Dirt Don't Hurt: Beautiful days make for a terrible daily life
Picture it: A husband comes home from work and the house looks like it’s been ransacked and abandoned. The remnants of breakfast are still strewn about the kitchen and there is evidence someone ate lunch and left another layer of dishes with ketchup drying and crusty pasta, still in the strainer.
He begins to worry. He knows his wife had a day off work and should be here. He knows his children are all older and don’t require the kind of attention they once did. He looks around. There is no sign of anyone, anywhere. There also is no sign of dinner. He is confused. He is hungry.
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He starts searching around the house. The beds are not made. The bathrooms are empty. There are no lights on in the basement, the closets or anywhere else his wife might be hiding. He wonders if this is a cruel joke or if something might be wrong as he walks through the family room, stepping over blankets and pillows from last night’s family TV gathering. Heart racing, he walks out the back door.
It was a beautiful summer day.
There sat his wife and a portion of his children, laughing in the sunshine, drinking lemonade, getting a little too much sun and ignoring the accumulating mess inside. He is not surprised. He knows his wife all too well.
She's just a fair weather tinkerer
That’s me, by the way.
Every time there is a beautiful day of weather in lovely Northeast Ohio, I can’t help but do two things. First, I remark repeatedly how nice a day it is. Over and over. To everyone willing to listen. The second thing I do is ignore all the things I should be doing and do whatever I can to enjoy the weather.
Maybe I’m tinkering in my flowerbeds. Maybe I’m riding a bike. Maybe I’m just sitting outside breathing in the smells of summer with a cup of coffee and a book that I don’t want to end. What I’m not doing is the dishes.
According to the internet (which never lies), anyone reading these words averages 164 days of sunshine per year, and some of those days happen in the winter. That means 201 days are cloudy, rainy, snowy or just dreary. This doesn’t even count for the hot and humid days of late summer when the sun just sizzles.
In my mind, I’ve got way more than 201 days to make the beds, dust the trinkets, prepare full meals, and do the dishes, so more often than not these things will get done.
But if it’s a perfect summer day with the right temperature and sunshine? Hopefully he’ll join us and we’ll just order pizza. As it should be.
Karrie McAllister can be reached at mcallisterkarrie@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Ignore the to-do list and head outside on beautiful summer days
