Calling in... healthy?

ALTERNATE TITLE FOR THIS POST: THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

Lots of people call in sick and cannot come to work when they are ill. I am having the opposite problem right now. I am 'calling in healthy' and just haven't been showing up for some jobs that seem to always, no matter what I do, end up as exclusively MINE. I have tried bribes, payments to children for household chores, job charts, begging the husband to help, pleading with them all to at least pick up after themselves, but now... I'm done. I will still make sure there are clean towels and that people eat and I will clean the kitchen and bathrooms once a week or so, but... other than that, they are on their own. I just don't care anymore. I have been a slave to others for all of my life. I'm forty-four now and I'm tired and I am finally going to do what I want to and I don't care anymore what it costs me. I'm done.

I wrote 700 words in my novel on Sunday after my 1100 words on Saturday. I had to stop because things were churning in my mind and I couldn't quite get to them. I needed quiet and inactive space alone for it to come to me. And finally, it came faster than I can type proper prose. I had to make notes. I got them all down and what was revealed to me for my story was wonderful. I look forward to waking up in the morning so I can get going on it again. I will say here and now and in public - I will be finished and polished and shopping this thing by September. And if that means my family doesn't know where their belongings are because they are slobs, then that's just too bad. My kids have their whole lives in front of them and I probably have more years behind me than what I have ahead. I can't wait anymore. I'm finally going to think of ME. Just for a fucking change. If they insist on being filthy, then I will let them forage in a dirty house for whatever it is they need.

There is a down-sizing a few years into my future when the teens go off to college. I've got big news for the hub. If he doesn't change his dirty ways, the down-sizing will be to a duplex so his filth can be properly contained away from me and I can finally have peace AND order.

I don't know how my family will adjust to the 'new me', but I like it just fine. I have tried everything and there is nothing else reasonable to do.



For my fellow history buffs:

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but I can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation (under God) shall have a new birth of freedom...

-- Abraham Lincoln