of entropy and exponents

oh where or where has my clean house gone?

oh where or where can it be?

with its vacuumed carpets and dusted shelves

oh where oh where can it be?

I often muse upon the days of my first married life when dinner was superb, the table was neatly set with placements. I spent my evenings reading short stories and watching good foreign films with my husband, prepping lectures or preparing to head off to some exotic locale on a medical mission. Somehow I thought it would always be like that peaceful evenings with with enjoyable activities. Everything was clean and in it's place and although there was a stack of papers to be filed on top of my filing cabinet it was less than 2 inches tall. And I wonder what happened to that?

Then I remind myself that our New England home is more than 3x the size of our bay area apartment and we have accumulated more than 3x the "stuff". Hence 3 x the surfaces to clean. We have 3/4 of an acre to keep mowed and weeded and landscaped as opposed to maintenance free living. We have three boys. Which means more than 3x times the mess and frequent interruptions for every task. Truly children have an exponential relationship here in their ability to create mess. The errands and phone calls and bills are endless.



I used to breeze through Safeway with nary a care, now getting through the aisles of Walmart with one of the monster "family carts" requires much self talk ("I am good, I am patient, I will survive"). My life is punctuated by drawings on the walls, a stuffed animals being given tastes of grape soda!

I have respect for the law of entropy but I never realized how it plays out over the life cycle-- order to chaos- please tell me it will not continue on this trajectory of chaos until I die because man I am already tired!

1. a house to live in

2. reading a good book to my boys

3. playing on the floor