The List of Unending Jobs That Will Kill Me

Mowing the lawn yesterday, I realized that this job is unending. There are those chores that just never seem to end, like doing the dishes. There will always be dirty dishes. You’re not going to stop eating, so the dishes won’t stop getting dirty. Of course you can’t stop cleaning them, so the job never ends.  Mowing the lawn is like that, too. You are never done. Oh, you might be done for the day, but yardwork is never really finished. There are always plants to cut back, weeds to pull, lawns to be mowed or watered. Something always has to be done.

I read a blog post last night about the word chores, and how the writer hated that word, and how it was like nails on a chalkboard. (Forgive me, I forgot where I read it. If you wrote that post and are reading this, message me and I will edit this here to credit you.) Personally, I use the words chores and jobs interchangeably, but I see what they mean. Either way, it’s not fun. Whatever you call them, sometimes I think they are going to kill me.

When my time does come, it will likely be because of one or more of the following chore-jobs:

• • Doing the dishes might kill me out of boredom. Either that, or the constant dishpan hands I have will crack worse than they usually do, and then I’ll just bleed to death.

• • Laundry will likely kill me out of exhaustion, from running up the stairs to get to the laundry area. Maybe someday a violently unbalanced load that shakes the whole house will have me jumping upstairs like an Olympic hurdler set on fire, and then I will simply trip and fall down the stairs.

• • Cleaning probably won’t kill me—it will just seem like it’s slowly killing me. Killing me softly with housework … killing meeeee, softly, with housework. Everybody sing it with me!
  • Yardwork could kill me because in the summer here it is something like 105 degrees outside. Someday dehydration will make me see things and I’ll just run over my foot with the mower. Actually, the yard I don’t mind, it’s the work part that I don’t like. (Now, just wait for a post from me in about three months called, “I Hate My Yard.”)

 

 

I would rather have to sit through a Justin Bieber concert strapped into a chair with my eyes pried open like in  A Clockwork Orange; then while mindlessly humming one of the songs as I walked to my car afterward, get beat up by a local high school football team. I would rather have all that happen than do yardwork.

And yet, every week I head outside to do just that. My main motivation is my daughter. I really just want to make things nice for her, so she has a great place to play when we are at home. She loves to go outside. She would stay out there all day if she could. That’s really why we bought this house, even though Piper wasn’t even here yet at the time. It’s funny that even before kids exist, they still affect your thoughts and plans. It’s like they were always here, and in a way that’s true. So yes, I’ll keep doing the chores and yardwork. But mostly for you, Little One.

What’s your least favorite chore? What motivates you to keep doing all that you do?