Housework Lament....

My best friend/college roommate, Jamie, and I used to joke (while pulling an all-nighter cramming for finals) that we really wouldn't mind a June and Ward Cleaver sort of family dynamic. You know, the old cliche image of the housewife vacuuming in heels and pearls? My favorite image is actually out of the movie Mona Lisa Smile, when Julia Roberts is angry with her students and is showing them slides of those ridiculous girdle advertisements and she yells something about them being the most educated women in the country and they'll able to calculate the volume of every meatloaf they make--or another part where they're talking about reading literary classics while vacuuming. Oops--got off on a tangent. Anyway, I think in honor of my upcoming wedding, Jamie made me a really (yes, really really) cute vintage-looking apron for Christmas. I'd show you a picture of it--but it's in the washing machine as we speak.

I'll admit, it hung in the closet for a good three months after she gave it to me (in part because I didn't want to ruin it with say, bleach--and in part because aprons sort of seem cliche to me) but in recent weeks I've noticed something about housework. It is absolutely, entirely, unarguably NEVER ENDING. I mean, the minute laundry is done it's time to go to the gym and wham-o...you've got gym clothes and towels ready for the washing machine. You mop the kitchen floor, and your soon-to-be father in-law comes over with his muddy work boots and grabs a bottle of water on his way to the backyard. You get the idea. And I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm sure it isn't really new in my world either, but with a mere 26 days until the wedding and about 1.5 million little things to do just for the event itself, I'm really starting to notice the perpetual nature of housework.

So at one point last week, perhaps thinking back to childhood days when costumes made all the difference (did you ever go to the doctor wearing a Superman cape or a Ninja Turtles belt?--yeah I wasn't a doll kind of girl) I went to the closet and pulled out my hand-sewn vintage apron. I'd like to say I put it on and it transformed me into Superhousewife, and though of course it didn't, psychologically it seems to do something. It's like it puts me in the mindset to just get the housework done and move on to, say knitting or good literature (not while vacuuming!). On another important note, I realized that Jamie made it with the intention that I would use it, not that I would let it hang in the closet for ever and ever just because I didn't want to ruin it. It's an apron. Don't they say life is short, use the nice china? Use the nice apron. Sheesh.


*Ashley*