House work

Good morning.

I am not a good housekeeper. I admit it.  I don't know why, but I do attribute it to my scattered attention.  Why is my attention scattered? Genes.

I got the scattered-attention genes in the family. Some got 'em, some didn't.  Most of the people in our family seem to have overcome the scattered attention syndrome.  I never did.  Well, there have been periodic respites that have shown  me that I could have overcome my affliction if things went right.

In my defense, they never did.  When I had little kids around, they took all my attention, which they should have.  I was not able to do two things at the same time, so housework took a back seat.  Then I had to go to work which was exhausting to me. Schoolteaching is a very attention-using job...hard for a person like me.

The process of organization is hard for me. I have to work slowly and painfully with utmost care to get an assortment of things into some kind of order. This isn't an excuse; it's a fact.  There is not enough time in the world for me to sort things AND show results.

That apologeia isn't the reason I wrote this post, however. When I was putting things into the dishwasher this a.m. I got to thinking about group housekeeping.  A friend of mine  onc told me about a male friend whom she was seriously considering getting married to.  Until the fateful night at a group dinner.

"After dinner, we all jumped up, took our plates and the serving dishes off the table, straightened our chairs and went to the kitchen with the dirty plates...and he just sat there!"

I would be the guy just sitting there.  I would never never presume to dictate the cleaning/clearing of a host's table and the disposition of the dirty dishes.  To me, it is a presumption to do things at another person's house unless asked. Specifically asked. Even then I wouldn't want to, but I probably would participate to an extent.  In my defense, I'll say that my father would have done the same.  Who are you to be jumping up in my house and dictating the process of affairs?

I agree that, in these servantless days, it's a good idea for family members to clear up after themselves, and so forth.  But that presumes a familiarity with the family, the routines, and a certain permission to get involved.  I think a hostess is a hostess and a guest is a guest.

There used to be, in the old days of kings and queens and their retinues, an "order" of precedence. Every person had a place in the order, from no. 1 to no. 150.  People came in and went out, and sat down to dinner in that order.  "Go, and stand not on the order of your going!" is an order (in Shakespeare?) that tells folks to just GIT and right now!!

All that busy-ing around seems to me like the disturbance of an order, rather than the implementing of an order upon the events of a party evening. Even if most of the people were "family," with only one guest, it seems to me that the fact of one guest moves the event out of the realm of family and into the realm of entertaining. That's the way I think.

I have had all kinds of trouble, therefore, with a common social occasion of recent years: the "pot luck" party.  Heavens, what a mess.  How many times have I had guests rushing in at the last minute with things frozen that had to be stored, or things that had to be placed in an oven for thirty minutes, or wrapped things from the supermarket bakery (ugh) that had to be unwrapped, sliced, and placed on a platter (yours)...and covered with plastic (yours) to await the moment of serving.  No. Awful. Talk about order! It's the height of disorder.

When I have people over (hah--when is that?) I want to be the arbiter of the menu, the food preparation, the choice of style and presentation.  Not a jumble of hastily selected things laid out for a pack of mannerless hogs to pile on a plate.  And there is sometimes the guest who chooses the complicated approach to presentation. I've half expected somebody, sometime, to come in and ask for two broomsticks to set over two kitchen chairs so she can make the spun sugar a la Fanny Farmer that she's always been dying to try.

Well, I've said my say.  You may not agree with me, but I said it.  I hope you understood what I said. Not all of us think alike.  I guess that is the point of this long harangue. YAZZYBEL