Happy Husband, Happy Life

I am not particularly tidy. I'm hygenic. But I leave stuff piled everywhere until it bothers me, and then I have to go on a wild cleanup ride before I can concentrate on anything else. Being married means that my behavior also affects my partner. Although I try to rein in my untidiness, it's not a easy thing for me to and consequently, my success rate is highly variable.

When my hubby starts getting anxious about the house being untidy, I've asked him to let me know and I roll up my sleeves and get busy. If the kids are available, I get them involved too.  I don't resent this. I feel like I'm getting my due for being messy. That's fine. I'm completely ok with cleaning stuff up.  I don't want to be nagged, followed, given a hard time, or have to listen to a long lecture about it. My 50% is cleaning it up and his 50% is letting me know timely and disappearing until it's fixed.  It works pretty well.

Except..

I have so little endurance now. I have to pick and choose very carefully which targets I hit hard because I run out of gas really fast. What does that mean? My heartrate shoots up well over 100. (The highest so far was 165 or so, I think).  It gets hard to breathe. My muscles start to burn and hurt really bad (probably because they aren't getting adequate oxygenation and because my skeletal structure and musculature don't provide enough support for the activities I'm doing), and my muscles weaken, making it difficult to lift, fold, bend, carry, walk, and go up and down steps.  The more I do, the worse everything gets until I get to a point (which I am learning to avoid) where I sink to the ground, have great difficulty breathing, and can't move my legs or arms very well.  It feels kind of like if you took off your arm and replaced it with a big wood stick and then tried to move it around.  It can take several weeks for me to recover to my baseline.

I feel guilty when I can't clean as much as I want to. I feel guilty for my chore list getting smaller. I feel guilty for only being able to clean 2-3 times per week and having to rest so extensively in between every 15-30 minute cleaning spree. (Usually I have to rest for several hours between and limit those activities to a maximum of 3 per day, 2-3 times per week.

I want to do more.

I feel driven to do more.

I used to do so very much more.

It's hard to let go, accept, and be loving to myself when I come face to face with these limitations and how they affect not only me, but also my family.  I'm working on it. I am blessed to have an understanding, loving family who helps me without resentment.