I don't wanna

Today has been declared "family clean-up day." We are all going to descend on the basement and clean it out. Then, once that is done, it's on to the bedrooms. It needs to happen. It's gonna happen.

But I don't wanna.

There is nothing on the calendar from 11:30am on. Do you know how rare that is? (Well, if you're a parent of school age kids, you probably do.) There are no games, no plays, no birthday parties or sleepovers. So of course it's the perfect day for a much needed deep clean.

But I don't wanna.

Because it's also the perfect day for reading the book on my Nook that I am thoroughly enjoying, even though I can't remember the name of it. It's the perfect day for watching movies, tooling around on Facebook, writing a few blog posts.

In the basement there are Legos and video games out of control and Christmas stuff that is waiting, boxed up, to be put in the storage room. In the bedrooms, there are mountains of laundry -- probably not all of which is dirty. (You know how I feel about that.)  All those things need to be dealt with, I know.

But I don't wanna.

What I want to do is take a nap and thumb through catalogs and in general laze about the day.  I don't wanna be the grown up, cracking the whip and barking orders. I don't wanna be the foot soldier, carrying out those orders and hoisting bags of trash and Goodwill items. But I will. I will pull on my big girl panties and fix my eyes on the prize of a clean basement and bedrooms that do not threaten to do bodily harm via ill-placed piles of clothes. I will cheer on the troops and lead by example.

But I don't wanna.

Sayonara sofa

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day in the Christian season of Lent. Lent is a period of 40 days of fasting and sacrifice. As a lifelong Catholic, I've given up a variety of things during Lent. There's the mandated giving up of meat on Fridays. When I was a kid, giving up candy or sweets was a popular choice. Of course every kid tries the "I'm giving up homework (or chores)" thing at least once -- quickly corrected by a parent, teacher or priest. 

As an adult, I've given up cussing, sweets (still a tough one for me), Diet Coke. Last year I gave up internet Scrabble. That was harder than it should have been -- I told you, I'm a nerd. If you want a decent explanation of the theology behind Lenten sacrifices, visit Insomnimom's recent post.

Each year, in our house, we choose a family sacrifice and we each choose an individual sacrifice. Our family sacrifice this year is pop. We've been going through it like water and this is a good opportunity to try to break that expensive and not-so-healthy habit. I think we're also going to try the 40 bags in 40 days challenge.

My personal sacrifice this Lent will help make the 40 bag challenge happen. This year for Lent, I am giving up the couch. Specifically, the couch in what we call the FR2 (Family Room #2, which is actually the living room, but has the TV in it). I LOVE this couch. But the problem is that everytime I lay down on the couch -- does anyone actually sit on a couch? -- I enter some kind of time warp and before I know it 3 or 4 or 10 hours have gone by. 

This couch is soft. It's cozy. It seems to conform to the shape of my body. I blog from this couch. I catch up on my DVRd shows from this couch. I use this couch to play "Mommy's legs are broken." I sleep on this couch -- a lot. I love the way the little swirlies leave imprints in my skin when I wake from a nap or a night's sleep on the couch.

So this year for Lent, I'm giving it up. I'll still watch my favorite shows from one of the chairs in the FR2. But when the show is over, I'll get up and do something else -- like laundry or dishes or reading a book. If I watch those shows from the couch, I may as well kiss the rest of the night goodbye. 

So, sayonara sofa. Catch ya later, couch. I'll miss you. See you in six weeks.

Coming full circle

When I was a kid, I used to babysit for a family who lived down the street. This family's house was always a mess. Dirty dishes, laundry piled up. Once I found cut up hot dog on the floor by the fireplace.

I remember being disgusted and thinking "I can't believe they live like this! How gross!"

This morning, as I was looking for a single black sandal, I looked behind the couch in the family room. No cut up hot dogs, but a bunch of ants were feasting on a breakfast of graham crackers, empty juice boxes and an old Gogurt wrapper.

Looking around at the dishes waiting to be done in the kitchen, the mountains of laundry in varying stages of cleanliness and the dirty ring in the bathroom sink, I thought to myself, "Oh my gosh! We are THAT family!" And I tried to figure out how that happened.

Working full-time doesn't leave me with lots of time to clean. Though, my house was never spotless when I was a stay-at-home mom either.

It pretty much comes down to laziness. I get home from work and I'm tired and just want to park it on the couch. I don't want to do laundry, dishes, clean the bathroom. That laziness then transfers to the kids who don't see Mom (I won't speak for Dad, but...) doing much of anything besides sitting behind the laptop and in front of the TV.

We got a postcard in the mail last week from a realtor who has a buyer looking for a 4-bedroom house with a basement on a cul de sac in our neighborhood. I'm so intrigued by the opportunity, but the condition of my house leaves me paralyzed. I think if we were ever to try to sell this house, we would need to move out and sell it empty.

My inability to permanently declutter my house falls right in line with my inability to make other lasting changes, like weight loss. How do you summon the drive to make changes in your life? I'm beginning to think my transformation will have to come about as an unplugged effort -- a week or so of no TV, video games or computer.

That thought scares the hot dogs out of me.

Self-indictment

Annie is at a friend's house. I've asked the boys to pick up the family room -- fold and put away the blankets, put the cushions back on the couch, take all the shoes to their owners bedrooms.

Charlie is reluctantly doing the lion's share of the work, while Robbie is being, well....lazy. Which made Charlie offer up the following self-indictment:

"I feel like I'm Annie and Robbie is me. The "Annie" is doing all the work and the "Charlie" is just sitting around doing nothing!"

De-slothing

Well, it had to happen. The end of Christmas break. This was the first break I can recall where I exhibited total sloth-like tendencies.

The days before Christmas I was busy baking and wrapping. But after that, I -- the whole family, really -- existed in survival mode. Oh, I had a crazy-long list of things I wanted to accomplish over the break, including:

• Re-organizing the pantry
• Cleaning out the Tupperware cabinet
• Re-arranging the baking cabinet
• Cleaning out our storage room
• Getting a jump start on some projects for work

But in reality, here's what I did:

• Slept in almost every day (today I didn't get up until almost 11am -- and Mom, we went to the 12:30pm Mass)
• Watched a lot of Food Network and TLC
• Stayed in my pajamas until mid-afternoon (or later) on most days
  
• Did minimal amounts of cooking, dishes and laundry -- enough to make sure we had clean underwear
  
• Mailed my Christmas cards on January 4

We were supposed to bring a vegetable dish to a New Year's Eve party, so I bought something from the grocery store's deli counter, dumped it in a bowl and collected the praise for how good it was. Another friend had the girls over for an afternoon of visiting and chatting. I was supposed to bring a snack to share -- a bottle of wine counts as a snack, right? I was even a little slow about blogging.

Oh, yes, I have definitely been a sloth. And you know what? It felt GREAT! Now, I may play "Mommy's legs are broken" from time to time. But that's only for an hour or so at a time.

I'm talking I didn't do much of anything for days on end. And neither did the kids -- and they didn't complain. I think we were just all so burned out on running from one practice to game to appointment, that we all just needed a little time to cocoon.

But alas, tomorrow, it all ends. So today, we got out the backpacks and the folders. We trucked on over to the library to check out books on polar bears and sea lions for this month's book reports (I refuse to feel guilty for not doing this over break!). We laid out the clothes, except for the socks -- I really should blog about how much I hate socks. We checked the lunch menu and looked over the volleyball and basketball practice schedules for the week ahead.

I am definitely de-slothing. And by tomorrow morning at 6am when it's time to wake the kids, (or by 5am if I am to stick to my "I'm gonna get up and exercise" mantra), I will be back to my usual taszmanian devil self.