You Can’t Put it Down

Have you ever had a day where you had so much to do, yet so little motivation to do it?  What stole your motivation? It’s one of those days, you know, one of those days where you have laundry piled in the basket needing to be done, the sheets need to be changed and the dog and cat need brushed. The house could use a good vacuuming and you certainly need to get up and cook dinner sometime that day.  You are out of milk, amongst other things and need to run to the store and yet you just can’t force yourself to do it.   The bathroom is questionable to use, thank goodness no guests are coming? You don’t encourage drop-ins as a rule.

Your dishes from breakfast and lunch are still in the sink unwashed – and starting to stink something fierce. The laundry is spreading a rather pungent aroma, sitting there in the basket, but you give yourself some props for at least having brought it down the stairs.  The dogs are restless as they prance about wanting attention and yet your hear yourself telling them to lie down and be quiet instead of getting up and taking them out (even though you have a twinge of guilt).

It gets late and finally you rush outside to take out the dogs and then settle back in to finish what you were doing, grabbing a bag of chips out of the kitchen for a snack instead of a dinner (knowing its unhealthy).  You tell yourself that the laundry can get done tomorrow and you can catch up on dishes then, since you didn’t get any more of them dirty by eating chips for dinner.

As you head up to bed you glance at the carpet which is a medium warm brown color, you had it picked out and special ordered last year. It is very plush and comfortable to walk on with thick padding underneath. Now it has patches of white fur on it which stick to your socks and spread as you walk about the house (muttering about what possessed you to get white, long furred animals to begin with).  You know that you have issues with fur and dust and dirt bugging you. Apparently though you CAN tolerate it longer than you thought.

You curl up in your bed intending to go to sleep, but you are hooked — you just can’t put it down. You glance at the clock surreptitiously, knowing that you must be up at 4:30am — and it is already 12:30am — you roll back over and groan knowing that 4 hours won’t cut it but likely you won’t even get that.  Finally, at 3:30am you have reached the end and exhausted, you fall asleep snuggled deep in your soft warm blankets in your comfy memory foam bed with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

The alarm clock blares, jolting you out of the sleep you just managed to obtain and you grouchily reach over — not too gently — and slap it, silencing the horrendous and offensive noise.  Your sense of smell takes over and you are not pleasantly reminded of the pungent aroma of unwashed laundry which you took downstairs but didn’t put in the laundry room so it is permeating that far. You stumble out of bed and head to the kitchen to fix a cup of coffee and the stench is overpowering, not to mention the pile of dishes.  Knowing how much work it would take to get the coffee pot filled with water due to the mess, you decide to skip the coffee and grab a soda instead.  You look down and the fur clump on your foot starts to annoy you, as you lean against the wall to pull it off you glance at the carpet in the living room and that’s when it all hits you.

Feeling overwhelmed with growing panic you look around and see everything. Your laundry isn’t done, your dishes aren’t done, and the house smells nasty. There is fur everywhere, your cat is meowing for attention and needs brushed just as badly as the dog who is making a lot of noise at your back door needing to go out. The pets need fed, the cat box needs cleaned out and you still have yet to take a shower and get ready for work. You sigh loudly and you feel very annoyed for just a moment and then you start to laugh at yourself as you realize that only one thing ever seems to be able to do this to you, only one thing possible could cause you to lose sight of what really needed to be done – – A good Story.