Chores are Fun

As much as I'd like to claim that I'd be perfectly adept at keeping house if only I had more time, the truth is that few things cause me greater agony than doing simple chores.  I hate washing dishes.  Hate dusting and vacuuming.  HATE doing laundry (especially when doing laundry requires a trek outside across my parking lot). 

So when I was trying to fit my bed with freshly washed sheets (yes, that required $3.00 in quarters and several trips up and down stairs and across the parking lot and back earlier this afternoon) and a little orange kitty immediately came to my "aid" per usual, let's just say I wasn't very amused. 

"Come ON, Holly.  I'm trying to make the bed here," I chided.

"Mmhmm," she responded in her sugary-sweet princess voice as she clamped her jaw into my bamboo fiber sheets.

"So it's enough of a pain as it is.  I really don't need your 'help.'"

"Chores aren't a pain.  They're really fun!  See?"
 "Fun to YOU, maybe."

"They can be fun to you, too.  You can make anything fun.   You just have to try!"

Since the one thing that causes me more agony than doing chores is the thought of someone coming over to witness my lack of domestic prowess, I do submit to the torture as often as necessary.  And I'm certain Holly is right that a shift in perception will make this torture less, well....torturous.  Her sheet-and-blanket escapade did eventually get me laughing.

But making it fun?  That will be a bit of a challenge.

The First Step in Feng Shui

If you've never lived with a rabbit, you may not be aware that they're quite the interior decorators. They designate a "toilet" corner of their dwellings (or sometimes two corners--one for #1 and one for #2). They locate the perfect spot for meal consumption and slide their food bowls in place accordingly. They arrange their bedding into a careful quilt of thick and thin. George even remodels his "walls" and "floors."

However, as I learned for myself last week, there are important rules to rabbit feng shui that trump aesthetic preference.
Hannah's home is situated atop a wide ottoman about 18 inches high (where she prefers it), though every once in a while, she manages to rock herself right to the floor. When I heard a crash in the bedroom, I knew she'd done it again. This time, only half the cage touched ground while the other half rested against the side of the ottoman, spilling food, bedding, and rabbit turds into the wall of the opposite side. I gently slid her back up onto the ottoman and gripped my fingers around the wire enclosure, preparing to pull the cage apart.

"What are you DOING?" Hannah gasped.

"I'm going to fix your home," I reassured her.

"Fix? It just flipped over. Everything's a mess!"

"Yes, I see that. That's why I'm going to fix it for you right now."

"Hands off, lady. I need a little time here. I'm not you, you know."

Ouch.

I'd clearly just been dissed, but couldn't wrap my thick human mind around what Hannah had meant by that. Luckily she filled me in before I had to ask her (sparing me further embarrassment).

"When your world gets shaken up, you need to re-ground yourself before you can move forward with repairing the damages. You can't just go running from person to person and project to project and expect everything to fall back into place. You need to first be where you are."

Talk about hitting the nail on the head. All at once I realized how even the subtlest of breezes had almost completely swept me away in recent weeks--before they suddenly dropped me with a crash quite similar to the sound Hannah's cage had made. I wasn't grounded. I didn't allow myself that time.

"Wow, Hannah. You're..."

"Of course I'm right."

"Why didn't you...."

"You never asked. And even if I did warn you, would you have listened?"  (Animals can understand a lot about us and what we're thinking without us having to say it in full, but Holly, Quincy, and George usually let me finish a sentence so I don't feel quite so intuitively inferior to them. Hannah rarely lets me finish a sentence.)

No, I probably wouldn't have listened. I probably wasn't ready to listen until now.

So, where am I at this given moment (meaning not where I've been or where I want to go)? I am 27 years old. Single. A size 12-14. A vegetarian with severe gluten, dairy, and refined sugar intolerance. An orange belt in karate. A full-time marketing coordinator and part-time adjunct professor of communication studies. I have far more debt than I'd care to carry. My apartment is a disaster. I have trouble waking up in the mornings. My writing comes only in spurts. I do this really cool thing with animals on the side. And I just began a dog obedience trainer certification program.

I don't like this place very much. I want to say that I'll be 28 in two months, just broke up with someone I wasn't happy with, and am losing weight constantly. I want to explain that my diet is due to the likelihood of my having celiac disease and it's not some low-carb fad. I want to clarify that I'm training for my black belt and that my current full-time job is not my "forever field." I want to affirm my intention to make my writing and work with animals my main focus someday. I want to boast about my plan for paying off debt and building my savings account or attribute the problem to my struggle to make ends meet post-divorce. I want to claim that I'd be perfectly organized if I wasn't so busy and am working to restore sanctuary to my home.

But I'm refraining....

I am where I am. I'll restore balance to the chaos that is my life soon enough, as Hannah did.