So, I mop my floors on a Monday night.
I’m one for order and I thrive on structure. Routine gives me a firm lattice work from which to steadily move from. I find I know where I’m meant to be and who should be there with me when I step into the start of the week off a shiny, clean floor.
Mondays for me are busy. I know Bob Geldoff hates them, but I smash as much into a Monday as I can. My day starts at 5 o’clock in the morning. It’s about 8 o’clock at night when I finally get to my floorboards. In the 15 hours between these two points I’ve moved through my own yoga practice, taught an early class, clocked an 8 hour physio shift, made 3 meals as well as 4 beds and active parented via tennis lesson cheering and reader signing. My long Monday quietly closes with a house scented with my fatigued sweat mixed with lemon essence on the floors and nag champa through the walls. Reflecting a packed up, ordered and clean home from which to step into our family week.
Last Monday, my lover bowled in from work just before 8:00pm. I raised my bent mop-pushing body and showed him my weary but satisfied eyes. I pointed to the glad-wrapped plate holding his now cold dinner. He stared at me. A look of complete incomprehension as to how I was moving at all. He told me I was crazy and that I was always cleaning. He asked me why yet again, I was pushing the mop over the floors.
My weary eyes widened. My first thought was that I wanted to take the mop I was pushing across the floors and push it right up his arse. My second thought was to suggest I’d push it across the floors a little less often if he would ever push the freakin’ thing at all.
But that would be reactive. And like a red flag to my taurean lover. So I pushed the mop into the lemon scented bucket and in my best calm voice informed him that our house was cleaned once a week. Because that’s what normal people do. They clean their houses weekly. I do it on a Monday. Meaning every Monday night, the floors need to be mopped. And so I mop the floors.
He humphed into his smart phone and nuked his evening meal.
I continued to push my mop.
It was about 10 minutes of uncomfortable silence. Him believing me to be anal. Me believing him to be a pig. Until he said in a victorious voice
“Ha!”
In his silence he had been googling how often one should mop one’s floors. And maid-google had concurred that the mopping of floors is to be done every second week.
But swept every day.
Think abdominal twists, partner core and bastrika breath.
There can be such dichotomy about what we should and shouldn’t do these days. And even though someone (or a smart phone) tells you your doing it wrong – in fact what you’re doing just kinda feels right. I’ve seen trends come and go not only in my own world, but in the worlds of those around me. Jane Fonda told me to bounce my hamstrings. Peter Larkins tells me to sustain longer holds. Wall Street told me greed was good. Friends of the Earth tell me greed will destroy our very fabric. The kinder told my small ones to continually wash their hands. The school tells me now they’re obsessive compulsive. At the end of the day, it’s what resonates as true within us that allows us to know what is the right thing for us to do. Whether it’s time to adjust your yoga pose or time to adjust your cleaning habits, it’s our life and our journey. And we are the best guide at chosing how to live them.
This Monday night, my lover will be late at work. At around 8 o’clock, I’ll be mopping my floors. Not because it’s what my mother told me was right and what maid-google told me was wrong – but because my floors will be dirty and need to be cleaned. It’s a task into which I can feed my fetish to day dream. To create a time where I can have my imagination to myself. Where I can ponder my life’s journey in all it’s mayhem and it’s magic.
While picturing the mop in my hand wedged firmly up my lover’s arse.
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