wallowing

Remember what I was saying about being a bad housekeeper? Well, the worst of it is the fights with my husband about it. As if I don't already feel badly enough about it.

We used to have these fights frequently until, I guess, he decided to give up. But the issue still comes up occassionally. In this instance, we had been out to our friends brand NEW bigger-than-ours house. Which was spotlessly clean and immaculately decorated with all new goods. Never mind that we were invited and therefore, I'm sure, lady of the house was cleaning furiously (in fact she told me all through her Christmas break she has been putting in dawn-to-dusk cleaning and decorating days). Still, my house gets compared to hers. Why can't he compare my house on the days we have had huge parties that we spent hours preparing for? No, he compares my everyday noones-gonna-see-it house to hers. How insulting.

The worst of it was, I felt like I had actually done an extraordinary amount of cleaning over the weekend. Dishes, a couple of loads of laundry, the bathroom, vacuumed a couple of rooms, put away ALL the toys into Jacob's room. But no, it did not look even close to the "other" house. Because, for one thing, we have 2 kids, and she has none. And we have a buildup of clutter to attack, not packed away in moving boxes to be tackled one at a time, but spread over most of the house. And, I guess, most of all, I just am not a good housekeeper - not motivated, not concerned.

So, this morning, I am torn between cleaning like a mad-woman to prove that I am worth something as a wife and mother and person, or wallowing in shame and doing nothing. Right now I am choosing wallowing.