The sacrament of putter

I woke up this morning with absolutely no plan for the day.  This was somewhat alarming to my 12-year old daughter who really seems to view me as her personal Julie McCoy (the Cruise Director of the Love Boat . . . if you recognize this pop culture reference, you are as old as me!).  Anyway.  She came in asking, “What are we doing today?” and I said, “Nothing” and she began to lobby for some Starbucks and I can’t even remember what because I shooed her out of my room and immediately put her wishes and dreams out of my mind.

I worked for a while, then decided that I couldn’t stand my dusty cluttered office for even one more afternoon.  So I launched into what Anne Lamott calls the “sacrament of putter.”  I just started to putter around, moving this thing to its rightful location and throwing away that thing and relocating other things out of sight.

I dusted.

You might be interested to know that dusting seems to me to be the least important household chore.  When I was a teenager, I never ever dusted my room.  It would have been fine except that from time to time someone would write cursive in the dust on my piano (yes, I had a full-sized piano in my bedroom).  Once you start writing cursive in dust, the dust becomes suddenly and obviously visible.

Anyway, it was kind of dusty in here, so I cleared off surfaces and dusted.  (Not totally thoroughly, of course, because I have eight thousand books in here and I am not a raving lunatic who would remove each book and dust behind it and all that.  Come on, now.  I am almost fifty years old and don’t have that kind of time left.)

I puttered and puttered and puttered and before I knew it, it was time to cook dinner.  Frankly, it was way past time to cook dinner and by the time we were eating our roasted chicken and mashed potatoes and weird gravy made from a bouillon cube because I didn’t have any chicken broth and green beans cooked in bacon . . . well, it was after 7 PM.

And so I barely had time to read before The Celebrity Apprentice came on.   (I’m reading California, a debut novel.  I love to read debut novels!)

Then it was time to work.

But, oh, my office looks so much better.  My heart is at peace.  (But the pots in the kitchen . . . are still all unwashed because I am not a superstar housewife.)