Ten on Tuesday [Vol. 53].

1. What are your designated chores in your home?
Being that I still live at home, I am fortunate to only have a limited number of chores. For the most part, the things I'm responsible for are things that my mom doesn't want to do anymore. This means sweeping and mopping the kitchen and hallway floors, cleaning the shower and bathtub, polishing the kitchen cabinets, and cleaning the microwave. Everything else varies - sometimes my mom does it, sometimes she delegates to me.

2. What is your least favorite chore to do around the house?
Dusting. I'm a cleaning perfectionist, so I never do a "quick" dusting unless it's necessary. This means taking down every single thing off my shelves - dusting each of those things if needed - then dusting the shelf and putting everything back. It's a pain.

3. What was your designated chore growing up?
I never had one. Honestly, I didn't do any chores on a regular basis. Once I was old enough, my mom would ask me to dust or vacuum, but only in preparation of guests. Otherwise, she handled it. I never had to take out the garbage or do the dishes, nor was I ever really forced to make my bed (though I did anyway because I was a neat freak).

4. Did you get paid to do chores or was your allowance connected to you completing your chores?
My allowance had nothing to do with chores, as far as I remember. I was always a generally helpful kid - I thought yard work and cleaning were fun, so if my mom asked me to do something, I did it.

5. If you had a bit of extra money, would you hire a cleaning person or would you save the money for something else?
I don't think I would ever hire a cleaning person unless I was working a super stressful full-time job and the housework, for whatever reason, wasn't getting done. Cleaning is enjoyable to me (pick your jaws up off the floor), so I don't think I would ever find it that annoying or tiresome.

6. What chores will you make your kids do around the house?
I will probably be a control freak and not let them do anything. What if they don't get it fully clean? Yeah, I'm that girl.

7. How frequently do you do laundry? Wash your sheets? Dust?
My laundry gets done when one of the following occurs: I run out of underwear I like, the hamper is full, or there's one or more items of clothing in the hamper I want to wear in the upcoming days. That's usually every other week. I think I wash my sheets once a month or so, though I don't really have a schedule. I definitely don't dust as often as I should for somebody who has white furniture in her room, but let's say every six weeks. Basically, it's whenever I get fed up with the layer of dust I keep encountering.

8. Do you have a designated “chore day” during the week?
Nope. But that's because I live at home and I don't have much of a schedule in general.

9. What is your favorite chore–if such a thing exists?
I love what everyone else (typically) hates: cleaning the toilet and doing the dishes. Washing the bathroom sink skeeves me out more than cleaning the toilet, if you'll believe that. But like I said earlier, I enjoy cleaning and chores. Generally my favorite chores of all are when things are super dirty and you can see a really vast improvement as your cleaning. It makes me feel accomplished.

10. Do you do anything to help pass the time while doing chores (music, TV, etc.)?
Music, always.

These questions are a part of Ten on Tuesday which is run by the wonderful Chelsea of Roots and Rings.

my friday in pictures.

This morning, after going through the grueling process of waking myself up, I found out that my boss didn't need me to come in today. Faced with the decision to curl back up in bed for the day or go into super productive mode... I actually went with the latter.

First up: clean up the aftermath of World War III going on outside my house, between us and the squirrels.

Spoiler alert - the squirrels are winning.

My secret weapon and proof that I get to use the Big Boy yard work toys.

My next task was to decorate our front yard for Halloween. This is why I could never leave suburbia, because where else would I be able to practice my mastered art (yes, it's an art) of applying faux spider webs to the landscape?

After that I was pretty much exhausted from how hot it got (make up your mind, fall), so I headed inside for lunch and a poor attempt at cleaning out the bathtub and sink drains, which are both mildly clogged. We had purchased the Turbo Snake which, while semi-helpful with the sink, was basically a waste of money. I quickly moved onto something at which I knew I'd be more successful - an interior design project!

Our living room has a great big wall above the sofa that needed to be filled, and after a bit of brainstorming with my mom, we came up with the idea of matting and framing pieces of pretty color-coordinated paper. Creativity win!

Our big, empty wall.

Frames ...

... plus paper ...

... equals pretty (and fancy)!

The finished product.

It may or may not be evident that the frames aren't exactly even, which is irking the shit out of my perfectionist side. My mom said nobody will notice; I told her it doesn't matter, it's going to continuously give me the shakes. The problem children might just need a different hook to hang on, so I may be able to remedy the situation for the most part. Otherwise though, I'm completely happy with it.

And now, since I got a minimal amount of sleep last night, it's time for a grandma-style Friday night, which means drinking tea and going to bed by ten. Happy Friday and happy three-day weekend!

wherein i admit to liking chores.

This week has just been one of those weeks and I know it's only going to get worse. And I don't mean I "know" in the pessimistic sense, but because something is happening Monday that will not be pleasant and will make me very unhappy, something I can't exactly talk about yet.

(I should also mention that this something is partly why I haven't been blogging, because my mind's all jumbly and it involves someone who reads this, so I can't exactly spill my guts on the matter.)

So.

Until then, I'm keeping my chin up by daydreaming about opening an Etsy shop and doing chores. Well, they're not so much chores as ... home improvement projects. I spent the better part of yesterday avoiding a mental meltdown by stripping the finish off of my brother's dresser drawers, touching up the ceiling paint in three different rooms, and putting the majority of my brother's things back in his room. Because I wanted to. (Okay, and because my mother yelled at me for being lazy and I was so going to prove her wrong).

I've always enjoyed doing chores - cleaning, yard work, and all things home improvement. When I was little, I bubbled with excitement when I could put on my "work" clothes and help dad fix something up in the backyard or put some big piece of new furniture together. If we were painting one of the rooms in the house, it was like Christmas. I still get that way. When it came time to paint my brother's room, which needed to be completed in one day, I bounded out of bed in the morning with just four hours of sleep under my belt. Which, if you know me, is totally crazy.

With the remodeling that went on in my dad and brother's rooms, I've had plenty to do and it's been glorious. Plus, it's a decent distraction when you're trying not to think of other things. There's nothing like zoning out as Lady Gaga blasts from your iPod and focusing on the task at hand.

The added benefit of all of this is that I feel ridiculously accomplished. It felt great to say that I did the majority of the work sanding down wall patches and painting both rooms, and I can't wait to completely re-finish my brother's dresser. I don't have much to do these days, so waking up to a long to-do list - and completing the tasks - is somewhat invigorating.

So, even for a completely shitty day mentally, I was damn productive. And that feels really good.

busy bee.

Has it really been two weeks? Really?

When I started writing this post, I thought it had only been a week since my last post. Wrong-O (or as my mother would say - because she's weird like that - wrong-o, long-o).

Anyway.

In addition to another round of feeling sorry for myself, I've spent the past week being the pseudo mom of the house. On Tuesday, my mom had surgery to remove her gall bladder and to do something about her herniated umbilical cord. I say "do something" because I'm no medical genius and since I don't exactly know what a hernia even is, I can't say what it is one does to correct it.

I've decided it's very weird when your mother is incapacitated. My mom has rarely been majorly sick in my lifetime. In fact, I couldn't even cite another instance where she was forced into bed because of illness or surgery. So in my recollection of life in this house, there has never been a day where my mom isn't being my mom.

This, of course, means that many of her duties fall to me, while my dad takes care of the rest (and my brother kinda just keeps getting to do whatever he wants). Mostly I've been doing what you'd expect - cleaning, laundry, helping with meals, and doing dishes. OH, the dishes. My dad refuses to do dishes, so it's always my task. Quite frankly, I'm glad to do it to the extent that he's terrible at it. But I'm getting so sick of it. I have come to the conclusion that there will definitely be a dish washer in my future home, NO compromises.

On top of all that, my "deal" with my parents about living here is that in lieu of rent, I have to do five hours of housework per week. Not a bad deal, but of course, this means I get to do everything nobody else wants to. I washed my dad's MESS of a car last weekend, I've trimmed the hedges and raked the yard twice already, and then there was today. Today I had the wonderful task of re-painting the gate to our backyard and the piece of fence on the opposite side of the house. And we have a chain-link fence. Right. Never mind that I picked the windiest day to do this and my drop cloth was fluttering in the wind, but the silver paint I was using isn't exactly washable. After finishing the job, I examined my arms and saw a few little drops and thought I had done a decent job of not turning myself into the tin man. Until I came inside and looked in the bathroom mirror and discovered that - as usual - I had gotten little pin-prick-sized droplets all over my face. Cut to me using paint thinner to remove it. PAINT THINNER. ON MY FACE.

Add that to the humongous pile of dishes I got to do from my dad making eggplant parm, and you'll understand why I promptly treated myself to a vanilla chai latte and chocolate iced donut from Dunkin Donuts.