Turn Down Service

I just cleaned the kitchen counters. Well, not really cleaned, but recycled the piles of papers that were stacked up. I put the cereal bowls from the counter into the dishwasher instead of into the sink, that black hole of a waiting area that all family members add to and add to until someone finally gets fed up enough to load  the dishwasher.

If you are a long-time reader, you may remember that Tim's inexplicable premarital request was for "Clean Counters." He later attempted to renegotiate and request something a little more frisky and a lot less practical, but I was not up for it. A deal is a deal. So I've pretty much kept the counters clean all these years.

But this week, a week where it seems as if everything I try to do ends in crushing disappointment, I just let things pile up. I didn't write. I didn't straighten. I took off my clothes  at night and threw them on the floor. I considered wallowing. It's hot as heck outside, so grumpiness and wallowing might be in order even if I didn't seem to be running up against brick walls at every turn. A workman left the back door open one day, running up our electric bill and filling the house with mosquitoes and I could barely muster an, "Oh well."

One morning, a 30 second burst of gumption hit me and I stripped Tim's and my bed. I washed and dried the sheets and deposited them back in our room. That night, Tim was out late at a softball game. Come bedtime, I looked at that pile of sheets and knew there was no way I was going to be able to do the tugging and pulling and humping of the king-sized mattress necessary to get even just the fitted sheet on, so I crawled on top of the lovely bare mattress pad and fell asleep.

At various times yesterday I thought of putting the sheets on, but other things took precedence. Like yelling at Shadow that it was NOT time for her nightly meal at noon. And giving in and feeding her by 2 pm. And celebrating my beautiful daughter's 12th birthday with lunch out and a long anticipated trip to the mall for a  CELL PHONE!

When I headed to bed last night, way past my bedtime, I pulled back the covers to find crisp white sheets and a sleeping husband. Tim had made the bed. And I got to experience that rare and wonderful feeling of crawling into a bed made by someone else. It's just different somehow, isn't it? This transformed my messy bedroom with piles of clothes on the floor and a few wayward mosquitoes into a hotel. Maybe not a luxury hotel, but at the very least a La Quinta Inn.

The sheets felt great, I slept well, and I awoke with the will to de-crapify the kitchen counters once again.

Sometimes it's the little things.