It’s official. I can’t keep up with my life. My life is racing ahead of me, accruing debt, getting dirty, eating all the food in the house, and I’m straggling many days behind hoping that my direct deposit hits before the mortgage check does, mopping up only the most extreme messes (did you know that eggs explode in the microwave??) and pulling out all the culinary stops to create dishes for the family using only pasta from the Ming dynasty and a jar of pimentos.
There are no Martha Points for me here. Martha Points of the positive sort are a distant memory. Like being a size 8.
I’m tired of it. I can’t live like this any longer. But since I have no ability to change my life in the foreseeable future, I’m simply going to redefine success.
So here are the new rules.
1. Laundry is now a hip design feature. Post modern and deconstructionist, piles of laundry are the new bean-bag chair.
2. “How High Can You Pile the Junk Mail” will be competitive sport requiring its own game show. And I will go on the game show, I will so win the gameshow, and with my winnings I will hire back my housekeeper, Martha, to help disassemble the training center.
3. Knowing the interests and activities of my children will be replaced with remembering how many I have. Teenagers want you to be less nosy anyway.
4. The “jungle look” is in. For the yard or your legs. Take your pick.
5. Gray is the new black. Which means that all the dust-covered surfaces in my house – the furniture, the floor, the cats – are now the height of haute design.
I think I’ll write a comparable set of rules next week about personal hygiene. Because if we could just all agree that three-day-old mascara is hawt I could get an extra twenty minutes of sleep every day and say good-bye to Mr. Chisel.
In Pursuit of Martha Points 
6. Leftover food that is now permanently crusted-on plates is a design feature.
7. Not showering on a regular or even weekly basis is a way to save water and being green.
Pop also has good rules.
The only reason my legs have been shaved recently? Is because I had an OB appointment.
Mommy loves this list – her life is running away from her too!
Solution: stop wearing mascara.
I know, I know, it sounds insane. But I stopped and no one notices.
Probably because they’re not looking me in the eyes anyway.
I’m actually finding attractive decorative patterns in some of my dust. Seems like dusting it might be destroying some kind of art.
And the junk mail. Ugh. What can I do to make it go away? I just want to toss it, but then there might be identity theft. If I put it in a pile to shred, I have to eventually actually *shred* the pile. I hate the junk mail.
I throw my junk mail into the diaper pail. I figure if someone wants to steal my identity THAT BAD, they probably need it more than I do. The kicker will be when they realize that they went through all that disgusting mess for a very un-cool and un-lucrative identity!
piles of magazines make excellent footrests.
random credit card approval letters make excellent pads for hot pans
if you can shove it all in a basket, it is considered ‘tidied’
Oh, Lori. You can so join my “grooming is over rated” club.
I’m tired of being the only member.
Come hang with me: the unshaved, unwashed, unpolished/plucked/pedicured.
No password required. Takes too much energy to come up with one…
wait…you GET your mail?
babe, you are ahead of me by leaps and bounds.
Also? I have decided that Afro Legs is THE look for spring/summer.
Hey, if you can shove it in the oven, it qualifies as tidied!
Jodi
Gray is *so* the new black. I’ve been saying this for about eight years. Right about the time I adopted Teva and Isabel. I wonder whether there’s a correlation. Nah.
Great post! I homeschool my kids and for art they decorate in the dust, and there’s an excuse for not dusting afterwords, can’t lose the ‘art’!! I think I’ve convinced my hubby that hairy legs are sexy, but honestly, we’re so wiped out at the end of the day, he doesn’t notice, lol.
Glad to know I’m in good company with the “jungle look.” This weekend however is Project “clean it or toss it.” I’ll see if it works as wonderfully in reality as it does in my imagination!
Dana
Dude, you are so funny. Even with life racing ahead of you. I am so with you on ALL points, and can we talk about a new exercise regime which involves not picking up toys, but bounding around them? It’s great fun and sprains your ankle only half the time.
Change the rules when they don’t work for you! It’s your game, play it your way!
BTW, I’ve been rocking the jungle look, too. Hehehe. It helps to know I’m not alone, but it could explain why I’m single.
Oh, Mistress of the Martha Points, this is ground breaking. I was in the process of writing rules but real ones, like go to bed on time and exercise, I like yours better. Much better.
Can’t wait for the personal hygiene edition. Can I request roots are the new highlights and pet hair become an attractive accessory?
Me and you together.
We need to live in one big group house.
It’s what I gotta do.
I mean, good idea for both of us, sisterwife.
You are so not alone. Glad to know that I’m not, as well. I just served left over chicken nuggets to my little nugget. Luckily, he’s totally down with that. Now for the rest of them….mayhaps I could borrow a quarter cup of pimentos?
The fact that you were able to come up with all these things would earn you Martha Points, in my opinion. I mean, that takes talent.
Also, you are doing your teenagers a service by allowing them to be responsible for their own lives. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.
PS The jungle look is ALWAYS in. ALWAYS.
In the junk mail category, you are going DOWN! I drive my OCD hubby nuts because I’ll just throw it on the kitchen table. He is on a new kick to make sure to throw away/shred/file whatever comes in the door the second it comes in.
Have fun with that honey…
Lori, you have just single-handedly made my day. Gray is the new black! Piles o’ laundry are the new bean bag chairs!
I feel suddenly at peace.
And I hope that your hamster wheel slows down a wee bit sometime soon, before the family tires of ancient pasta topped with whatever.
Bless you!! I can relate to all of the above and am the proud owner of 3 new beanbag chairs for better viewing of the dust on the TV. You are my hero!
Woo-hoo for the dust! Even if I did dust, I wouldn’t because kicking up all the dust messes with my allergies.