In the last week or so I've been reading a book that Natalie had bought and left on the coffee table How to Keep House While Drowning, by KC Davis. Apparently it's a bestseller. It's a solid book written by a therapist which promulgates the idea that "self-care is morally neutral" and that people need to keep their houses as clean as they need to and no more. I get that. Certainly her play-by-play of what it's like to try to keep dishes clean while managing toddlers and the pressures of making timelines with them lest one miss nap time ring sublimely true and hearken back to a much earlier time in our lives which is now fully enclosed in sentimental amber but was at the time its own sort of crucible.
Then just this morning I noticed that Mary was managing her day-to-day tasks out of a small ring-binder notebook. For many years, she preferred an organizational system of a paper calendar but task lists written helter-skelter on a random, recycled pieces of loose leaf 8.5x11s which were strewn across her end of the counter like some madwoman's den. It drove me a little crazy and I advocated for some sort of little notebook or notepad like I used for task lists but she resisted with her trademark aplomb.
But now she's using a notebook. I will not make any sort of comment about it to her, because I certainly don't want to get involved in the dynamic of "winning" a spousal argument. Every such publically acknowledged victory is Pyrhhic at the absolute best. Let me say no more on that score.
No, what I need to do here is to consciously look for something to do better at that would make her happy and not make a big point of doing it.
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