OOK

(This one’s for you, Mom 🙂 )

Today, I took the day off from work to clean my house… Yes, it’s THAT bad… Exactly what are you trying to say?

It’s true that my car looks like I live in it, and my house looks like no one could live in it. What the heck?! The sad thing is we aren’t even training for our next Ironman yet. This is definitely NOT ACCEPTABLE. I must rectify this situation!!! My mom would not approve of the clothes on the floor. No way. But, hey, at least the bed is made.

Yes, it’s the craziest thing, but even with the look of a recent tornado throughout the rest of my house, I can’t stand to *not* have the bed made. My husband, Craig, has accepted this obsession of mine and dutifully stands by the bed, ready to help me make it every morning — just as soon as we get up. It’s so sweet. But it’s pretty ridiculous when you look at the rest of our house. Why should the bed be different?

It all reminds me of what goes through my mind on most Mondays…  Here is a typical conversation with a co-worker on any given Monday:

Them: “Hi there. How was your weekend? Did you ride 100 miles or something?”

Me: “Well, actually, we rode 56 miles and then we ran 6 miles on Saturday. On Sunday, we just swam 3000 yards. It’s still early in our training plan…”

Them: “Wow, I can’t even imagine doing half of that!”

Me: “How was your weekend? What did you do?”

Them: “Well, the kids had three soccer matches and a birthday party on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, we re-landscaped our back yard,  and I changed the oil in my car.”

What they don’t know is that now, I’m thinking, “Wow, I can’t even imagine doing half of that!”

I guess somewhere along the way, as we got into training for triathlons more and more, I gave myself permission to, um, let’s just say … not always get all my chores done around the house. And, then, eventually, I just didn’t have enough energy to do all that stuff! Honestly, I’ll buy flowers or shrubs to plant in the yard on Friday evening, and that’s as far as they get. They’ll sit there in their plastic pots the rest of the weekend while we’re out training, waiting for me to put them in the ground. “Maybe next weekend,” I’ll think. Poor plants! Or, maybe I’ll actually pick up all the clutter in the house, but I’ll never get as far as sweeping and dusting and really cleaning once I can finally see the floors and the counters and the furniture. It’s about to drive me insane. Cobwebs, and dust bunnies, and dog hair, oh my!!!

I’ll get up each morning during the week, sometimes earlier and earlier, thinking I’ll get some of it done before I take the dogs for a walk and go to the gym… I look around and try to get a little done here and there. But, I have this sort of all-or-nothing feeling, like I can’t dive into a cleaning project unless I know I can do it completely. It’s very frustrating. Then, on top of that, I’ve gotten up so early that when I get home from work, I’m so tired, I can’t do anything either. At one point, Craig and I made this plan to do 15 minutes of cleaning every evening, and we haven’t even been able to do that. We are ri-DIC-u-lous!

What I think is funny is that we always seem to get the laundry done. I wonder if this is true for a lot of triathletes. If there are two chores that never take a backseat when you’re training, it’s laundry and grocery shopping. You’ve got to wash those stinky, sweaty workout clothes, and you’ve GOT to eat!  Okay, so maybe the laundry does not always get completely put away. But it’s clean. It’s piled up in the laundry baskets… or on the couch… or on the bed. But the laundry is CLEAN, and the bed is MADE, dammit!

And, I don’t even need to go to work on a Monday to feel the shame of my triathlon lifestyle … I’ll go to the gym, where other people are spending precious chore-doing time exercising instead of polishing the bannister… And I’ll ask them what they’ve been up to. They actually have the gall to have done something like replace their hardwood floors, or they’ve re-painted their guest room, or they’ve cleaned out their garage… IN ADDITION TO training. How dare they!

And, then sometimes, I’ll just walk outside my house and have a conversation with my neighbor about all the amazing stuff she has done inside her house… like dusting all her china or cleaning out her fridge. Mind you, the reason why I have to walk outside my house to have this conversation is because I couldn’t possibly let her come into my house. Not in the state that it’s in!

Sometimes, I’ll think to myself, “Well, I got the laundry done. Does that count?” I guess I better go clean now…

Oh yes, and to continue with the theme of my last blog post, here is some of the music to which I will be cleaning my house. No special theme this time. Just random music… Enjoy…

• Here Out of Reach – Swivel Chairs
• Bad – U2
• Nightswimming – REM
• Please Speak Well of Me – The Weepies
• Light Will Keep Your Heart Beating in the Future – Mike Doughty
• Counting on Karma – Will Dailey & the Rivals
• Rainbow – Robert Plant
• This is a Game – Nick Waterhouse
• Southern Skies – Yuck
• Dark Sunglasses – Chrissie Hynde
• Only One – John Butler Trio
• Another is Waiting – The Avett Brothers