The Quest for Perfection
No one’s perfect; so why, at 75, am I still trying?
I’m lying-in bed, trying to settle down enough to get asleep. But my brain keeps working overtime.
I’ve made a list of things “to-do” the next day. I’ve read that writing down tasks can put those tasks out of your head.
It didn’t help.
Many of the household tasks I felt I “had” to do were too difficult for me — with ongoing upper and lower back pain and shoulder pain from a badly torn rotator cuff.
We live in 170-year-old stone farmhouse; an addition was added fifty years ago; it sits on almost 3 acres of lawn, pond, meadows, and woods. There is a lot of household tasks with my hundreds of books and many of my husband’s collectables. We also have four cats.
That there are a lot of household tasks is an understatement. Unfortunately, my 81-year-old husband and my 75-year-old self have problems, physically, that prevent us from doing these routinely. We have some paid help and my daughter lives with us and helps around working on her PhD.
But I grew up in the 50s and 60s when the household tasks were relegated to the woman of the house. If something was a mess — it was HER fault. If food wasn’t prepared — it was HER fault. If clothes weren’t washed, pressed, and put away — it was HER fault.
