dirty laundry.

i walked outside earlier to retrieve the tv remote from the golden retriever (aka thief dog), and i noticed that our neighbors with the pretty yard, the yard i envy, were having it mowed by a team of mower/edger people. that they have a hoard of people to take care of their well-sculpted lawn didn't make me feel better, but it completely explains why their yard is so well kept even though they're never home and hardly ever DO anything to it. i wondered about that.

then, because this was an obvious train of thought, i wondered if they also have someone to clean their house for them. the possibility that they don't have to clean their home made me even more envious because right now i'm attempting to clean my own house without much luck. i thought it would be helpful if i made a list of everything that needs to be done, but i was wrong. two pages later it became painfully obvious that oh my god i'm never going to be finished cleaning. and the thing about cleaning is that it never ends. makes me want to live in a dirt hut because then, at least, you'd expect the place to be dirty. also, there would be less square footage of hut to clean. dirty, small, cramped living quarters? that would be ideal.

also, i've been thinking a lot lately about quality of life and how to define that. last night alvin told me he needs to work more hours per week starting, like, last week. i started calculating how many hours per day and days per week more actually means--relative to what he's working now--and when i realized it was something like 10+ hour days six days a week we had to end the conversation because it wasn't going anywhere good. that just upsets me. i don't know if i'm alone in this or what, but i've never understood working 60 hour weeks (i realize it's necessary but i don't understand WHY it's necessary or anywhere near acceptable). 40 or 50 hours, that's kind of enough. after that your brain ceases to work like it should, or at all. and if you want to see daylight, or if you want to interact with, say, your family, maybe you should cap the number of hours you work. i don't know. i'm about to start school and i know that's going to require lots of time and energy on my part--i'm not entirely sure how the seeing alvin thing is going to work. it's not working very well now, and i've got free time. what happens when i'm crazy busy?

i guess what i'm saying is that my quality of life standards include not working yourself (myself, alvin's self...) to death just because you can can can. i would happily trade my current house and stuff for a smaller house and less stuff if it meant more quality alvin time and less overworked stressed out alvin time. i'd trade starbucks (i haven't been there in three days!) and a car and maybe even beagle dog, too.

i have plenty to be thankful for--i've been bitch ass poor and living in north carolina where life just wasn't very good and i was working my ass off at a minimum wage job while living in sub-standard housing in the middle of nowhere, and let me just say that sucked and this is a hundred times better than that--but i want life to be optimal and right now it's really not. because it takes two to make things optimal, i'm pretty sure, and one of the two of us who lives in this house is so busy he doesn't even have time to read my blog! which i can't even imagine because if he had a blog i'd force him to update just so i could read it.

so many more things i could say on this subject, but this isn't solving anything. eh.