuck-was-I-doing list of things to get done before going back to work.
Now, my house was only a two-week disaster, IE it was immaculate for Thanksgiving and this disaster was only two weeks after that. It was bad enough, apparently, to elicit nasty comments from my mother. You know, the kind where when my 3-year old says I`m sick today`` (he was a little tired, I think), your mom says ``That`s because the house was so dirty, so it`s a good thing we`re cleaning it up.`` That was just one comment of many.
The house was not that bad.
The next weekend, after I`ve gone back to work, I felt myself stressing out about the state of the house. It took a comment from my husband to make me realize that I was believing some serious bullshit. I was trying to hold myself up to a standard that would make any woman crack, even Martha Stewart. Well, Martha Stewart without staff.
My house really is respectably clean and tidy, just not so much by Fridays when everyone`s working full-time, and when some of us also work a second job, but that`s just a couple hours on the weekend to remedy.
My bullshit I had to stop believing? That I could be Superwoman and get It All done. And be Sane at the same time. As soon as I stopped beating myself up for not being able to hold up to an impossible standard, I was Happier.
Which brings me to this weekend. It`s my son`s First Birthday Party!
We had a few people come over, which of course means Clean-Up-Time. I'd spent all day Saturday baking, so enlisted hubby's help to tidy on Sunday. My mom, for whatever reason, was walking around with a big frowny face. When she left to run a quick errand, my husband asked, "What the fuck's wrong with your mom?"
I could only imagine that it was because we weren't 100% ready for the party two hours before the party. Well, she would have been 99% ready the day before.
Regardless, I remember thinking that I wished she could just be happy in the moment. It's her grandson's First Birthday!
I had a 30-minute period of time myself where I was stressing out, and it was making me the opposite of happy, so I had a little pep-talk with myself:
The house doesn't have to be perfect, who else would really know that the cake wasn't 100% frosted how I wanted it to be, and people are here to have fun, not watch me cry! And since they all have kids, none of us judges the other--this I know for sure.
I was super-happy after this!
Sometimes, the day is too important to focus on the bullshit that drags you down.
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