Successful adulting involves toleration of the mundane. Moving into your first apartment and living on your own is magnificent… until it isn’t. Adult life, to your dismay, turns out to be 5% exciting and 95% taking care of everyday shit. Welcome to the real world. But wait, there’s more! As you get older, the definition of “exciting” changes. Once upon a time, it meant you threw a wild party or went skydiving. Now it means you spotted a robin at the birdfeeder, the dentist was able to re-glue your crown, or there’s a new episode of NCIS in your queue.
The KYRIELLE, with its (tiresome?) refrain, seemed a good fit for my subject matter. The A rhymes push the oblique-est of boundaries but chores are what they are and when they don’t rhyme, you make do. I just noticed the alternate prompt for this one is “write a poem about servitude” so I think I’ve earned a bonus point! (Exciting, am I right??) It’s not too late to hop on the bandwagon if you’d like to join Muri’s NPM Challenge.
ADVANCED ADULTING
Walk the dog, bring in the paper
Sweep up crumbs on the kitchen floor
Work out what to have for supper
Every day, it’s the same old chores
Take out trash, fill medi-planners
Shop for food at the grocery store
Wash whatever’s in the hamper
Every week, it’s the same old chores
Give the rugs a quick once-over
Arm the pets for the flea-tick war
Rid the fridge of green leftovers
Every month, it’s the same old chores
Change the oil and furnace filter
Purge the overflowing junk drawer
Spring and summer, fall and winter
Do-si-do with the same old chores
JUST JOAN 42 
Funny…your life sounds just like mine. The only thing that’s brand new every spring is my garden. But even that is pretty much the same year after year.
Plant potatoes, lettuce and leeks
Start the seeds that like life indoors
Turn the soil and add stuff that reeks
Every spring it’s the same old chores
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Judy, you have made my day! Talk about exciting! I got JRR to write a poem! Woo-hoo! It doesn’t get any more exciting than that. I’m sure your garden will be fabulous, despite its boringness. Is that a word? Well, it is now. XXX to you and the girls.
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LOL you use the term “poem” loosely.
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It rhymes and it’s written in the same style as my stanzas so in my book, it qualifies. Now go stir some manure into your garden beds while the muses cook up some more poetry.
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It’s amazing how well chores rhymes with bores, though it seems you’ve resisted that temptation, while conveying the same idea. Yep, that’s adulthood, for the most part. But every now and then something new and unexpected comes along, where you wish that all you have to worry about is the same old chores.
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Thanks, Tippy. When I read this one, I feel like the caller at the world’s most boring square dance. All but one of my nieces and nephews are out of the nest now, learning exactly what I have laid out here. Life has ups and downs that register on the Richter Scale, but it’s mostly just chugging along doing what needs to be done.
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That’s true. Most of life is just ordinary life.
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I love how exactly perfect this form was for the subject. Great work 🙂
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Thanks, Churchmousie. It seemed to fit. They say you can’t write a poem without giving away things about yourself. Guess everyone now knows I only vacuum and toss out green leftovers once a month.
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And to think that when we were young, we were so excited to grow up so that we could do the same old chores. LOL! Good job on the poem!
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Thanks, JR. We push, push, push to grow up, move out, be free… and find ourselves trapped in monotony.
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Exactly!
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a wonderfully composed Kyrielle! I read this and was torn between hysterical laughter and abject despair! Son#1 asked me the other day if there was ever an end to the constant need to clean. I informed him that the end could come in several ways – get rich and hire someone to clean, marry a neat freak who will assist in making sure it is clean and stays that way, or live in squalor! Adulting is very hard most days… again this is a wonderful poem on a tough subject (which you handled with humor)!!!
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Thanks, Muri. I recall one of my science teachers saying the universe tends toward entropy–even as we put things in order, it is putting things into disorder (making dust, losing socks, causing the junk drawer to jam, etc). So keeping things clean is working against nature. I hadn’t thought of all the solutions you did, but I don’t see myself becoming rich or content to live in squalor, and I’m the closest thing to a neat freak in my household. I think the trick to living a happy life is to notice and appreciate the 5%, whatever that may be… watching NCIS, geocaching, or getting a package in the mail.
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I see myself in the latest poem! Good or Bad?
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I’d be shocked if you didn’t, LOL. It’s not good or bad, it just IS.
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