Failure to Launch, or Day Two

After yesterday's successes, today was a pretty big letdown. Let's hit the ground running and criticize the hell out of me.

Daily chores
You remember the daily litany, right?

1. Throw back the covers. Nope. Didn't happen, at least not for a few hours. Remember yesterday's point regarding the sacred nature of sleeping babies?

2. Open up the blinds and windows. Oh, HELL NO. Today's high was 43C (109.4F, for those Americans in the audience) and I was not doing a single thing to make my house warmer.

7. Shower, do hair and make-up, get dressed. I did none of those things. It's impossible to shower with the children awake, and I felt that sweatpants and a tank top were about as dressed up as the weather warranted. I even skipped the mascara, because like hell I'm going to deal with it running all day.

12. Hang up any clothes that may be about or ensure dirty ones are in the hamper. I fully accept the shame that comes of realizing this is note-worthy, but our dirty clothes are finally in a hamper. Repeat. Dirty clothes are in the hamper.

24. Handle weekly chore for the day. So much fail. So very, very much.

29. Freshen up before the husband comes home. Consider changing into something more festive if the day dress is plain. I'm still wearing red, paint-splatted track pants, and a grey tank top that has somehow acquired a smear of peanut butter on the right bosom.

33. Clear table and wash dishes
34. Pour boiling water down the sink to ensure pipes are flushed
35. If necessary, pack the husband’s lunch for the next day. Set aside a lunch tray in the refrigerator for yourself if having leftovers
36. Set table for breakfast
37. Ensure breakfast foods are available and do any make-ahead preparations for it
38.Enjoy an evening of relaxation, or possibly just fall asleep dead on your feet. No one will notice.
It's almost 10pm and I still haven't done any of that. The baby will only stay asleep if he's on me tonight. At some point I'm going to have to either a) deal with the baby waking up and not getting back to sleep until God knows when or b) ask "the husband" to help out.

Daily chore
Today's little spot of hell torture and failure is:
TUESDAY
Deep clean the bedrooms and bathrooms.  Bed linens should be laundered twice a week and the floors in the bedrooms should be vacuumed on the same schedule, windows should be washed, bathroom floors scrubbed, and bathroom fixtures polished with metal polish, bath tubs and toilets were to be scrubbed and disinfected.  Garbage pails were also scrubbed and disinfected.

First of all, let me straight-up admit that it took me forever to actually get to the daily chore. It was almost 1pm before I made my way upstairs to tackle the cleaning. The heat today was a powerful demotivator, and I figure if you show me one woman in the 50s who didn't chill out a little when experiencing Arizonian weather, and I'll show you a giant liar. (I cannot stress enough that I live in Canada. CANADA. I should not have to even think about functioning in this sort of weather.)

When I finally did make it upstairs to do the deep cleaning, it didn't take long for disaster to strike. I had only been working on Ginny's bedroom for about 10 minutes (note: need to buy more Magic Erasers, because scrubbing ain't doing a damn thing for the crayon on the walls), and being reminded why I don't ever dust ceiling fans (hint: having a clump of dust land in my eye), I left things to go make nachos for the kids. And in that time, disaster struck.

When I came back upstairs to resume cleaning, I found that Ginny had emptied an entire bottle of baby oil into my wash bucket, helpfully getting a quantity of oil on her floors, too. Her hardwood floors. Baby oil. In the wash water. And the bucket.

I had to scour the bucket several times with soap and hot water to rinse out the majority of the oil, and then realized that I no longer had the ability to clean. I clean with vinegar and water for most things, and it just so happened that I had used the last of my vinegar. I usually buy the big 4L jugs of vinegar 4 at a time just so I never run out... except for today, of course.

Oh, and the baby oil was supposed to polish the fixtures in the bathroom, because I read online that it could. I'd report on its efficacy, but, well, you know. It's all gone.

Some reflections on the day

• You remember that episode of The Simpsons where Bart studied for a test, and he said that knowing the answers was like a whole new kind of cheating? Cleaning the house today was kind of like that.

"And when I went to desperately fake a clean house, the dirt was already gone! It was like a whole new kind of hiding the dirt!"

•  It's impossible to do anything quickly in this heat. You heard me. I said impossible.
• I have never, not once ever, used metal polish for anything other than jewellery. It looks like my Cal Ripken-like streak of metal non-polish-inage remains unbroken.
• I can tell Elise to pick up her floor, and she can be cleaning in her room for two solid hours, and it can still look as messy as it did before I sent her up there.

All in all, today was a bit of a bust on the housewifey front. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more accomplished.