Thursday, January 14, 2010

A Himalayan sense of accomplishment


I am generally not a procrastinator...
Actually though putting things off can sometimes be a good thing. Like recently, I did this with laundry until the mounds of clothes were in a word...epic? mammoth? nay Himalayan.  (This is after all one of the things I like to chronically put off-- because it has no deadline and I thrive on open-endedness. (This is why I made sure to have 3 weeks worth of underwear and plenty of clothes in college.)

See as I realized today, had I done this in a "load- per-day" timely fashion, it would not be a monumental task. And were it not a monumental task, it would not yield a monumental sense of accomplishment upon completion. The process of reverse-entropy on this scale is truly impressive, a sight to behold. Cubic yards of twisted robot bedsheets and footie pajamas artfully transformed into neatly folded piles spanning my entire family room (please note full usage of the 400+ sq ft) turning it into a mini scale version of the man-made world archipelago in Dubai (PBS documentary watchers anyone?) Then hefting the baskets upstairs (thats how my arms stay cut- with loads like this if I keep it up they'll probably better than when I played lacrosse).

Revealing this to the public may paint me in a less than glamourous light, but I promise no one was injured in this stunt, no real neglect. No one was forced to go naked or wear dirty clothes. While my husbands drawer now has 16 more pairs of socks in it, he was no worse for wear. The sock count runs around 5 dozen pairs, so as you can see I could have drawn out this laundry strike shenanigan even longer. (This might also give insight into why I insist upon very spacious, deep drawered dressers?
It also meant letting my kids shuttle the baskets from the laundry room to the family room and dump them out- something they love. Nothing like achieving Mach II maximum velocity with a slick plastic basket on polished hardwoods given a good 50 foot straightaway.

We tried to see how tall of a mound we could build, had a rousing round of king of the laundry mountain. My 2 year re-enacted what seemd to be scenes from Lawrence of Arabia with a blue tea towel on his head.  Something this big called for a party, so mom put on a movie (arise joyous shouts from my TV- limited children) They are cursed with a mother with a child development background seeks to create some cultural growth restriction and therefore my kids don't watch TV much. (Don't get me started on the correlations between violent media and behavior or marketing influence on children- thats when former college professor smart mama pops out, wearing her studious looking glasses and instantly descend into journal and statistic-speak-it's not pretty- just be glad you never had to listen to me lecture for 6 hrs hours straight. )

So don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today, unless it's laundry because you might miss out on a party and a Himalyan sense of accomplishment!

7 comments:

LL said...

i enjoy laundry. And it's a GOOD thing because it's NEVER ENDING over here!
Sounds like you guys had LOADS of fun ;-)

Shelah said...

Only three weeks??? I'd call that a Mt. Timpanogos. You need to go six like you used to do in college before you reach Everest status.

Unknown said...

PROCRASTINATION:
yields himalayan sense of accomplishment.
I'm submitting that as definition 'C' in Webster's.
I practice your type of mountain climbing regularly.
I just never practiced that same thought process. Now I can marry the two!

(You would not want to be my friend if you knew how much tv has been on over here this week...)

Company EIGHT said...

Hey, I would come and do your laundry everyday, if you would cook my family the lovely meals you make!

Swimmingmom said...

That's a good way of looking at it and enjoying it!

whitney said...

HILARIOUS!

Ditto on Jenny's comment.

Jake and Madi said...

I love that your kids don't watch tv. I remember when there was some kind of church thing going on and Syd and I were watching some of the kids in the ward. We put on a movie and Bennet was awe struck. I don't think he moved for a good twenty minutes. When you came to pick him up you said he never watches tv and I was awe stuck! It really is such a good thing, tv is pretty much a waste of time.