Domestic sabotage

My house is a constant reminder of life happening. I am talking about the kids’ ongoing running in and out, slamming of doors, heaps of shoes and jackets right inside the entrance door, schoolbags being dropped on the floor at the strangest places, the permanent heap of used towels and dirty clothes which never end up in the laundry basket. In short the activity level is high, noisy and visible in various ways.

I spend a lot of time picking up socks, always looking for the other one to make up a pair. The dog helps out by carrying shoes from the hallway and hides it under tables and other furniture. Sometimes he is lucky and finds my keys. I never find them at first attempt myself, so it is a good thing he can put them somewhere “obvious”.

Things scattered around is not really a big problem, because it is not a mess: it does not result in a sticky pool of something wet left to soak up by itself… hopefully before I find it and get a fit of frustration. (I realize my fits do not help any, as the kids try to avoid them by hiding the mess, rather than clean it up themselves or at least tell me so I can clean it up before it sets. My fits really end up having no effect other than serving as a classic example of what we could call frustrating recoil.)

Anyway, this weekend the sun was shining, so I let the clutter, my frustration over the state of my house and laundry be, and went outside.

I have this hallucination that if at least the garden looks fine, people will not notice the state of my house inside too much because they will be dazzled by the perfect idyll outside.

Last fall I invested in an abundance of flower bulbs and seed in the hope that they would survive the harsh winter… which never really came. And by now the tulips, the hyasinths and the crocus stood there proudly, ready to bloom. Ever so lovely, and I could picture the flowering season starting off like an overwhelming fireworks.

Anyway, I did some weeding, checked on my olive tree, my apricot/plum trees (yes, two kinds on one tree), my fritillaries, roses and clematis. I cut whatever was weathered or broken and refilled the flowerbeds with fresh soil.

At the end of the afternoon my garden looked really trimmed and cared for… my boys played football and I sat on the outdoor steps with a jug of hot coffee, enjoying the last beams of sun and feeling really pleased with myself.

The phone rang, I went inside to pick it up and I answered as I went back outside, still talking on the phone. Wireless phones are really great that way…

I still feel sorry for the person at the receiving end: when I came back outside my dog had, during those couple of minutes, dug a few perfect holes in my flowerbeds. Flowerbulbs scattered around the edge and the numerous perfect, lovely looking sprouts lay around in the dirt…

No, the dog is not dead... it is resting. He worked hard for a short while, you see....