Balance, Me

Today I did the most mundane things imaginable. I slept in a little, which I never do, and woke feeling a little dazed and groggy. I did dishes, two loads, and made a savory bread pudding and sauteed zucchini for lunch. I cleaned up toys, the ultimate Sisyphusian task, and sorted through a small mountain of clothes I've been avoiding for months, storing some, washing some, putting some in a bag for charity. I didn't spend a lot of time actively playing with the girls, but I was with them all day long, able to build the fence for Lily's barn and find her tape to make the stuffed animal dogs new collars. I held Annika when she wanted to be held, and chased her when she wanted to be silly. When I went upstairs to put away the clothes we were keeping, they came too. I folded; they arranged the doll house (or pretended to eat small pieces of furniture, depending). At night, I worked, some, sent some work-related emails, cleared my desk for the morning. I made Lily's lunch, ground the coffee beans, set the dog dishes on the counter for the morning.

I didn't do anything today for pleasure. I didn't really read, call a friend, lie on the couch and close my eyes. But consciously, I allowed myself to forget about the rest of the world. Today did not feel like a race. It did not feel like a challenge. It did not feel like an entanglement of commitments and scheduling and frustrations. What I did, I did well, not sloppily or half-assed. None of it mattered, I was about to write, but I'm not so sure I think that's true.

The Phantom Tollbooth is doing a number on me. In it, the Terrible Trivium, "demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs," tells Milo, "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing." Maybe working mothers shouldn't read The Phantom Tollbooth. Today, if not tomorrow, I disagree with Terrible Triv. I needed a day for the easy and useless jobs. Not just to get them done--I could have waited on everything with no great price--but because in the doing of them I backed off the idea that life has to be largely about what I "really should be doing." And that was absolutely necessary.