Some thoughts on effortless competence

[lizwilliams]

I dunno, sometimes you read people's blogs in which they detail their five year menu plan, or see someone looking immaculate on the underground at 6.30 pm after a bomb scare, or go round to someone's house and find that they're stocking an entire WI stall with jam and home made cake.

I'm not like that. I do a lot of stuff, and some of it's successful and some of it's not. I suspect I'm like a lot of people. Martha Stewart might as well hail from Alpha Centauri as far as I'm concerned, and can probably do amusing table decorations with lumps of super-dense radioactive matter, but I also find myself deeply irritated by the Bridget Jones/Ally McBeal model of klutzy, ineffectual I-fell-over-in-my-business-meeting womanhood. I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle.

So, a snapshot of our weekend: T makes granary bread. I go down to the kitchen last thing and find a feral, wild-eyed Sid in I-mighty-hunter-mode crouching over the loaf in the middle of the floor. Rescue slightly-cat-mumbled loaf. Get up at 8 am. Sneeze about 500 times. Make toast, trying not to think too hard about where bread has been. Stumble about looking for Stuff. Locate Stuff (laptop, Racing Post, invoices). Remove enormous pile of unspeakableness from floor of conservatory. Make appointment with mortgage adviser to renegotiate fixed rate. Put on load of laundry. Feed all the animals, including horses with bran and hay. Rearrange hay in barn for easier access. Go to B&Q. Buy Xmas tree, avoiding 'musical' tree on which T poured scorn earlier in the week. Drop tree in car park. Swear. Wrestle tree into car and drive to shop. Request help in erecting tree from employee. Tree is wrestled onto stand, assembled and plugged in. Employee and I turn backs to attend to a customer. Distant rustling crash indicates that tree has fallen off stand, narrowly missing other customer, who deals calmly with near death experience. Send employee to hardware store to buy bungee rope. Lash tree to stand. Go to cafe, do tarot reading, book staff Xmas dinner and write 3K. Procure dinner at local Chinese restaurant. Get extremely good news from oncology department. Go to bed. Wake up. Sneeze some more. Feed animals etc. Get rest of Xmas stock on shelves. Do full day's work, meet old friend for coffee, write further 1K. Return home. Do housework in preparation for trip. Check passport, tickets, travel info etc. Make list of payment schedule in absence, list of instructions for staff, cat feeders etc. Become engrossed in f-list. Burn potatoes. T cooks haggis, which bursts in oven like alien spawn out of astronaut's ribcage. Find we have no peas. Dinner edible, surprisingly.

It's a mix. The media would have it that we're all either perfect chisel-faced superwomen (hey, in my twenties I was a size zero, and now, I'm not- whaddayou expect? I'm 42! I'm an average size and shape. Sometimes I have salon-ready hair, sometimes it's full of straw), or total ditzes. I guess you can't expect the media to take shades of grey into consideration. But I bet they live it themselves.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

The sheer volume and diversity of things you deal with constantly impresses me, even when it's dogs that eat cowpats and cats that steal your food.

Himself has just dealt with a giant headless rat found in the lounge, which I'm convinced counts for something but probably doesn't register on the Martha Stewart Scale.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

There you go, you see! You deal with lots of things too.

Actually one of the things I haven't dealt with is your invoice. On its way.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Do you always sneeze muchly on waking, or is this a seasonal effect?

Also, yay for ongoing oncology goodnesses.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

This is a temporary thing, I hope to god, although during a trip to the Outer Hebrides vincam was of the opinion that my Native American name ought to be 'Two Sneezes', because I never sneeze only once.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Hey woman, you are disgustingly overachieving by MY standards! I haven't watered the poor plants in more than a week!

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I just remembered to do ours before they died...

[catherinew.livejournal.com]

So true, and it's a continual frustration to me when blogging that I can't seem to find the correct note between sounding boastful and sounding completely hopeless.

If I recount the parts of life that *do* go well and at which I *am* very good, it sounds unspeakably smug -- heck, sometimes I reread it and want to un-friend myself.

But if I spend a post or two reflecting on the challenges of life, especially Life With Small Children, my in-laws write me concerned-sounding letters packed with helpful advice I already knew.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Well, you know, when I try to maintain that level of activity for any length of time, I break. The myth is in the effortlessness, I think: that one can do all this without becoming tired/stressed/annoyed etc. And on the other end... Women look so much less scary when they fall over, don't they? And we can't have scary women in the office, think of the boys...

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

What She Said, on all counts. And anyway, you're both doing much better than me because you're both getting paid Real Money for one of my two absolute dream jobs [grin]

[coyotesequoia.livejournal.com]

I often think about not consuming any of "the media" for exactly the reasons you suggest. But I suppose consumed in moderation they have their uses. I just have to remember that there are better places to look for role models.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons I read books ...

[vincam.livejournal.com]

Sneeze about 500 times.

That would be about 250 pair, right, Two Sneezes?

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Achoo! ACHOOOOO! :-)

Shades of grey

[judithornot.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I suspect people who believe other people (usually famous for some reason) are perfect is because they haven't quite grown up yet. Kids are so often raised to believe the "other" is something they have to measure up to, and that "normal" exists. Kids also tend to believe in black/white, right/wrong, etc. One of the nicest parts of getting older is being comfortable with the shades of grey, and admiring people for some of the things they have done, while realizing all of us muck along, doing the best we can. :-)

Re: Shades of grey

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I think this is a very wise post.

Re: Shades of grey

[greeneyedkzin.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i never post about any daily routine. i am amazed by competence. most of what i do is "not" -- not doing my laundry, not cleaning the house, not changing the cat litter, and so on.

Thank you --

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Your day sounds a lot like mine when I'm on a roll. Different things, in some cases, but very full of things that do not necessarily fit together like puzzle pieces. Still, they all need to get done, so there we are.

It's good to know that others face those same challenges daily, and competence is what we expect, and deliver. I'm quite envious that you got so much writing done -- that's where the ADEDness of this blasted condition can slow me down. Still -- much was accomplished. The night is young. And no haggis lurks in the oven.

Damn skippy it's a good day -- and night!

[greeneyedkzin.livejournal.com]

After reading about you day, I need a nap.