There has been a pile of small kitchen towels sitting at the end of my bed for the last week.  I folded them last Sunday after they sat in the dryer for 3 days.  I sleep, make my bed, sleep, make my bed and each day I look at the pile and each day I walk downstairs to my kitchen without taking the pile with me.  The boys insulated lunch bags have been sitting on the hallway bench since Friday.  The plastic tupperware and warm ice pack still living inside.  I walk by the bench, look at the lunch bags and keep on walking.  The stack of magazines that need to be recycled; the glass of water sweating on the desk downstairs; the granola bar Max decided not to eat last week which still sits on the counter next to the candle I just lit.


I have a clean house.  The floors are vacuumed, the counters are disinfected, the bathrooms are addressed on a regular basis.  But I move the collection of shoes by the front door to one side - sweep that area - move the same collection of shoes to the other side of the hallway - sweep - leaving the collection of shoes to deal with another time.  My boys will sit on a stack of artwork they brought home from school and not even notice.  None of us knowing where to put the papers so all of us deciding to leave them until we discover a proper home for them.


How come some chores seem more exhausting to address than others?  I make my bed every morning without fail.  But bringing that pile of kitchen towels downstairs - ugh!  I buy and put away groceries practically everyday but throwing out the rubbery carrots in the vegetable draw - sigh!   I sweep the entryway almost every day.  But collecting the pile of shoes, walking them 3 feet down the hall to put them into the closet - yawn!


It recently took me 3 days to return a Redbox movie.  My dishwasher has been clean for 2 days and I am drinking out of a paper cup I found in the pantry.  Here is my thought process - if I reach into the dishwasher to get a clean glass, I will be obliged to unload the whole dishwasher and I don't have time for all of that, I just want a glass of water.


Am I lazy?  No.  Silly?  Probably.  Seems like I spend more mental energy not picking up or not putting away or not throwing out.   But honestly, it feels like I only have a certain amount of energy to contribute to running the show every day and those piles or stray objects move to the bottom of the list I don't even realize I am operating from.  I am not losing sleep over piles and random collections. Dust bunnies haunt me but a mountain of shoes by the front door does not.  So when you visit our home, gently put your shoes on the top of the shoe mountain and kindly move the pile of artwork to another chair and have a seat.  When I bring you a glass of water in a paper cup, you can smile, knowing the dishwasher is full of clean dishes. And when I come to your house, I hope you will show me your stack of junk mail that hasn't made it to the shredder.  I will feel right at home.

The other day I woke up - again.  I don't mean the - I am finished sleeping and now it's time to open my eyes.  I mean I woke up in the middle of my life and discovered I had been absent for a little while.  There is a book that I read that refers to these moments as strange mental blank spots.  Some people refer to them as spiritual awakenings.  In that gorgeous song it says ...I was blind and now I see.  I call these moments sober blackouts.


Back in the old days when I woke up naked on a friends couch with a small damp towel covering my not-so-private parts wondering where I was, how I had gotten there and why was my ankle swollen after a night on the town with my stranger drunken friends - that was the kind of blackout I had come to know and dread.  Waking from those blackouts was horrifying and embarrassing and temporarily sobering.  But with all of my might, I was unable to answer those questions; unable to piece together the hazy memories of the night before.  But I haven't had a drink in quite some time so waking up in the middle of my life, as if I was in a blackout, is a strange experience.


The good news is that I was fully clothed when I woke up.  My body parts were in tact.  My house was in order.  My children were playing Pokemon on the living room floor.  I get so busy in the day-to-dayness of my life that I forget to look up every once in a while and take note.  I walk the dog and fix breakfast for the boys and dig out clean clothes from the dryer to wear and drop them off at school and drive to work and listen to spiritual teachings and work at work and eat the same salad from Trader Joe's for lunch and drive home and talk to my mom or sister or friend and pick up the boys and fix dinner and coach football and cheer on soccer and walk the dog - and did I feed the dog - and do more laundry and sit for a minute and get ready for bed and read and write a little and check on the boys one last time and sleep.  Day after day after day after day with a little variation like bake a cake for the cake walk (I won 3rd place) or pay a bill or go to church or volunteer hours of time helping others but mostly day after day after day is the same routine.  Until one day I wake up.


And what I see today is - I have a good life.  Whew!  I never know what I am going to see when I wake up from one of these moments.  One time I woke up spiritually dead in my studio apartment in Chicago - wait, where did my 20's go?  Years later I woke up in the middle of a long-term lesbian relationship - wait, where did the men go?  Another time I woke up dating an ex-con who lived with another woman - wait, where did my integrity go?  So I was thrilled to look around my lovely neighborhood, with my sweet boys, playing with little Tag and all of us having a good, quiet, drama free time.  Each awakening reveals some startling fact about me that I am supposed to address.  This time, I am learning to accept and trust that life is good - really good.
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