Who, Me, Lower My Standards?

I have always been just a bit Type A. Okay, not just a bit. My mother tells me I used to wake up in the middle of the night, as a child, to clean my room. I was valedictorian. I actually studied during set hours in college. This is me, it has always been me, until now. Enter little angel.

When I was growing up, I was appalled (once I was old enough to realize) that my mother would habitually walk around the house in the mornings in her underwear. Egads, I would think, put on some clothes, woman! Now I realize, she probably heard me calling M-O-M-M-Y (yes, I thought it was clever to spell her title while yelling) and didn't have time to actually don her garments before responding to my every need. I also thought there were too many piles stacked around our house. This, too, is now more understandable to me.

My husband was lamenting last night about our lawn. Lawn? You mean the prairie grasslands surrounding our house? You mean you're not supposed to see your lawn waving in the wind like a native Kansas wheat field? I interrupted him to point out that the spiders are holding their own democratic convention on the screen porch and that we haven't gone grocery shopping in two weeks. My friends have stopped calling the authorities to find me, but unfortunately they have also stopped trying to find me due to my inability to return phone calls, and I think my boss would like to physically tie me to the desk chair to get me to complete a project.

What happened to the fit, organized, DIY queen of my pre-mommy days? Where is the woman who thought intimacy was more important than ten little minutes of absolute silence? Will she ever come back to rescue me from the dripping bottles and mind-blowing poopy diapers? The funny truth is, though, I've realized a messy house and bird-shit-covered car haven't really impacted my life so much as I thought they would. My husband is happier, I think, because he thought I was kind of a freak anyway. The little angel doesn't seem to notice much of anything these days, but that might change once she grasps the concept of object permanence. Or maybe she'll inherit her daddy's ability to overlook a sink full of dirty dishes and the smell of unchanged cat litter as long as there's baseball on television. Let's hope for that.