- I have to clean my filthy filthy house. I caught a mouse last week and spotted another and I suspect it's because I've let it get too messy (too many places for the things to hide and not enough stink of cleaning products) and so I guess that's my afternoon today.
- I still have to finish that toy cat my niece
- I have to make time to either knit the fingerless mitts for the AAUW gift exchange the first week of December, or go shopping for an acceptably-nice gift that costs $10 or less and it's almost easier to make time to just knit the darn mitts. (Or maybe I just skip the party altogether)
- I have alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll my regular work stuff to attend to
- I have a Pastor-parish committee meeting next weekend and I'm already worried given the bad history these have of people bringing many grievances but no solutions
- And now: for next Saturday, I need to bake a cake and go serve at a funeral lunch because most of the people who typically do are going to be gone. I'm a little salty about this - and I realize this is very unChristian but - it's someone who had essentially quit the congregation because he had some beef with the current minister but it was never clearly articulated and everyone kind of pussyfooted around it so I don't even know if it's a serious issue or one of those silly things that people get in their heads.
And: neither of the scheduled elders showed up so I wound up at the table. What's more, the only OTHER elder present was filling the pulpit, our regular minister being at a conference, so it was just me. And I ***almost*** didn't have the words. I threw something together, it was terrible, but it doesn't matter (I'm telling myself and not believing) because LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE WAS THERE TO DO IT. I also wound up doing deacon duty despite not knowing how because there weren't enough able-bodied men to do it. I made a hash of it but again, whatever, no one else was there to do it, and if anyone complains.....well, they can complain, and yes, I'll be upset, but I think their complaints are unjustified. But I'll still be upset.
(And Roger, if you're reading this: I think of how people in my congregation have often mentioned that Timothy passage you talked about being taken out of context, and how they say "If we held to that we wouldn't HAVE a church, and wow is that true).
And I got to thinking, sitting in the pew: okay, then, with all else I have to do, when do I decorate for Christmas?
I don't know. So maybe I *don't* decorate for Christmas this year (there's no time after I get back from Thanksgiving) and you do not know how sad that makes me. I know lots of people don't but it's something that's really important to me and it makes me sad not to do it. So I don't know.
I sat there in the pew when I should have been listening to the sermon and tried to plan and plot: okay, then, if I clean house for an hour today, and an hour on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, no wait, Monday is bell choir....and if I clean this afternoon and maybe Tuesday afternoon and if I skip out a little early after classes get done for me Thursday, maybe I can, and Friday evening I can bake that cake and then maybe Saturday I can work in the fingerless mitts and maybe I can even take them with me to knit on over Thanksgiving though I can't count on any knitting time because I know I will be Needed for stuff (grocery shopping, entertaining my niece) when I'm up there and...
I'm so tired. Just so tired. I want to give something up but I think the only things I'm able to give up without causing major upset would be my own hobby-things (like decorating for Christmas) or bell choir (which is one of the few bright spots in my week) and I am just so upset and this feels so much like not the life I signed up for.
***
Today was All Saints' Day. Two things:
1. Mike was tasked with getting up and reading all the names of people we had on the rolls, both from this year and past years, who passed away (I think he got one or two wrong, but that's OK, he's fairly new and didn't know the people. I didn't really know them other than by others talking about them). When he got to Steve - Steve had been an especial friend of his - he kind of paused, and took a deep breath, and his voice was shaky afterward and I admit part of me wanted to jump up and slip up to the podium through the back way and whisper in his ear, "Do you want me to take over for you?" but I didn't, and that was probably the right thing to do; he got it back under control and did the rest fine, and later on there were a few names (Chappy and Dorothy) that might have caught me up a little even though their deaths are not nearly as recent.
2. This is the one year anniversary, isn't it, of that terrible church shooting in Texas. And of course we're still hearing the news of the synagogue shooting and that apparently the guy who shot people in Louisville TRIED to get into an African-American church and was kept out and....I don't know. As I said last year, I feel a particular insult at people invading others' places of worship to do violence. It seems we live in a very dark time and I don't know what the answer is or even if there is one.
***
Edited to add: spent about 2 hours rage-cleaning. Got the guest room pretty well cleaned up (I was fearful the mice had run down the hall from the kitchen - where I saw the one - to here but I see no "evidence" of them. I also cleaned the kitchen and laundry room extensively and found what might have been the beginnings of a nest (a pair of my underwear that fell when I was getting them out of the dryer and I guess I never retrieved them had been dragged behind the washer-dryer. Those are now in the trash and I washed the area down with a strong-smelling cleaner, and I might spray it down with something called Rodent Sheriff, which is a cedar oil/mint combination that is alleged to repel mice.) I didn't find any BABY mice, so I'm hoping either the pregnant mouse was the one I caught, or that she left, or that she will be repelled by my efforts and leave. Or that I catch her tonight; I refreshed the bait in the electric trap and also set a snap trap with bait.
Rage cleaning is like regular cleaning, except you do it faster and more forcefully and you throw stuff out without dithering about it. (I doubt anything I've thrown out would be anything I miss; I tend to err far too much on the side of "but I might want this some time" when I regular clean).
I feel a *little* better, and maybe if I can get a bit more cleaning done in the coming week, then Thursday I could put up my tree. (I still need to pick up the living room.)
I have a few minutes to pick up my bedroom, I guess, before I have to get back into my good clothes and head out to Dana's for the party.
***
Added, 4:30: I guess I'm glad I went to the party. It was low-key, one of those come-and-go things, and for a change, I knew most of the people there (either people from church, people from bell choir, or someone I knew from AAUW. Ate a piece of strawberry cake made by her granddaughter.
A couple of interesting things - when I walked in the door the two grandkids (who are like 9 and 6) grabbed me and wanted to give me a tour of the house, and then when we were out on the patio they kept bringing stuff to show me and Dana said, "They're excited to have someone who speaks 'kid' here" and that struck me funny because I really feel like I don't - yes, I listen to them, and answer their questions or make impressed noises when they show me some cool toy they have, but I'm not one of those adults who's into getting down on the floor and playing with kids. But maybe the fact that I listen to them is more than some people do?
Later on, A. (the girl) and a friend of hers who came over were having a tea party with their dolls in her room and it made me so happy to see that. So happy that there are still kids who are into that, and that even though I've read that "seven year old girls are putting their toys aside in favor of make-up and clothes," it's just nice that she still can have simple fun like that. (I tend to feel like: they're gonna have 60+ years to be in the grownup world, which really isn't all that nice a lot of the time, so they should be allowed to enjoy being kids as long as they want to)
Dana also commented that A. was enjoying using my old piano books, and noted, "It's nice to see how diligent and precise you were" (I guess from the notations my various teachers - first the two I had as a kid, and now Jana Lou - made in the books) and she added "It's like a little insight into your personality" and yeah, I guess so, but sometimes I wish I were more fun and less diligent and less likely to get tied up in knots over everything I MUST do.
(And yeah. I need to wash my hair and figure out something for dinner and probably sit down and see if I can get the legs and tail and muzzle knit for the little cat for my niece....I have decided that maybe if I work for 45 minutes or an hour on Monday cleaning, and maybe the same on Tuesday and Wednesday, I will have my house really super-cleaned-up and the end of this week I could put up the Christmas stuff, but I also fear that something will come up that will prevent me doing that...)
And if worse comes to absolute worst and I don't get the mitts done for AAUW, I will wrap up that green "Chucko's Hat" that I knit and give that. I haven't actually WORN it yet (other than to try it on) so it's not "used." I'd rather give a pair of mitts but I also worry about having time to make them.
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