Pathetic

This morning I decided to nestle a project in between the mindless laundry sorting and the also mindless dish duty.  I pulled our overflowing "Look Book" from the shelf in our sun room and plopped down on the carpet for business.

I had been in the zone of housewifery, and so the concept of sorting and stuffing previously ripped out magazine pages into the binder appeared nothing more exciting or spirit-lifting than tossing one of Thomas's toys back into his room for the one millionth time since he's been born.

And at first it wasn't.  I went about it like I do with most of my housework: moving appendages, responding to Thomas in interim sessions, and thinking on autopilot about what we've got to do today come Hell, high water, or a heat index of 108. But then I ran across those scones I forgot I had so longingly torn from the pages of Southern Living... and the recipe for apple-butter I had requested and had been granted from a co-worker...and that girl's lavender room that I swore to myself I would recreate should I ever be blessed with a sweet little baby Anderson girl.

I thumbed through the binder after mentally crossing off the task of revive Look Book. Brightly colored toss pillows on neutral sitting room furniture.  The perfect pot roast.  A plan for making the most of a small garden  space. The how-to for emergency kits.  Creating an inviting space for guests. Variations on our already white kitchen.  Creative lighting. Backyard sprawling lounges edged by gorgeous greens.

I felt sparks of creativity ignite inside of me, and I felt a tangible sense of gratitude for all things creative Paul and I have found a way to make time for.  Namely, we've cooked a lot. We're great at taking up space side-by-side, and finding some sort of tandem rhythm, even if it is typically me playing sous-chef to his authority.

But when I put the Look Book back in its spot on the shelf, I went right back to work.  Without those little details of laundry, dishes, wiping off the counters, there's just no room for creativity.

Today, there was no hoisting of chandeliers or ripping open of fun packages shipped from Ikea.  I didn't finally decide on a paint color for the laundry room and hightail my creativity-igniting-self over to Sherwin-Williams, slap down my ripped out page from Southern Living, and declare, "I want your Eggshell White. I want it now. And I won't take no for an answer!"

Today, I made appointments to fix the Vue's front windshield [cracked by a suicidal bird over 6 months ago] and the side panel [which chose to jump ship earlier this year on a particularly windy drive I made across the state].  I looked up how to remove a decal from a mailbox properly. I organized my Google Drive.  I walked through Lowe's researching project prices and looks and made decisive mental notes: 1) I know next to nothing about plants 2) That is unacceptable.


The only physical evidence that my creative genius is making things happen in our home is the thirty-nine cent cover I screwed into what was an uncovered electrical outlet in Thomas's room.  I don't know what kind of light that holds to building a tree house big enough to house a sleepover, designing a guest room fit for the Queen of England, or making eight variations of a scone just because, but I'm guessing it's pathetic.  Just as pathetic as it would have been for me to be whipping up a batch of scones while Thomas plays Operation with the gaping hole in his wall.  


Well, that's life.  Sometimes, we get piles of pathetic and sometimes we get crazy freak flags of creativity.  


Tomorrow, I'm planning on getting all pathetic up in this joint for the second day in a row.  I've got a date with that decal, and I'm not going down without a fight.