Small Jobs Add Up (Laziness)

I've been lazy lately. That's not unusual - actually I am congenitally lazy. I come from a long line of lazy people (not every last one, of course! Relax, industrious relatives. I didn't mean you.). When given the choice between, say, cleaning out the rabbit hutch and watching the newest episode of Breaking Bad, well - let's just say that's not a tough choice for me.

I am so lazy, I have even figured out many ways to work and be lazy at the same time. Most of us, I am sure, have a hierarchy of hatred when it comes to housework. You might not mind laundry so much, but flinch at the thought of cleaning the bathroom. Or maybe dishes are your bugaboo, but you kind of like yardwork. Perhaps you enjoy the satisfaction of really clean windows, but just can't stand vacuuming day after ever-loving day.

I hate almost all of it. God I hate housework. Here is a comprehensive list of the jobs I don't mind doing so much:

Grocery shopping

Cooking (including Preserving)

Goatherding and Milking

Gardening

My "wifely duty" (yes that counts)

That leaves this much larger list of things I loathe:

Dishes

sweeping and vacuuming

scrubbing of any kind

Laundry

balancing the checkbook

paying bills

recycling

mending clothes

PTA meetings

mowing the lawn

All yardwork really

digging

yelling at the kids (yes that counts)

So here's the (transparent) strategy I've worked out... I've elaborated those tasks I actually enjoy into complex undertakings and creative expressions that take utter precedence over everything else. I like to cook: I've become a gourmet home-chef who bakes our own bread (never will storebought bread pass my children's lips), makes our own cheese (don't call it a hobby), and grows many of our own vegetables.

Under the guise of providing for our food security and reducing our carbon footprint, I spend hours in the garden and at local farmer's markets, procuring enough vegetable bounty to spend many more hours preserving food for the winter, like some kind of hyperactive squirrel. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I am also saving us boatloads of cash, because we will be giving our friends and relatives pickled asparagus for christmas. Or maybe beets, if we don't like you much.

As you can imagine, all this industriousness on my part leaves me little time for - say - trimming the goat's hooves, or going to the dump. Cleaning out the refrigerator. Pulling weeds. Setting mousetraps (yes, we have a problem). Sorting through the kid's clothes to make sure they don't go to school looking like extras from the set of Little Orphan Annie.

This strategy works surprisingly well, most of the time. It is only about twice a year that the backup of work that legitimately belongs to me gets so large that I can no longer ignore it. Oh, I try to fight it. Before I will recognize that I need to spend a couple of days catching up, I will try mightily to convince my husband that HE needs to go to the dump... rake the leaves.... turn the compost pile... take the kids to the dentist....

But eventually, I have to give in and recognize that my husband is too busy fixing cars to make us money so I can go to the farmer's market to do all the mundane daily tasks that I am supposed to be doing. Then I have to have a day like today.

Things I did today:

-Sorted a pile of laundry the size of Mt. Kulshan. Threw out a pile the size of Mt. Shuksan.

-Trimmed four goat hooves - long overdue and totally disgusting. Did it without, however, cutting myself, so that's a plus.

- cleaned out the rabbit hutch. LONG overdue and totally disgusting. I had to use the hoe. 'Nough said. Will make nice compost, however.

Doesn't sound like much, maybe, but for a lady as lazy as I am, it's a lot.