A Busy Day

I sometimes used to wonder how it could take my mother so long to do seemingly simple tasks.  “I worked all day making that salad,” she once moaned.  I had given her the recipe and knew that it should take about twenty minutes – max! 

This morning, the first item on my agenda (after drinking lots of tea, reading the newspaper, and looking at my friends’ blogs, of course,) was vacuuming my downstairs.  I got out the vacuum cleaner and started it up.  Its whine was higher than usual, so I checked to see if it needed a new bag.  Sure enough, it did.  I had been keeping them in the basement, but then had decided to keep them in a bin of cleaning things in my panty.  Getting at this bin requires being down on hands and knees in order to move several other bins.  Maybe there are still a few in the basement, I thought.  It would be smarter to check there first.  Getting to the basement requires stepping over the cat box and treading in all the kitty litter that Tobias has spread around in his enthusiastic toilet flushing.  I had better clean the cat box, I thought.  And so I did.  I had better sweep up all this kitty litter from the floor and the basement stairs, I thought.  And so I did.  As long as I have the broom in my hands, I might as well sweep my other stairs, I thought.  And so I did.  Then I made my way down to the basement, and noticed my mother’s rooster.  The rooster was not really my sort of thing, but my mother liked him a lot, and I liked him  because she did.  Since I didn't want him in my kitchen, I had put him where I could enjoy him, but not too much.  Unfortunately, one of his little legs was broken, but with careful arrangement, he could still stand and his injury was not too noticeable.  I really should fix that rooster, I thought.  Of course, I had been thinking this every time I saw him for about five years. But today would be the day.  I brought him upstairs, and then had to find the glue.  This meant groveling around under my sink.  There is so much useless stuff here, I thought.  I had better get rid of some of it.  And so I did.  I eventually found the glue and fixed the rooster.  I felt that I had really accomplished something – something that I had put off for so many years.  To celebrate my accomplishment, I made myself a cup of tea, went to sit and sip it in the living room, and thought, “What is that vacuum cleaner doing here?”

I guess my mother’s problem was genetic!