guilt trips...the vacations you never want to take

Today was Saturday. My usual routine is to run from chore to errand to chore and continue this procedure until I either run out of items on my To Do list or I collapse, whichever comes first. The older I get, the sooner the collapsing occurs. I have found myself taking little cat naps in between big chores and making excuses for why I shouldn't start the next item on my list. Hangnails are a great excuse! I even give myself a very long "break" and, if I'm not passing out on the couch, I search for movies on TV that I can watch so I can have at least a two-hour break. Once I start watching the movie I feel it is very impolite to turn it off. Those actors are doing their very best to entertain me and who am I to "click" them into oblivion. Besides, then I'd have to actually go back to working. Ha!

Part of my compulsion for doing all these chores and being able to check each and every one off my list is that I'm always on a trip...a guilt trip, self-imposed. I will be on my death bed, ready for the last breath of life and hoping that when the movie of my life flashes before my eyes, it won't involve only dustbusters, Swiffers and whirling-cupped vacuum cleaners. There is a little voice in my head, actually a very loud and pushy voice, that tells me I have to have a clean house and it must be cleaned every week without exception or I will die instantly and people will come to my house and discover that I was a secret slob and that dust bunnies abound. That same voice tells me that my lawn must be mowed and my flowers clipped when their blooms are drooping (heck, my blooms have been drooping for some time and no one has clipped them
--thank goodness). Ms. Voce Grande tells me that everything must be put away, my bed made, my towels hung precisely (no extra piece hanging down in front of the other or, heaven forfend, crookedly), my spices alphabetized (one reason to have minimum spices in the cabinet), my clothes must never touch the floor, always be hung up and I must never mix types of clothing--there will be no pants hanging with blouses or skirts mixed in with sweaters...no, no, no. And so I've always got my bags packed and a ticket in my land for Never Never Land and we're not talking Peter, Wendy, Nanna and the gang (or Johnny Depp). My NNL consists of never failing to feel guilty if everything isn't crossed off/checked off my list. However, as I am getting older (and trust me these years aren't golden) I am also learning this amazing concept--what doesn't get done today can probably be done another day if, indeed, it needs to be done at all. And if I die and people come to my house and are appalled by the dust bunnies or dishes in the sink or an unmade bed, they aren't people about whom I care, and they're probably just returning from or about to embark on a guilt trip of their own. So I'm unpacking my "baggage" and storing it in the loft in my garage and I'm putting my To Do list in next week's calendar...maybe I'll feel an obligation to read it and do some of what is listed there and then again, maybe I won't.