Why June 25 might be my favorite day of the year

June 25th, a magical day! Summer is in full swing yet most of it still lies ahead of us. Leisure is abundant and the celebrations of Independence Day are right around the corner. But most importantly….

We’re halfway to Christmas, so I might as well not put all my seasonal plates and mugs away.

There’s a certain art to living in the female version of a bachelor pad, and one of its signature techniques is leaving seasonal stuff out year-round. If December isn’t too crazy and I remember to put out my little plug in Christmas tree, that usually gets put away come late January. But the mugs? I don’t have that many to begin with, plus I don’t have enough storage to keep them.

And most importantly, I think this mug is cute and I really don’t care that you “shouldn’t” drink out of a snowman cup in the middle of the summer.

“Shoulds” are my enemy. There are a lot of things that I “should” do, as I was reminded last week listening to a radio show about housework that went on and on about the differences between men and women and every description of a man could have been applied to me (A few weeks ago I dropped the grocery bag on the kitchen floor, walked around it  for the rest of the afternoon and didn’t realize I had left it there until dinner time).

I wish I didn’t have to give myself pep talks. I wish I didn’t have to mentally list my accomplishments in order not to feel bad about keeping house the “wrong” way. I wish I didn’t have to fortify myself for a barrage of “shoulds” to keep, as some might say, from “shoulding all over myself”.

Maybe someday I will live in a big house where I have room to have more than one set of mugs. Maybe someday I’ll magically change into someone who does it all right. For now, I’ll enjoy my coffee in my snowman mug and take comfort in the fact that it’s really too late to put my Christmas plates away.