The joys of having actual paying gigs to do at home are these:

I don’t feel guilty about not doing the chores.
I get just as many chores done as I do when I don’t have paying work to do.
I feel better about the whole thing because I’m making money.

I’m not sure how this works, but I can somehow manage to get the dishes done, wash a few loads of laundry, and pick up the trouble spots with ease while I’m working. But if I don’t have work to do, I get the same amount of housework done – no more – and I feel bad about the housework I didn’t do.

Honestly, I am seriously not well-suited to being taken care of; I can’t tell you the weirdnesses I suffer knowing that my husband’s money goes to feed and shelter me! I never really thought I’d ever get married, and I never thought anyone would ever just give me money on purpose. I find that I sometimes feel guilty that I’m ‘not doing enough,’ and I often feel guilty about spending “his” money.

I find myself running a tape in my head that says I have to be respectful of Brett’s hard earned pay – even though he certainly isn’t (“Spend it! You can always make more money.”). I really feel stupid when I run this particular tape while, for instance, choosing between generic and brand-name household cleaners. I’ve observed myself agonizing over laundry detergent, somehow convinced that I really need to save that extra $1.40 and buy the bottom shelf detergent so as not to waste Brett’s money… I’m a weird little monster, there’s no doubt about it! I don’t even know where these tapes come from, to be quite honest. I don’t remember this shit from my childhood, but I’d assume it had to have been there since my folks were always broke!

And this house… well, there’s never a shortage of shit to do. It’s a dirty old house on a gravel road in rural Iowa with dogs living in it; it’s always dirty. Always.

If I dust the entertainment center, for instance, it needs to be dusted again within two or three hours. If I sweep the utility room floor, you can’t even tell by looking at it because it’s a rough old broken concrete floor. If I clean the kitchen floor, it looks the same when it dries: dingy, broken, buckled, and dull.

If I clean a room and close the door, two months later it’s filthy: bugs and dust just get in through the walls. Right now there are probably a million dead Japanese beetles littered in corners and on window sills all over the house.

All my cleaning implements are, in spite of fairly normal use, nasty – brooms, mops, dusters are all filthy and most folks wouldn’t be caught dead using them in their homes.

And I’ve already killed my vacuum cleaner twice, by simply vacuuming the rug in the living room once a week: this house is just too dirty for even a top-end vacuum.

I find I resent having to clean up messes I didn’t even make. Is that weird? I mean, it’s so dismal to dust the same stuff, week after week after week, and know that it will never get any better because your house is just old and in the middle of BFE.

But it’s spring now, and I’ve been walking around the property a little. Man oh man is it wonderful out here. I may live in a dusty, dirty, drafty old farm house that’s always full of bugs, but I have a killer view every direction I set my eyes. The woods are showing a hint of green, I’ve got riots of daffodils everywhere, and the rhubarb is already showing. I’m surrounded by a choir of songbirds, the sun is shining, and my line-dried laundry smells like life.

Hooray, big property! Hooray, daffodils! Hooray, working at home for money! Hooray, Spring!