Too Hot For A Clean House

I can’t clean our house anymore. It is too hot.

 

OK, it won’t be too hot in a few days, so I can probably do it then. And it was not too hot for a while a week ago, so I could have done it then, too. But right now, at this moment, I can feel confident and guilt-free in the knowledge that today, it is too hot.

 

Now don’t get the wrong idea, our house is not a complete pigsty, I have done some cleaning here and there as well as a few random acts of tidying. What I have not done is the floor mopping, carpet vacuuming, major bathroom and kitchen cleaning that a “real” cleanup demands.

 

It is just too hot.

 

I have let the kitchen counters stay piled up with junk, only putting away the top few layers. I tell myself I am OK with having to carefully step over the clothes, toys, books, etc. in my daughter’s room everyday to give her a kiss goodnight (don’t some parents call this “creative expression”?).  I avoid unloading the dishwasher because I want to be sure it is completely cool before opening the door; I can’t bear to let any more heat into the house.

 

This all sounds very unkempt, I know, but isn’t this what is meant by “those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer”? I am not sure if it is exactly what Nat King Cole meant, but I don’t think it is far off the mark either. I like to think that I am just being loyal to my season. In another week or so it will be September and with it will come cooler temperatures, fewer excuses, and, if I am lucky, a clean house.

Sleepy Mommy

My daughter is starting Kindergarten in a few weeks. I am excited, she is excited. But I am also a bit sad, not (just) because my little girl is approaching another milestone in her precious life, or because I am going to miss her terribly, or even because she is “growing up so fast.” No, my reason is not nearly so sentimental. I am sad because we will now have to get up early, every morning.

 

I have never been a morning person. I am most productive in the morning, if I can get myself out of bed, and therein lies the rub. I just can’t convince myself, at 7:00 a.m., that getting up early is a good thing.

 

For the past 5½ years I have been in the fortunate position of stay-at-home mom to a late sleeper. Unless we have something scheduled for the morning (play date, preschool, or appointment), we rarely haul ourselves out of bed before 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. We do wake up earlier than that, we just don’t get out of bed. If my daughter does happen to rouse herself at the ungodly hour of 7:00 a.m. or so, she is always happy to join me for a snuggle in our bed and we snooze a bit longer. Around 9:00 a.m., we turn on the TV and she watches cartoons while I read the newspaper, she with a bowl of cheerios and me with a coffee. It is blissful.

 

I used to feel guilty about this little tradition of ours and never spoke of it with others, lest they think me a lazy mom! I would lie and say that we got up around 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m., as that is sleeping in for most moms of young children. During this past year, however, I have started confessing my sleepy mommy habits more and more often. I stopped feeling bad about wasting away our mornings together, because I realized that Kindergarten was coming. Soon enough we would be on the same schedule as most of the world and once you are on it, it is almost impossible to get off. So I now proudly tell of the average time we get out of bed (around 10:00 a.m.), I even brag about it sometimes. But I will still never admit to the mornings we laid around until noon; some things just need to be kept private.