I keep telling myself I will devote a few minutes every evening to writing. Yet, after the 45-50 minute drive home amongst people who I’m fairly sure have malevolent intent and the bittersweet thirty minutes of time with my toddler and dinner and the cleanup after dinner I wonder how all these people manage to do it all — have a career and a family and not have piles of laundry and scary sinks and rooms that we just don’t go in because we’re not ready to face THAT, not yet, it’s too much.

Writing seems pretty self-indulgent when it’s 8pm and I’m realizing that I haven’t scrubbed toilets in about a month and I’m half-awake (don’t rub your eyes! yuck! dammit now you have to wash your face when you’re done too) working on chipping away at the layers of neglect.

I’ve been told that since I spend so much time away from home during the week, I should just do all my cleaning on the weekend. I can’t stand that thought. I relish sitting on the floor with Littlefoot on Saturday mornings after the grocery shopping is done and letting him run circles around me (do all toddlers do this?) as he giggles his head off.

The past few days I haven’t turned the TV on at all. Monday I don’t get home till 9pm because I have a Bible study in the evening, Tuesday I took my brother grocery shopping and scrubbed toilets to fill the time and I still got in bed before 10. Love kept asking me “is it bedtime?” which annoyed me because I struggle with wanting to just give up and go to bed. It’s like asking me if I want a plate or a bowl for dinner when I’m trying to have salad with my meal every night and the only way I will do that is if I have the salad on the plate with the meal. I need a plate, but thanks for the temptation to skip the salad, dear.

Anybody else have that problem? Certain things don’t bother me; you can offer me sweets all day when I’m trying to avoid them and I’ll be happy to turn them down. But these things I struggle with: eating that salad, staying awake past 9pm, I have a hard time with temptations. I don’t think I actively blame the other person but I feel this tension in gritted teeth and hunched shoulders as I either ignore the request or say “No” in a way that I hope isn’t as mean as it feels.

Anyway, there’s a bit of my life to chew on. Time to get back to this ridiculous 9-5.