Just Call Me Sissy

I've never claimed to be a domestic goddess. In fact, I've never claimed to be domestic at all. It's much easier and much more fun to go through the motions- baking cakes and cookies, melting crayons with the kids, sewing comforter covers, etc. All those things make me feel like I'm being domestic, and more importantly, make me APPEAR to be domestic without having to do all the hard work.
It's not that I don't like cooking and cleaning every day for my family. It's that I Hate cooking and cleaning every day- for anybody! For the short time I was home after the birth of each of my children, I literally felt myself going nuts. "Housewife" is something akin to "Prisoner of War" as an occupational option to me.
There's a reason the ancient tale of Sisyphus is a cautionary one. You screw up, you have to push a boulder to the top of a mountain every day for eternity only to have it roll down to the bottom just in time for you to start pushing it up again. That's housewifery my friends! It never ends. The mountain of laundry and dishes never goes down. The mouths are always hungry. The floors are always scuffed or sticky. Every time you finish, you are right back where you started.
It's much easier for me to use this as an excuse to not try. If it can't be perfect, why should I spend time on it? I could be knitting, or painting, or sewing, or doing something else that has an actual finish line.
Except it shouldn't be perfect. It won't ever be. But I can at least make it better.
I just read a study that found gifted/talented kids set themselves up for failure because they think if something doesn't come easy, it won't come at all. The concept of hard work is foreign to people who never have to try hard. I can see this attitude popping up in my psyche wayyy tooo often.
I guess that's the lesson I should learn from Sisyphus: instead of trying to keep the boulder at the top of the mountain, I should try to push it a little more each day. I might not get to the top, but if it backslides it won't slide too far.