The Horrid Housewife Day

It is Tuesday. I am ashamed to say that I have fallen behind with the ironing and (yet again) forgotten to put the bins out. There is a vintage Fisher Price Playschool alongside a complicated arrangement of lego people on the living room floor, a smudge of goodness knows what on the kitchen counter that will not be budged by organic means alone, a trail of spidermen I am forbidden to move climbing up the stairs and two unmade beds flouting my blatant neglect all over the bedroom floors. (And let’s not even discuss the bathroom unless you are made of industrial strength stuff…)
Somebody string me up and whip me. Or blame the curl dangling right down the middle of my forehead, compromising my chances of being a good housewife, because when she was good, she was very very good and when she was bad, she was horrid

It’s one of those days. I am officially horrid and obliged to confess my domestic misdemeanors to those of you I am certain, live in puttery pretty palaces and would never dream of standing at the bottom of the stairs and chucking stuff upwards to save your legs…

I blame the blogosphere. Is it just me or is the internet a dangerous place as far as housewifely guilt goes? One prowls around the blogs of many a vintage lovely and comes away wanting… chocolate and a hug from your Mum and life before kids, and a house in California and a dog called Pooch and that cherry red coffee table and her way with a glue gun and a pile of old postcards…

Life in your own little grey house seems dull and suburbanely and dare I say it, a little dusty in compaison. You project all manner of layers of perfection upon the shoulders of your fellow bloggers. You make excuses for yourself. You suffer from the kind of bloggery envy you would never dare confess in polite company. You feel, oh isn’t it just downright awful, a little ashamed.

And though you know it is a nonsense, that even Martha Stewart must have her secret slovenly habits, you rather wish someone would declare a housekeeping amnesty for just one day and one by one stand up and be counted in the Horrid Housewife stakes.

I, Wilma of Wigan, only change my pillowcases every six weeks.
I, Cara of Cleethorpes, bake fairy cakes every Tuesday morning and eat them all before the kids get home from school.
I, Doris of Dagenham, take pretty pictures in the only tidy room in the house.

I, Alison of Aughton, am thoroughly ashamed of myself. But I will go and apologise to Bertha the Goddess of Baking Powder, attack that nasty stain with new found vigour and resolve to keep my envy in check when I wander round the lovely little village of Blogsville.