The Modern Life

I feel like I'm always rushing. I rush around in the morning to get out the door on time. I rush around work all day and then rush home. I rush to make dinner, clean up after dinner and then rush through the kids homework and get them in bed. At that point I have a choice to make. Sit down on the couch and relax or get some light cleaning/organizing done around my house. It's often a tough decision because there is always something to do around my house. It's never as clean as I want or like it to be and I often feel that if someone was to drop by to see me, I would be terribly embarrased for them to see my house looking that way it does.

My husband is a closet trekkie (this relates, I promise). I discovered after I had been with him for more than a year, that he has a deep-rooted rarely spoken of love of sci-fi, especially Star Trek. I also have a fondness for sci-fi. Not to Dave's extent, but my brother used to tape the original Star Trek series and The Next Generation and I would watch it with him. So when Dave and I happened upon a channel called G4 which was airing episodes of The Next Generation twice a night every night during the week, we were hooked. Forget about network TV, this became our nightly ritual. Kids in bed by nine, flop on the couch for Star Trek. Then G4 changed their line-up and much to our chagrin, we flipped the TV on one night and found G4 in the middle of a COPS marathon. Now COPS can also be entertaining, but this messed up our little geek ritual and we were bummed. Thank the Lord for Netflix. I re-activated my Netflix account and put all seven seasons, yes seven seasons, of The Next Generation in my queue.

So Wednesday night I didn't get home until 6pm. I had stopped to grocery shop on my way home. As I walked in the door, I was met with, "I'm Starving!" Of course. We threw a steak on the grill and I rushed around putting groceries away. By the time we were done eating and the dishes had been done it was decision time. Clean up the mess that was my house or sit down and watch Star Trek with my husband. I looked at him sitting on the couch looking at me with puppy dog eyes and I looked at my kitchen/dining room that was cluttered with a weeks worth of junk mail, a box of cereal that wouldn't fit in the pantry, 17 hand-outs that the kids had brought home from school and a rotting lemon and I didn't know what to do. How could I relax when my house was obviously such a disaster? Then I thought, when I die, what would I rather have had - a house that was always spotless or a family who loved me and who I spent quality time with on a regular basis? I went for the couch and tried to avert my eyes from the kitchen for the rest of the night.

I did throw the lemon in the trash. I'm human.