Raining on Saturday Morning

Rain has been falling all morning. A steady stream of relentless rain. The kind of rain that slowly washes everything away without anybody noticing.

After having a shower and pulling on some clean clothes I wandered into the lounge and met my other half – curled up on the end of the sofa with her laptop. We both looked out at the streams of water trickling down the patio doors.

“Looks like a perfect day to binge-watch something on Netflix.”

We smiled, and I pottered off to clear the washing up from last night, and make a coffee.

Washing up is a continual mystery to me. I have often cleared the washing up from the sink at midnight – and yet the next morning more will always have appeared. Sometimes the remnants of entire cooked meals appear – saucepans, plates, cutlery. Of course if either of my teenage daughters clean their room up, all of the missing bowls, cups and plates from the past several weeks suddenly appear.

I don’t know how they do that. How do you live in a room, surrounded by the detritus of daily life? How do you not pick it up, clean up, put things away, and so on?

Although I often talk about “the junk room” – the room I sit in while writing blog posts, working, playing video games, listening to music, reading books, or whatever else – it’s often the most tidy, organised room in the entire house. And that’s because of me, I suppose.

Maybe I’m not so good at ignoring things. Teenagers seem to be incredible at it. They can eat a yoghurt, and leave the empty pot and the spoon they used on the coffee table and walk away. How? How do they do that? When I make a meal, if somebody were to walk into the kitchen after the plates have been delivered to the table – aside from a wok or cooking pot, you might not know I had even been there. If you follow my kids or other half into the kitchen after they’ve made something, you might think we have been feeding the army for several days.

Maybe it’s all down to my work. I’m a software developer. Everything we do is neat, tidy, and has to turn cogs like a swiss watch. Nothing is left behind. Nothing is left over. Nothing is there that should not be. Maybe I’ve re-programmed myself to operate this way all the time.

Anyway.

It’s still raining.