so i have a really bad thing that i do. and it's not even that fun. andy says it is compulsion and i think it might be. i clean when i want to destress. funny, though, one of the contestants in junior miss this past weekend had "Cleaning" down as a hobby. i asked her about this, she said she did it when she was stressed, and that the night before junior miss she cleaned her bathroom. it was so nice to meet someone else with my addiction.
i will vacuum, scrub, dust, wipe, mop, reorganize. it's really nice for the home but it wears me out. i need to think of another way to relax.
feeding the frenzy is the new vacuum that andy brought home for me. i'm excited to use it.
i have always been a neat, clean person. neither of my parents are, except my dad has a fear of dirt. when it rains, he goes outside, sometimes even while it is still raining, and takes a water hose and washes the driveway. he's weird about things like that but he would never scrub a sink.
i think maybe what i take away from that is a fear of being dirty since he didn't like it. now that i have my own home i run a very tight ship. it's a control issue-it's something that i can control and it's something that i do very well. i think that God is a God of order and that He is honored when I am serving Him by taking care of what He has entrusted me. but when I clean to the extreme, that's not really what He cares about. so i need to find the fine line between Pigpen from Peanuts comics and Martha Stewart.
It's hard, though, because I want to teach Kate how to take care of things. She did sweep today (read: drag the broom around) so that really excited me. When she saw me using the broom, she started saying "Mine mine mine" which means she just wanted what i had.
but i was cleaning up her mess so it was really funny.
of course i learned a lot today about myself thanks to charlotte, my counselor. i'm going to refer to her as c dawg because that sounds better than charlotte my personal growth facilitator. so c dawg was really nice, sweet, and helpful. by no means did she appear to have it all together, she just seemed like she knew what was up. humble. i'm excited to learn more about why i do the things i do, and to be able to work on the things that i do not need to do.
today's big realization: i am a huge interrupter. i crave information, i want to know so much about things, that i really interrupt people. c dawg said it is driven by fear, because i don't want to be left out. 100 percent correct. but i am going to try to actively not interrupt. i tried it at lunch with andy today and he could tell it was hard for me. i'm just glad to realize what i did wrong so that i can try to fix it.
after he told a story, he said, "Do you have any questions?" I said "Yes i have 3!" But i really had about 6 but it went much better when i asked them at the end.
it's weird, because i get very frustrated with my mom because she constantly interrupts me, so i know what andy is feeling.
c dawg also said i had a lot of baggage to unpack. duh. this i know. she will help me, she says. i'm so glad. that's why i blog-i don't have to clean if i blog and i can unpack my day.
i am conquering some of my cleaning fears as i type. i let rosie the dog come inside. she is loving it and she is shedding all over the place. shed it up rosie. i'm gonna vacuum that in a little while but for now i am going to let her live her life as messy as it is. me, too.