Entropy

I am a lousy housewife.

By "housewife" I don't mean any sort of traditional "husband role/wife role" commentary.

I mean I am a lousy wife to my house.

When we purchased our first (very little) house, I was a pretty good housewife. Now, it wasn't a regularly clean house by any means. But I took great pride in painting the inside, situating the furniture just so, having fresh flowers around, etc. This may not always be the way the house WAS but it was the way I wanted it to be.

This house was purchased with all sorts of charming nature in mind. We even had bed-and-breakfast sort of aspirations (hysterical laughter, now). We HAVE gotten most of the rooms painted. But in general, it is a repository for furniture that people give us, and a piece or two we have purchased. Nothing goes together. An artistic eye might be able to make it go together, but my artistic eye fell asleep from world-weariness long ago. Each painted room has something that's not quite done yet. The kitchen needs a third coat. The den needs molding. This poor house begs for a good wife, and instead it's stuck with me.

Mark is a good house husband. He made sure the water pump got fixed yesterday (and dug out the pump access) and he's out their mowing the fields now on his tractor.

It just seems like all of my wifely duties are constantly degrading ones. If I get up in the morning and clean up all the breakfast things, wipe down all the counters, clean off the stove, vacuum the floors, clean up the bathroom...the next morning, gosh, it needs to be done all over again.

Tomorrow we are having overnight company so I am cleaning the house. Company is a good thing. Things that we tolerate (a dingy shower curtain) get cleaned up for company.

I'm going see if I can shake out my wifely skills and wake up that poor artistic eye.