Balance

Mom has been invalid-ish recently; she had surgery last Friday, and while it was fairly minor in that she was home the same day, any surgery is going to affect what you're capable of accomplishing for some weeks. This means that for the past week, the gruntwork of keeping up the house has largely been on my shoulders. Now Mom is up and around and feeling better, which means she is also noticing everything about the house which hasn't been done.

Understand that I am not blogging about this in self-defense. Mom is realizing almost for the first time just how much I do, so this is actually the first time I haven't felt guilty about what I haven't done, when we go through this cycle of Mom not being able to take care of the house (most often because she's working), then looking at it and saying, 'because I haven't done it, it hasn't been done.' Nor am I blogging it in accusation, or saying that I do everything and it isn't fair. This is purely about the balance of my own life, and if that is selfish, so be it. (My blog, after all.)

Mom brought this up herself, last night--I do a lot of the stuff around the house. I am laundress; meal planner; grocery assistant; chef ordinaire and baker extraordinaire (translation in my world: I do lots of cooking and almost all the baking); I am scullion the nights I don't cook dinner; I fetch and carry for Mom; I am cat wrangler; I moonlight as in-house tech support for Mom (I don't know much, but I do what I can well). All this while contributing to the tidiness of the main portions of the house, keeping up with three active hobbies (knitting, spinning, and biking), practicing a demanding instrument, still having high school coursework, and continuing to eat, sleep, bathe, read, and go out in public. In short, I do enough for three normal people, and the fact that I don't manage to do everything perfectly is less remarkable than the fact that I have a life that is remotely balanced! I need reminded sometimes--often, in fact--that I do a lot, because it's too easy to focus on what isn't done still.