The best laid plans of mice and men ended up being a book that made me ugly cry.
Best laid plans.
I plan all kinds of shit. I mean, I don’t go crazy, make a list, and develop a course of action or follow through on my plans, but I do make plans.
For instance, we plan to put our house on the market this spring. I have planned to work on the house and get it ready, but then accidentally spent the last 3 months laying in bed and watching TV during my spare time. Well, other than when we were at the hospital for half of January.
Fine, it’s been the last year.
Anyway, what I’m saying is I do make plans. I get up in the morning and follow my well worn plan of having no goddamn idea what I’m going to wear to work. Which is awesome, because it gets those first few strings of cursing out of the way before 7:00 AM. I plan to not play on the internet until the last few minutes before I have to leave. But then I play on the internet until I have about 120 seconds to put my makeup on, get dressed, and still get to work kind of on time. Sometimes, I still have to figure out what to wear in those 2 minutes.
Even with my morning plan moving along like the well-oiled machine that it is, I still stray.
Since I am me, I can count on shit going wrong.
Traditionally, I have found that when things go wrong, often it’s due to actual things. Here is a sampling of reasons why my plans slide down south.
- I dropped it.
- I spilled it on my boobs.
- I forgot it.
- I lost it.
- I set on fire.
and
- I married it.
I so got some things wrong, you guys. At least two times I should have set it on fire instead of marrying it.
Not Randy. There is no reason for me to set him on fire. Although, honestly, I can think of at least a half a dozen times when the motherfucker should have at least gotten singed.
I’m not saying there haven’t been times that it would have been fair to throw a lit match at me, but if Randy wants to talk about that, he can write his own blog.
I don’t get the concept of a schedule. For instance, I hear people at work: “Well, I do laundry on Tuesdays and Thursdays and vacuum on Wednesdays. That’s how I clean. That’s how my mother cleaned and her mother before her cleaned.”
Frankly, I am stunned if I get any housework done. I certainly don’t have a day or time dedicated to certain tasks. Well, unless we count “Fuck no…not today”. I guess that is a day of sorts.
I would like to say I’m spontaneous, if we can all agree that one can spontaneously spend night after night in bed re-watching all five seasons of Angel and the 7th season of Buffy. I guess instead of spontaneous, it would be more accurate to call me clueless. Or maybe aimless. I’ve never been good at planning. Every aspect of every single thing I need to do shouts at me all at once. I get overwhelmed. I shut down. I embrace my geekiness and sink into the comforting arms of Joss Whedon.
I need to start making some baby steps here. I want to downsize. I want to move from this house.
I’m pretty sure that when we move, I will convince Randy that it’s time for me to get a kitten.
Being overwhelmed isn’t going to cut it anymore. I have to plan. We have to move forward.
I think it’s time for us to rid ourselves of many things. Like I said earlier, things are my downfall.
I’ll probably still spill stuff on my boobs. No matter what.
When it comes to cleaning, I used to be totally anal, now I’m the Queen of procrastination, or maybe I just decided life was more interesting than cleaning. I gave up on ironing decades ago. I am so organised with so many other things but I just can’t bring myself to care about hoovering every other day 🙂
I hope you get the house sorted soon. I’d come and help you if the ocean wasn’t in the way as I know how much you’ve wanted to do this. You’ll get there and yes you do need a kitten!
Sorry Randy.
I will take your good thoughts in place of you actually helping. Although…that would be SO COOL. We could procrastinate together!!!!
For ‘procrastinate’ read ‘drink bourbon’ 🙂
🙂
When I was first off work in 2005 my wife still worked. I took over the household chores. Since I only had one good wrist I had to do everything single-handed. I found that I could load the noisy-ass dishwasher, clean the sink with a scuff pad, do the laundry, vacuum the entire first floor, mow the yard, dry and fold the laundry, put it way and do it all before the noisy-ass dishwasher was done with it’s two hour cycle. After the dishes were cool enough to touch I put them all way in a matter of minutes. I’d made it a contest against myself to see how fast I could do it all.
Now we split the chores as she’s off-work, devoted to tell me what to do. She’s usually right too. I haven’t driven our car in over three months after I told her that I could get arrested in a fender bender because of my necessary daily medicines. I have a chauffeur.
But I digress. My point is that it really doesn’t take long to do the ‘chores’. Less than two hours with most of it spent mowing, an hour. If you don’t have to mow lookit how much extra free time you’ll have.
You have to be a self-starter but once you get rolling lookout whatever get’s in the way. I don’t even have to mow anymore so I have a ton of free time, splitting the chores.
You can do it. Stop for no one.
I will have to read this a hundred more times until it sinks in. haha.
I wish my boobs were big enough to spill shit on.
Mine, apparently, are just right.
You really made my day to day! I was feeling depressed and then I read this (while sitting wrapped in a towel and my wet hair dripping down my back supposedly getting ready for work). I often relate to what you write. But this, this is a whole new level of “Yes, me too! What she said!” I’m going to smile all day thinking about this post. Thanks for sharing!
Okay now YOU made MY day! YAY FOR US!
Experience tells me that boobs have a stronger field of gravity than the rest of our bodies. Therefore food is drawn to it.
It’s not you. It’s science.
Science ruins SO MANY of my shirts.
ahhh Buffy and Angel and all things Joss…. my bestie and my nemesis all tied up in one. Who can focus when there is a Joss show on. Funny I am very organized actually to the extreme for everything in my life except CLEANING…bahahhahah who wants to schedule that, my plan is wait till someone is coming over and do the OMFG dance of cleanliness
Sometimes, I want to invite people over just so I HAVE to clean the house. Haha.
My strategy for getting the house cleaned is to regularly invite people over (like at least once a month). It motivates me to do what needs to be done to make the place presentable. We’re also putting our house on the market this month (we’re downsizing, too), so that lights a giant fire under my ass to get things weeded out (I started in December) and keep things picked up for showings. Hmmm…I guess I care more about what other people think than I thought…on the other hand, I really want to get this place sold. And a kitten would be a GIANT incentive…
Yep…inviting people over..that always motivates me.
So. This setting things on fire. How do you do it without being caught? And what’s the minimum offense for doing it in the first place. Details! I need details!
I might have set the kitchen on fire more than once. Nothing drastic. I mean, I put it out. And I burn myself. A lot.
At least two times I married it instead of setting it on fire….
Some tips:
1. Don’t set the kitten on fire.
2. Don’t set the house on fire (new or old) insurance sucks. Such a racket.
3. Go ahead and blow up the insurance industry.
HAHAH…sound advice. Very sound.
The saddest story I ever read is about an old lady who keeps washing her husband’s clothes every week on the same day for years after he has died.
oh hell…THAT is really sad. 🙁
I wander if there’s ever a spur of the moment person that’s like ‘ahhh, what a beautiful day to clean’. I would strangle that motherfucker
Yeah..I think there would a line for that.
If you take my cat, I will throw in my robot vacuum.
Hahah…I would, but Randy is still holding fast to his ‘no cats’ stance.
I hear ya sister. We have been planning to clean up our house to sell for about a gazillion years.
Maybe this spring?
And ya, spilling stuff on my boobs. Guess I can always plan for that and it will happen.
Hey..you make a good point. I really work that ‘spilling stuff on my boobs’ plan to perfection.
“Things” are the downfall of us all….we all have too many of them..I try to downsize and get rid of stuff and then just get more stuff…I need to stop!
I have been doing pretty good on not bringing new stuff in. Except for a bunch of furniture. haha. But it was free!
I was just saying to someone this morning that I became more aware of the “stuff” in my house when we were cleaning out my Gran’s. It’s amazing how much “stuff” can be gathered in a short time – and I’m totally with you on avoiding dealing with it. I mean…getting right on it. 😉
Good luck with your move!
Thank you! I really REALLY want to get out of this house.
The problem I always run into is that I could create a schedule but I have to keep it flexible, and as long as it’s flexible it’s too easy to avoid the things I don’t want to do.
I did come up with an idea, though: set all your problems on fire. I find problems are a lot easier to deal with once they’ve been reduced to ashes.
not gonna lie..that is tempting.
My mother used to like saying “life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.” I tried to cut to the chase by planning for life to happen to me. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. And all of this other shit that I haven’t even thought about keeps happening anyway. I wonder what’s up with that?
No idea. When you figure it out, then explain it to me. 🙂
And what does the quality of my plans’ sex lives have to do with anything?
Hahahaha
Great minds, etc etc. I started a post yesterday with the heading, “Help, I’m Organizationally Challenged.” It had a modicum of humor–though not nearly so much as yours–and then I realized that writing a post was nowhere on my list of things to do. So I abandoned it. Now, thanks to your way with words, I don’t have to finish it. I’ll just link to your blog on my blog and say, “ditto”.
Haha! Yes! Finish it! Writing is so much more fun than cleaning.
Pisces plus schedules equals failure. I can’t manage taking a multi-vitamin every day. Not that I don’t try to convince myself I can change. (A huge waste of time.) I’ve pared it down to: Get up tomorrow. I don’t remember how I kept a house clean for so many years, but I know I did – sort of. Now my challenge is a small 2-bedroom apartment. If it weren’t for the dog hair tumbleweeds I might clean monthly, but I’m forced to clean weekly out of shame. Yup. That’s the motivation. And I’ve begun spring cleaning despite 10cm of snowfall last night. Here’s the thing I can swear by, M: get rid of shit. You won’t regret it. And I’m the kind of person who thinks she’ll need/use every little thing (one day). When I had to downsize a 5 bedroom house, I started by filling one garbage bag per week. Just walked around pulling out random items that I knew I could part with, some were donated, some rode the garbage truck. Don’t overthink it, just do it quickly. One. Bag. Per. Week.
Ohhhh…I can DO that! I CAN! Okay. I’m starting tonite.
You got me – down to the food on my boobs and ruined shirts to putting off getting the house ready to sell. So I feel your pain, sister.
Anyway, I thought I’d overcome my addiction to self help books – yea, that was in my 30’s when self loathing was at its peak! – I found a book called the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. This author does not play! A little scary, even. But, for me, a procrastinator all my life, the message is welcome. Get rid of it room by room, not a bit at a time, but all at once.
I put it down, picked it up, put it down, picked it up. Then tried one room. The joy, the elation, the high. Better than sex. Well, sex as it is now after 35 years of marriage, anyway.
I am definitely going to have to check this out!! Thank you!!
I don’t see the correlation to being unorganized and spilled beverages, I really never will. I say this because I am well organized, not like it is 5 PM on Tuesday and I am making tacos for dinner organized. I find that dull. But I am organized that every week the toilets get clean on a day about the same as the week before organized! I have an awful time of spilling coffee down me. I love white tops but the coffee issue. See no correlation between spilled coffee and stained clothes and organization skills!
Man, I feel you. I don’t even buy white clothes. Two jobs ago, I came to work one morning in a white shirt and a girl looked at me, shook her head and said, that is very optimistic of you.
I can’t imagine having a day on which I do certain household tasks, rather than simply doing them when they need to be done again. That’s a completely alien concept to me.
What if it was Tuesday but I didn’t have enough dirty clothes to make a load of washing worth my while?
Exactly! I guess you’d have to put on a bunch of clothes and roll around in the dirt for a few minutes…then you’d have a full load. Or does that not make any sense?
I love to plan and make to do lists, just don’t end up following it….flexible plans that bend.
Yeah, mine have to all be flexible, that’s for sure…
I’m very good and packing up and de-cluttering. I could definitely come and help you with those. Al is terrified to let me touch anything because 99% of the time I will just toss it and, given he is a hoarder of note, he just about has a heart attack when I say a room needs to be tidied /cleaned which is really just a polite way of saying “I’m chucking all this crap out – it’s been here long enough and we haven’t used / needed it. It’s now going”
The rest of the time, I’m happy to sit and crochet. Cleaning is a chore I will put off forever when I have to do it.
Dad has been in and out of hospital this week – he came home yesterday morning and then he went back in at 1.30 this morning – they will keep him there until tomorrow and then make a decision on whether to let him go home and whether to continue with the treatment, stop the treatment or delay it for a while. My Mom is not dealing with this very well – I think she is living in lala land thinking that Dad is going to get better – bottom line is that he isn’t going to get better, this treatment is prolonging the inevitable but it is going to happen sooner than we want. Al will be home tomorrow night so that will be nice – I don’t like dealing with all of this by myself. K asked if M should get his passport and I said if they wanted to see Dad before he died it would probably be a good thing. They have to take all her paperwork in next week so said they would look at applying for his passport then.
Sometimes life is tough and sucks hairy balls but what can I do, I just need to carry on each day because sitting and crying won’t get anything done !!!!
xox
I am so sorry you are going through this. So so sorry. How painful and tiring for you and your family. And yes, we do just have to carry on, don’t we? I am thinking of you and sending you thoughts of peace and love and strength.
Cleaning is such a thankless job that I can so easily say “no not today.” Every time I try to get rid of something, without fail, I will need it within a week. Forget that it sat in a pile for years! Good luck with your purge!
Thank you!
Also working on getting the house ready for sale. Probably not until next spring.
But we just finished the bathroom — new vanity, bead board to pretty-up the ghastly ceiling, fresh coat of paint after a few much-needed patch jobs.
What’s amazing and interesting to me is that we’re in love with the bathroom now, and, though the color is very nice, I think it’s more because we haven’t cluttered it up with any of the old decor (the colors don’t “go” with the new paint). It’s just clean lines right now. Ahhhhh. Such a relief. I had been thinking of buying a few new decorative items to go with the new paint, but now I’m going to save my money and leave well enough alone (this works for the lazy, procrastinating part of me, too — win-win).
Now if we can just accomplish the same thing with the rest of this over-stuffed house….
(if only it was easier to watch TV while sorting through all the detritus)
I’m glad I’m not alone in this..
This: “Every aspect of every single thing I need to do shouts at me all at once. I get overwhelmed. I shut down. I embrace my geekiness and sink into the comforting arms of Joss Whedon.” amen.
🙂
I love planning. Checklists are my favorite thing. It’s a great thrill to put that mark that says complete. It’s such a rare thing to do.
Yeah…that’s what we need to do.
Hi Michelle, I just posted today for the first time in 3 weeks. The title? Best Laid Plans. OMG, I didn’t even see your post til just now. I guess great minds think alike or something. Point is, I didn’t intentionally steal your title. 😛
Phfffft…It’s a common saying! No worries at all.