Oh Tyler

So, I was reading a Reddit post asking guys what they thought the most annoying thing about being a girl is.  There were the obvious things: periods, having to look good all the time, hair care, makeup, etc.  But, a surprising number of guys said that they wouldn't like being so physically weak.  A few of them said that they got really freaked out when they discovered just how much stronger they were than their girlfriends/SOs.  Like they were wrestling and they realized that they were using 50% of their strength and easily overpowering the girls' 100%.  The guys went on to say that they'd be afraid of all these strong men who could easily kill them.

I told Tyler because I thought that was interesting.  I've never really dwelt on the fact that I'm physically weak because there's nothing I can do about it.  You can't think too much about how 50% of the population could rape you and then kill you without breaking a sweat or else you'd be paralyzed with fear.

Moving on to the punchline:  Tyler said he didn't think he was that much stronger than me (says the guy who can jump our back fence in a single leap.  If we had a fence that was proportional to my size, it wouldn't be pretty if I tried to get over it.  Also, he ran a half-marathon WITHOUT TRAINING.  I had to train for 5 months before I was even remotely ready.).I suggested we wrestle for real to see how much stronger he was than me, and that I would give it everything I had.

"Why?" he asks.  "Like, if you were in a dark alley or something and a girl jumped on you and was trying to rape you, and you'd have to fight them off."

"Why would I ever want to fight off a girl who's trying to have sex with me?" 

By the way, he pinned me easily.  I'm not sure if I'm glad that he proved my point, or freaked out that he proved my point; he really IS much MUCH stronger than me.

For one minute

So, I accepted a long time ago that I wasn't ever going to have an A+-all-the-time-clean house.  In order to do this, you need to either have no children or really like cleaning.  I am the opposite of both those things.  One time, I asked my neighbor, who, at the time, had 4 children and a SPOTLESS-ALL-THE-TIME house how she kept it clean.  She told me she found cleaning relaxing and really enjoyed it.  This does not compute.

When my kids go to bed, I don't want to spend an hour cleaning up and putting my house aright.  I don't want to spend 10 minutes doing it.  I want to sit down and and read a book and not have to answer any more demands or have anyone touch me for like 2 hours.  And then I want to go to sleep.

During the day, I can think of about 50,000 things that I'd rather do than clean.  I got used to the idea that I would have a B- house that I'd clean up for company.  Maybe.

I went to a kid-free (except I brought my baby) get-together last night at a friend's house and her house was spotless.  She also has 4 kids and her husband is in medical school, so probably he's not doing a whole lot of cleaning.  SPOT. LESS.

I thought, "I wonder if I could get my whole entire house clean at one time.  Even for just one minute."

The house was pretty bad because I spent all day yesterday doing this:

and generally ignoring my children while they trashed my house, but I decided that I didn't care how long it took, I was going to get my entire house clean for one minute.

I cleaned all morning and got the whole upstairs in pristine order.  I took a break to watch the afternoon session of conference and then went upstairs for something and saw that my kids had attacked.  I almost cried.  Instead, I freaked out at the kids and then called my mom.

Two hours later, my whole house is clean.  Except the floors, I didn't sweep or mop... but they're mostly clean.  Mostly.

So, if I can keep the kids outside for the rest of the evening and then put them to bed, we might set a record for at least 10 hours.