Friday, Blogtoberfest 11, 2013

This sign makes me smile.  There is nothing that squelches my energy more, than to do housework, stand back to enjoy it for one minute, one single minute, and boom! its undone. Whats the point of all the effort?

Art isn't like that.  If you do it and you are happy with it, unless you have a catastrophy in your art room, it usually stays that way.

There is a sign in my house that says, "I can't be creative and tidy too."

Which brings me to what my hubby calls "my Story of the day"...
Years ago, I was sent for my job to a days seminar to a place about 3 hours from home.  I rode with another lady that I knew but didn't know well enough to really call a friend.   She grew up in this small town, went away, and came back, settled down and raised kids.

We both were talking about the very essence of the sign I posted above.  She was telling me that her mothers house was always a wreck when she grew up.  But her mother was a very creative person.  She, however didn't inherit  her mothers knack.  As she grew up, she never wanted her house to look like her mothers but was saying that there had to be more to life than housework.

I was saying that my house is lived in and its "clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy."  She then said something that has stuck with me through all these years.  She said that she didn't want her headstone to say "She kept a clean house."  And at least her mothers legacy was the art that she would leave behind.


She's right, of course.

So now, about 15 years later, she and I are working on a community project.  While we sat on my front porch tonight discussing said project on this beautiful fall day,  I learn that she now is refurbishing some older homes. She has found a niche.  She walked into our home and it was the pits.  I don't have kids to blame it on anymore, just a 40 hour a week job and a dog.  And the art.... plenty of that scattered around.  Some things change, some things stay the same.

Maybe someday, my headstone might say, "had better things to do than housework."