Dear Diary…

On By GriffithsKLIn Personal Journey

Some people can’t think of anything to write. I don’t have that problem. I can always, ALWAYS throw some words down on a page. Probably a result of hours spent freewriting with my students, if you put on a timer and tell me to write, I’ll fill pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness. Some people start describing things. Some start telling stories. I just sling my thoughts at the page like Jackson Pollack on Starbucks.

Trouble is, I’d like to give you something other than mind puke, but I’m busy with my WIP and some flash and my 5000 Words classes. Oh, and the fridge broke, which meant I had to clean twelve years of spilled pickle juice, gelatinized meat blood, broccoli bitties, milk flakes, and unnameable other foodstuffs off the walls and shelves. My husband had to tell me to do it, that’s how possible it was that I wouldn’t take the opportunity to clean the fridge, even though it was empty, off, and every shelf was tossed onto the floor. See, my husband knows I’d rather write than do just about anything else. And we pay, especially when company comes over and I scurry around trying to make up for being a writer. It doesn’t work. I see all the dust I normally don’t see, and…despair, my friends. Despair.

In my defense, one can’t be great at everything. I’ve chosen housewifery to suck at. I mean, whoever stood over a coffin and complimented the corpse on her dust-free hutches and shiny stove top?

I used to be a neat freak like my mom, who still keeps in an inhumanly clean home. You could lick her floor and be entirely safe from germs. You could ladle a cup of cold water straight from her toilet bowl and think it Perrier. I wish there was a way to measure the number of dust motes in a given home. My mother would have exactly none. There has never been one single crumb in her silverware drawer. I have enough to recreate a loaf of bread. Just add water.

So the fridge broke and my husband will fix it. HE WILL. He fixes everything against all odds. Our furnace was declared legally dead over ten years ago by a grimy, GED-wielding twenty-something from Furnaces-R-Us. He charged me the $75 cleaning fee (though he didn’t clean it) and assured me we could apply the fee to our new furnace which would cost a jillion dollars. Bob came home and fired up that sucker in three minutes. And, like the dad from A Christmas Story, he’s been keeping it alive ever since. Ish. Did I mention we have a wood burner as well?

My point is, Bob keeps our appliances alive-ish far longer than I would have thought possible, so when he says he’s going to fix our 17-year-old fridge with a $14 part he got from Amazon (same one at Sears, $60), I believe him. Our food is on the back porch, thank you Cleveland weather. And I spent two hours cleaning the fridge (since he asked). Some people would feel a sense of satisfaction at a pristinely white fridge. Not me. I got bleach on my black pants and the nagging thought that it’s going to get dirty again, so why bother? That’s a really dangerous way to think. I’m pretty sure hoarders and people who get social services called on them think that way.

How did I go from a Mama’s-girl-neat-freak to the life’s-too-short-to-clean-your-house woman I am today?

That’s too long of a story to tell, and I’ve probably mentioned it somewhere in my blog. It has to do with four kids and homeschooling and having the joy sucked out of my life with the force of a Dyson and a decision to be relational first, let the crumbs fall as they may. And lay there, as they may. They’ll be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Or until I have company over, which thankfully is every week. My 5000 Words class is a good excuse to shine up.

 

 

 

26 thoughts on “Dear Diary…”

  3. Andrea's avatar Andrea

    Thanks for this helpful article! It is necessary to keep our house neat and clean for a healthy family. Keeping the whole house clean is a difficult task you can even make it easy through a website called Onata, they are offering Home cleaning services and much more.Visit their page for more information https://onata.com/oip

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  8. peglovesjesus's avatar peglovesjesus

    Ha! Same. Love your writing, Kelly! I, too, used to be meticulous, even clean my fridge, before writing consumed me. My husband also fixes EVERYTHING. Which means we can’t just put the broken appliance on the curb and get a shiny-CLEAN, new one. So unfair!

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  11. This is hilarious. So many good lines. I think the toilet water is my favorite. And to think–I scrub my refrigerator when you come over because I think yours is always so pristine. I don’t want you to think me a slob. 🙂

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  14. I love your style of writing—humorous, entertaining, inspirational—the way I aspire to write one day. I’ve been enjoying reading several of your posts, some old, some new—they encourage me to relax and write and not worry about things (people’s opinions) so much. Thanks for that!

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