FOLLOW THE LEADER

I have no follow-through.  There.  I said it.  Reader, it feels so good to let it all hang out.  Every once in a while it is good to do a little self-analysis, you should try it some time.  It explains so much!

I have already admitted to Al Gore and his Internet that I am a horrible laundress.   There are some people who are so happy to do laundry, it makes them all smiley and cheerful (come on, you know who you are!) to be surrounded by the fluffy, nice smelling, clean clothes.  I hate that.  I don't mind throwing the clothes into the washer, and it does make me a little cheerful.  But not because of the clean smelling laundry baloney.  It is because I have reduced the pile of dirty clothes that lives in another part of the house.  For a blissful half hour, they are hidden from view.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I consider it a terrible drag when it is time to put them in the dryer.  It shouldn't be a drag, and you are wondering why I would complain, but it is because of what is in the dryer.  Lurking in the dryer are the clothes from the previous laundry event.  I do not look forward to taking them out and folding them and putting them away.  It is the putting them away part that really kills me.  I wouldn't mind if I could simply fold them and leave them on the couch.  There comes a time when A Person wants to have company, or when the neighbors creep over to your back yard and peer through the sliding glass door, and A Person doesn't want one's unmentionables wadded there in a mountain on the chair for the world to see.  It is one thing, Nit Picking Reader, to blog about one's orange underpants ballooning out over the top of the low-riding, sparkly butt jeans, but it is another thing all together to have them on public display in one's living room.  The putting away the clothes part is always tough, stuffing them in drawers, scootching hangers over in the closet to make room for just one more garment, and eventually plopping the whole pile in a spare laundry basket in the bedroom.  Then the whole cycle begins again.

I have confessed to hating to floss and I know I will get flak for it at the dentist next week, so enough about that.

The story of the dishwasher is pretty much the same.  I like loading it because it hides those dishes that have been milling around in the sink.  Clearing it is where I start to drag my feet.  It's the follow-through again!  Even though I can clear it during a prime-time TV commercial break (yes, I've timed it), it is still challenging putting those bowls away, stuffing one more wine glass in the cupboard, and jamming that cake pan under the counter.  Slam the door quickly before anything jumps out.

Follow-through, and my lack of it, explains all sorts of things.  I love to buy the plants for that succulent garden, but I don't want to prepare the area and plant them, so there they sit, on the bench.  Four years after acquiring the Weed-and-Feed, I finally got around to spreading some, but the bad news is that it has encouraged the grass to grow.  Now I have to mow the lawn.  I have bought bookshelves at IKEA with full intentions of speeding home and whipping them together with my handy tools.  Those bookshelves sat in the garage in their boxes for a good six months before I drummed up the drive to put them together.  I am wild to go cut up a branch or a limb with the chain saw, but am not so motivated to do something with the pieces that I have generated.  I bought a whole flat of strawberries with honest intentions of making a full load of strawberry jam, but you know what happened, FaceBook Stalker that you are.  I made seven jars and celebrated my burst of industriousness by posting pictures and proclaiming myself to the Best Jam Maker On Earth.

I planted some zucchini plants.  Well there are a lot of follow throughs here.  I had to water them, which I barely managed.  I went on vacation and some very nice Garden Fairies did it for me.  I don't mind pulling the odd weed here or there, after all, it is just a raised bed.  You can already see it, Smart Reader!  I am going to be buried in zucchini plants.  I will have all sorts of dreams of making zucchini bread, and freezing it for baking soirees in the winter time.  Have I ever told you that I have zucchini from 2008 in my freezer?

I may as well confess that I am not very good at any household chores.  You are shocked, I can tell.  Dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, window washing.... in the end they all require some form of follow through.  There are cords to wind up, bags to change, brooms to put away, newspaper to collect.... It's a wonder that I have a real job.

Even my hobbies are starting to drag me down.  Scrapbooking has all those, well, scraps.  Even reading, which hardly requires a person to even move, results in major acquisition of books if one isn't a member of the Timberland Regional Library system.  "Acquistion of books" really means that now I have to find a place for all of them.  Collecting tea cups speaks for itself.  Collecting.  Putting them somewhere.  Blogging is such a tidy hobby.  I don't have to clean up the papers or pencil shavings when I'm done.  Post and POOF!  It's very easy.  With that said.... POOF!

No comments:

Post a Comment