Listen While You Work

Do you avoid housework like me or are you like it my sis- in- law "Col" and have your place spotless before you go to bed? I wish I was like her but I'm not. I'm very good at figuring how to not do "it"- then I speed up and run around like a whirling dirlish to get it done quickly. It's not that I don't like a clean home- I do. Martha's show is on my season pass list and I watch often.I think about all the things I'm going to do to the house and yard right before bed or a nap. But I usually don't follow through with all my plans.And then I feel like a failure which traps me in the place of staring at all that needs done.

I have found a perfect solution to my dilemma!!! The iTouch. I am probably behind the times on this. I know people love listening to their music as they walk or jog or write (like me) but I have found that if I have an audiobook on my iTouch I WANT to clean the kitchen, make the bed, pick the berries and weed- because it gives me an excuse to listen to my book. I even want to walk in 90 degree heat- alone. I'm driving my husband as I do my chores or cook with the plugs in my ears, oblivious to the goings on around me, deep in the Congo of Barbara Kingsolver's African novel The Poisonwood Bible.

I have my standards- it can only be unabridged. I have learned from experience to be wary of awful audiobooks even if the actual book is supposedly great. I listened to The Da Vinci Code- the reader's voice (male) trying to be a woman with a french accent was laughable. The reader for The Double Bind was impossible to listen to. I am going to look into websites that rate the audiobooks before chalking over the thirty bucks to purchase it.

My home is going to be sparkling by summer's end...