March 31: Writing Prompt #90-Odd Couple

Does a messy home (or office) make you anxious and cranky, or is cleaning something you just do before company comes over?

I would say that now a days, I’m somewhere in between. When I was younger, and I mean in my twenties, particularly after I had my first child, I would get anxious about the house not being clean because I didn’t have the time or energy to clean it like I was used to being able to do.  You see, I come from a home with a mother who would say, “Don’t look at my house; it’s a wreck.” But her definition of a “wreck” meant, as our friend Jewel used to say, that one of her nick knacks was a quarter of an inch off. That said, in her 70’s, my mom still keeps an extremely clean and orderly home.  So, it was bred into me to do the same, but over the years, as I’ve gotten older, had another child, went through some major life changes, started working full time, and moved back to the states where time is more scarce than on the island, I am finding that my tolerance for a messy home has increased. 

I still get to the point where it makes me anxious, but it takes a lot more mess to get to that.  I clean thoroughly more like monthly now instead of weekly.  And I don’t mean dishes and laundry are piling up for a month…I mean dusting and mopping the floors, vacumming the entire house, cleaning all the bathrooms surfaces and toilets, etc…may get done only once a month.  Hey, don’t judge me!! J

I do continue to start and end each of my days with dishes. Can’t leave a dish in the sink overnight…just can’t….bothers me too much. I pick up after myself and my family as I go about my day. I wipe down toilet seats, counters, etc…very regularly. I even pick up pieces of bark mulch or carpet fibers off the hardwoods floors as I see them daily, but the deep cleaning doesn’t happen like it used to. 

The biggest thing I do is clean up after people in my family before they are ready for me too. This is a habit from my mom. I remember leaving a glass next to the couch on the end table and going off to the bathroom when I was a teenager. When I returned, the glass was gone. Mom had picked it up. I asked her where it was and told her I wasn’t finished, but that was just her habit, and I do the same, naturally.  My husband is often asking me where things are because I have picked up and moved them, and I don’t even touch the kitchen anymore until we are done eating because I have put so many things back away before my husband has finished with them (since he does all the cooking, and I do all the dishwashing).  In fact, I think that may be one reason I am not so good at cooking…because I am too worried about cleaning up as I go, so nothing is ready all at the same time nor it is necessarily cooked right because I was too busy working on cleaning up rather than focusing on getting the pasta done correctly, etc…

Oh well, that’s okay I suppose.  I do the same thing with my office that I do at home…when it gets too piled up or dirty, my “spidey” cleaning sensors start to go off, and I begin to feel that if I don’t clean up soon, I will flip-out, but it always works out. I rarely flip out…about cleaning, that is.  What about you? 

March 30: Writing Prompt #89-Five a Day

You’ve being exiled to a private island, and your captors will only supply you with five foods. What do you pick?

Wow, so many things to choose from, but these are the first 5 that come to mind:

1. Avocado

2. Apples

3. Almond Butter

4. Chips and Salsa (is that considered a food?)

5. Salmon

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ll get sick of all of these foods after awhile, but it gives me my crunch, my protein, my fiber, my healthy fats, and in addition to this, I LOVE all of these foods. It also takes me a super long time to get tired of any of these as I have them regularly now! I eat apples, almost daily, often with almond butter. I have a HARD time resisting chips and salsa EVER, and visiting and living in the NW has shown me all the wonderful ways to enjoy salmon. Now, avocado…who doesn’t like avocado?!?! Besides my children, that is, but they just don’t know what they are missing yet.  Mmmmm….Mmmmm….what about you?

March 29: Writing Prompt #88-Trading Spaces

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a member of the opposite sex for a day? What do you think life would be like?

I can’t say that I’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be a guy, but I think it would, in many ways, be much simpler on a day-to-day basis, and I don’t mean that in an offensive way. For example, I work at a place that is 98% female.  There are exactly 3 males on our staff of over 150.  My husband often comes home and listens to my stories about work, and in response says, “Well, that would have been handled totally differently where I work.” Needless to say, he works in a facility that is probably about 98% male.  There’s very little time spent in worrying about each other’s feelings or even bringing up feelings.  They say what some of us women would consider “rude” things to each other, harass each other in fun, and generally don’t take what they say to each other all that seriously (except when they are really talking work related issues that are serious). 

At my work, I regularly see and even shed tears, listen to heart breaking stories from my colleagues, and serve as a sort of sounding board if you will for those who just need to vent, and none of those things are officially part of my job description.  I am, for the most part, the sort of person that others feel comfortable sharing with, and that’s okay with me. I like to get to know those I work with, develop relationships with them because it makes us all more human, more able to empathize with each other and more apt to take care of each other. After all, work is a huge percentage of our lives, if we work full time for 20 or more years before retirement, so we better take the time to look after each other or that 20+ years is going to seem like 40 and may be pretty miserable.  That said, I think about what it would be like to work with a group of all men, and I’m not sure I’d want to.  There would surely be less tears, venting sessions, and emotions overall, but there’d also be less getting to know each other, sharing in each other’s lives, and less connection too. And as a woman, I think we thrive on and need that connection to someone and to some purpose in our work and our lives. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying men do not want to feel connected to someone and have purpose in their lives, but I do think they go about getting this in very different ways, and that’s okay too. I don’t mind being a woman. I like it most days.  I do think sometimes that as women we don’t support each other enough. Men sometimes are better at this, but we all have things to work on, right? And one of my goals in life is to work on my relationships with people daily and be a support and encouragement to each and every one of them both individually and as a team. I’m not perfect, and I make plenty of mistakes, but hopefully they are all forgivable. J Love you ladies AND gents!

March 28: Writing Prompt #87- Happy Happy Joy Joy

We cry for lots of reasons: sadness, pain, fear . . . and happiness. When was the last time you shed tears of joy?

I’m a crier, and I probably shed a tear close to daily, usually when watching some movie, TV show, or even a commercial. YES, I am a commercial crier. Usually, those tears are tears of happiness, but sometimes they are tears of pain and sadness for what others have gone through or are going through or so often they are tears of both pain and happiness because they often go together…suffering can lead to joy in the end. 

When I was a teenager, I remember being in a Bible study class at church, and I was in tears over something sad or painful and a sweet friend of mine said something funny, trying to lighten the mood in the room, and he did. I started laughing through my tears, and he was amazed. He said, “How do you do that, cry and laugh at the same time?” He said he’d never seen anything like that before.  I know I had probably done that before, but I never thought about it in that way. 

So, the last time I shed tears of joy was TODAY while watching a movie on TV and tears of sadness were shed earlier this week when dealing with some difficult situations at work. Like I said, tears flow easily from my face, it’s a burden and a blessing. I am pretty much an open book, can’t hide how I feel, but it can also be that burden when I can’t control them in stressful situations. For example, just a couple of weeks ago, I cried in front of my son’s friends and their parents (who are really just acquaintances) out of embarrassment because I got my car stuck in their ditch at the end of the driveway. They were very gracious, thankfully, and even helped me get out of the ditch, but it was not my finest moment for sure. J  Does that mean I’ve come up with a new emotion associated with tears…the prompt doesn’t mention embarrassment, but I’ve nailed that one with salty tears too.  Oh, well, it’s just a part of who I am, and I’ve gradually adjusted to being okay with that.  How about you? 

March 27: Writing Prompt #86-Judgment Day

If you were to judge your favorite book by its cover, would you still read it?

When I think about my favorite books over the years, I don’t always remember their covers, and those covers that I do remember, well, they are are not necessarily all that interesting.  If I really had to judge the entire book by just the cover, then I probably wouldn’t have read even half of what I’ve read over the years.  Heck, if I had to judge a book by it’s first 50-100 pages, then there’s many a book I never would have finished because the cover and/or the first few pages didn’t draw me in, but I learned a long time ago to finish what I start and that the words inside the pages of a book and the lessons and stories to be learned from reading are greater than the sum of the cover or even the beginning of the story.  You have to read the entire thing to be able to make any sort of judgment about it, and even then, it must be tempered with some understanding of where the author is coming from and some consideration of what they are trying to do through their written work.    

So, the point is, as I have said before, God is the only rightful judge of anything or any of us, and we should never judge a book by just its cover. If I were judged that way, then I would have been a very lonely, sad little girl because I was so shy and quiet outside of family when I was younger, and as an adult, I would have had trouble becoming a teacher and a supervisor to others because I would never have had the opportunity to grow out of that shyness, never an opportunity to practice being comfortable in front of others in college classes, etc…because no one would have had any confidence in me, which would have kept my confidence low and turned my “cover look” into all that I’d ever be…no depth inside.  Thankfully, that was not the case. 

Today, I feel lucky. Lucky that there were many people in my life who took the time to help bring me out of my shell, took the time to get to know me, and who were interested enough to open up the book of me and find out what I was all about.  Because of these people, I learned to be the same way with others.  Maybe it was that library work that I started out in as soon as I moved away from home and to the islands…librarians never judge a book by their covers, right?!