Turns out I just can't be trusted.
At all.
With anything.
Yesterday I nearly lost my entire work email account, including years of archived stuff that's probably essential to doing my job. I got it back again, but gave myself a bit of a scare.
This week sees me trying, and only partially succeeding, to be a functional domesticated adult. Mostly this is a moan about how being all domestical and keeping a house nice and pretty and clean and not stinky is tricky.
I wore a skirt today, not really through choice, but because all but one pair of work trousers were in the washing machine. Together, at the same time. All but the one pair that went through the wash yesterday and weren't dry yet. Because my forward-planning is crap. This skirt was worn with my one wearable (only one small out-of-sight ladder) pair of tights, because I can't be trusted with tights either. When someone invents bulletproof tights that I can't put a giant ladder in the first time they get worn I'll be at the front of the queue.
You see, I have plans, nice, shiny grown-up plans in which I will have clean laundry and all my shirts and blouses will be ironed and on individual hangers. Plans for an alternate reality in which I keep my dishes in the cupboard and cutlery in the cutlery drawer, and not on the draining rack. Where I wake up awake and not desperate for an immediate supplementary nap, and don't eat bakery macaroni cheese for lunch because I haven't managed to make time to make sandwiches.
I have plans to be the sort of functional, responsible grown up who lives in a house with fresh flowers on the mantelpiece and real fruit in the fruit bowl. Real fruit that alternate reality me will actually eat.
There would totally be a market for a fruit bowl with a false bottom which conceals a biscuit tin, right? Brb, off to the patent office.
Yesterday evening I had the house to myself for a few hours. I put on classic fm and got shed-loads done. I even made myself a little tartan shoebag, just because it'll be nice to have one. My Grannie would be proud if she was still with us. I hoovered and cleaned things and did 2 loads of laundry. Got me thinking. If I didn't schedule something for every waking minute then I could make this place look really nice.
We've got a week and a bit till we escape for our French adventure. Everything I'm up to this week is pointed at that. At work it's about me doing all the stuff I should have done before going, because I actually quite like my colleagues and don't fancy dropping them in it. At home it's about laundry, mostly. I have a plan, you see, that will give me a full week's worth of work outfits all clean and ironed so that I can come home brain-dead and get away with it. Not to mention the exciting business of holiday packing. Which in this case is coupled with the slightly-more stressful business of costume packing. Which cannot happen until the aforementioned costume is, y'know, finished. In this case I think my to-do list is:
- Put a zip in spare skirt
- Put a popper or a button on my other skirt
- Put new elastic in my long underskirt
- Hand-sew the edges of my new blouse
- Patch the hole in my long white dress
- Hot-wash all the white stuff
- Tidy up the poorly-made edges of my bodice
- Stain my dark-grey shoes black and sew some elastic in so I can pass them off as suitable parade shoes
- Collect the new corporate identity t-shirts (which are now ready - phew)
- About 3 day's worth of ironing
Then there's some other stuff. Like buying gifts for people we'll see there. Euros - got to sort that too.
Then wouldn't it be nice to go away feeling like everything is rosy in the flat and that we can come back to our happy spotless home.
Wouldn't it be nice if I could spend less time passing my self off as having it all together, and spend more time and energy on actually getting it together? What if the TV licence people come round? They keep threatening to, because no-one genuinely doesn't have a TV. They wouldn't find a TV, but in looking for one what else would they wind up looking at? Well, they'd probably find an airer out with clothes on it that have been dry for a while but haven't been put away yet. They'd probably find 2 or three mugs in the living room, alongside some incriminating biscuit wrappers. They'd no doubt find some dishes still to be washed and some other random things out on the kitchen counter. They'd find at least one, probably two gym bags in the hallway alongside thousands of shoes that never quite make it into the shoe rack, but like to hang out next to it, with a handful of items of junk mail that haven't made it to the recycling box.
Friends - help me out. Invite yourself round. Give me like ten minutes notice and then just show up. I am vain and proud and will clean for you.
Baby steps, starting with little things. Today I bought L these on my way home, so that I would have a reason to sort out the clutter on the mantelpiece.
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That wooden block to the left of the jug is sample of the kitchen countertops that are going to go in our shiny new kitchen in about a month's time. Watch this space. It's a fairly safe bet that I will tell you all about it.
I have also discovered this wonderful, if slightly profane website.
On a totally unrelated note, if you have 5 minutes this video of Aberdeen is pretty cool, and makes me all fuzzy and happy that I live here.
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