Somethings are just efforts in Futility.
I’m trying to be a responsible adult. I think, at the age of 27, its time for me to grow up and become one of those. I figured out a lot of things about being responsible, like, if you wait 2 weeks to buy a new transformer, you won’t overdraft your checking account and add $35 to the cost of your new robot friend. Seriously, somethings I’ve had to learn in the last year or so are that simple, and make me feel all accomplished. The things that I’m still trying to get into my head, though, are the ones that just seem stupid and futile. I think doing those things are the real definition of being a responsible adult.
1) Making the Bed
Ok. This one is probably going to the be hardest thing for me to get used to doing. I know the reasons people do it. Sleeping in a bed that has actually been made is way more comfortable than sleeping in a pile of blankets. I still can’t bring myself to do it though. It means getting up earlier, or doing it of an evening after I get off work. I don’t want to get up earlier, its hard, and making the bed a couple of hours before sleeping in it seems, well, stupid.
I’m still not even on the step where I have sheets that match my pillow cases. For that matter about 90% of the time I’m at the step where the bottom sheet doesn’t stay on my bed for longer than 1 night.
2) Shoveling the Driveway
Winter sucks. Generally, here in the Midwest, you get a few days of “warm” sunshine, followed by a blizzard. Generally, its just long enough between snowfalls for everyone to forget they’ve been driving in snow basically their entire lives. In years gone by, I would have sat in my home and and hid away from the frigid, deadly cold and watched a little television. This, too me, seems like a perfectly reasonable behavior. However, now that I actually speak with my neighbors instead of assuming that all of them are chainsaw wielding serial killers, I feel guilty when I don’t keep up with the adult home owner things.
This lead to me coming home from work tonight with 3 inches of snow already on the ground and seeing all of my neighbors standing in their driveways watching their teen sons shovel the snow and drinking steaming beverages. Of course this means a couple of moments later I was pushing around the snow in my own driveway and cursing my lack of teenage slave labor. The fact that it was still snowing while this was going on was frustrating, since by the time I got to the end of the driveway, the front of the driveway was already once again covered by a thin layer of white.
I would consider this a big step into the world of adulthood if I hadn’t spent the entire time pretending I was a robot snow plow.
3) Vacuuming the Floor
I own a Golden Retriever. She is a wonderfully loving, beautiful dog. Those are all synonyms for a machine that is capable of shedding impossible amounts of hair all over everything she comes near. I also have blue carpets. Infinite amounts of golden fur combined with a dark blue carpet equals a teal carpet. For a long time I would look at my carpet and think, “meh.” Then something really strange happened to me. My mom came to visit.
My mother, love her dearly, has a super human power to radiate an aura of guilt. When she came to visit, I could tell that she was not impressed by the fact that my floor and my dog were the same color now. Since I have to scrub the fur up off the floor with a dog brush, she went out and bought me a cool rake thingy. This did not do much to assuage my guilt. However, my new roommate, using his hillbilly hoodoo, discovered a magical setting on my vacuum that sucks up dog hair without making it explode.
This does nothing to make me want to actually vacuum the floor everyday. If I vacuum today, by tomorrow my floor will just be covered in dog fur again. It gets vacuumed though, because blue floors look much nicer than golden retriever colored floors.
The list keeps going
At times, it seems like everything about being a responsible adult is just doing the same thing everyday because it has to be done. Cooking, shaving, watching a glass after only using it for one day. These are all things that we start to do as we transition from the extended adolescence we call bachelorhood (or bachelorettehood) and into full on adulthood.
What are the things that you do everyday just because you have to?