You see, sometime before Christmas, I did a little winter cleaning. No one was coming for the holidays and many of my clients were shut down. It was the perfect opportunity.
Then we decided to have a family gift exchange at my house. With time running out and no chance to run to the recycling center, I piled the recyclables in the trunk of my car to drop off later.
Around that time, a couple of interpreters went out of town for the holidays, causing a spate of panicked requests for someone to cover court cases. Figuring I might be able to swing by the Goodwill on my way to cover these last-minute assignments, I put a few bags in the back seat of the car.
A few days later, I took the bags back out – it was time for the annual Oma-Granddaughter-Borrowed Granddaughter Sleepover, which couldn’t be pushed out any further if we still wanted to claim the word “annual” in the title. The trunk was still full.
Somewhere in there, my dishwasher decided that umpteen-eleven was old enough, and quit.
The clothes washer died of empathy a few days later.
Also somewhere in there, a friend and I went to check out my parents’ old house. The workmen hired to paint and repair were done and it was time to get the house ready for sale. I’m no good at those details but Arline is, so off we went.
Maybe all the good ideas and planning alerted Murphy. Before we could do anything to the house, I came down with a bug. Not a 24-hour bug, mind you. The kind that makes you want to climb under the covers and whine for your mommy to bring you juice and a good book.
So I pulled my laptop into bed with me and doggedly plugged away at those projects, instead. They would have gone faster if it weren’t for the unexpected naps. Once, my son Adrian walked in and found me face-down on the laptop, snoring. He considerately turned the lights out and left me there.
Just as the bug was beginning to subside, the real estate agent told me that someone wanted to see the house. So I climbed out of my sick bed, marshaled the troops in the form of my offspring and daughter-in-law, and took off for Mom and Dad’s old place. We cleaned, scrubbed, vacuumed and mopped. Or rather, they did. I mostly lay on the couch and played queen.
We found two cupboards that I’d forgotten to clear out earlier. I told the kids what needed to stay in the house and asked them to put everything else in the back of my car.
After a while, Patrick came in and asked if he could use the front seat, too.
In less than four hours, the house was clutter-free and ready to be seen. My car, on the other hand, was filled half-way to the roof with cleaning products, vagrant curtain rods, throw rugs, a bucket of clothespins and countless other odds and ends.
The next night, the color on my ancient TV started to do things color shouldn’t do.
My fever let up two days later. Figuring that much of the stuff in my car was destined for Goodwill, I crammed those bags– the ones I’d removed to make room for granddaughters –into the overflowing back seat.
You would think I might have remembered all of this and postponed my trip to the grocery store.
You would think that somewhere a sane fragment of my brain might whisper that shopping bags have to be transported home.
You would be wrong.
Under the amused gaze of the employee herding shopping carts, I surveyed the garage-sale-on-wheels that is my car. I carefully stuffed bags of groceries into what nook and cranny I could find. And I swore that this year – this year – I will learn to keep a few less balls in the air at a time.
Right after I take down the ones still on the Christmas tree.
