Don’t Tell Me

If I had a true grasp of how much work I need to do in the next five hours I would not be sitting here typing about it. I would be curled up under my desk crying, praying for Jesus to return so the world could end and I wouldn’t have to clean up from house guests, grade papers that are due tomorrow, make a salad to take to dinner tonight, or shower. I don’t think Jesus will mind that I haven’t done my hair. As a matter of fact, I’m hoping the hair I get on my heavenly body will be a lot better than the hair I have on my earthly one. If I could put in a request I’d ask for hair a la Amy Grant, circa 1998. A girl can dream.

We had a great Thanksgiving week in Atlanta and rolled back here last Saturday night around midnight. Our house guests came Sunday evening about 7. While I was thrilled to have Julie, Bruce and their three children here, I didn’t have a chance to recover from our week away. So now I’m in the process of recuperating from being gone and having a house full of children who ran wild. They were in and out of the house, up and down the stairs… holy cow, they had a great time together.

The kids are trying to make sure they’re caught up on their studies and I’m trying to balance the checkbook. We may or may not have any money in our account; I have so many debit charges from our week away and each time I enter one the balance in Quicken just keeps going lower, much lower.

I need to really clean the bathrooms, change the sheets, mop the kitchen floor, dust the family room (my all-time least favorite chore), do 17 loads of laundry, and, as I mentioned above, take a shower. Yet here I sit, typing about all that needs to be done, doing nothing. I am a procrastinator. I work well under pressure, but I would prefer to learn how to pace myself and work a bit at a time. But I would always know I had a cushion of more time, so I wouldn’t do it and I’d end up right back where I am now.

I also need to make a salad to take to dinner tonight. A lovely family from our new church invited us over and all I have to bring is a salad. You’d think I could handle that, but for some reason I’m feeling major pressure to take a really good salad. A salad to be remembered. A salad so good I would be asked for the recipe and all the women in the church would look at me and think, “Wow! There goes the lady who makes the greatest salad in the world!”

That is not like me. Anyone who really knows me knows this is not the kind of thing I usually care about. See - there is something wrong! I ended a sentence in a preposition. I must be tired.

Even so, I’ve candied walnuts to put in a spinach salad with mandarin oranges and raspberry vinaigrette. I actually googled “salad” to come up with this. I am now officially worried about me. I hope it’s just lack of sleep…

Maybe what I really need to do is take a nap. Now that’s something I think I could do right away. The dust will certainly still be there tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.