1 EAGLETON NOTES: Decisions

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Tuesday 19 June 2012

Decisions

Have you noticed how many decisions we are faced with every day?  I don't mean business decisions or the Really Big Decisions.  Just the tiny ones.

Every time you get up you are about to face a day with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of decisions.  Driving a car, for example, would require a computer with quite phenomenal computing power.  So much so the human brain doesn't always cope  Hence the 1.2 million road accident deaths globally each year.

However this morning I was far more concerned with the minutae of life and the mundane decisions of how to achieve today's goal.  Having already taken the decision that today was to be my annual spring cleaning day I had to decide with which room to start.  I know you ladies will be shaking your heads.  Spring cleaning in one day!  I know some who take a day just to do one room.  But here I am having my morning coffee and writing this paragraph and already the bathroom is like new.  One down 10 rooms to go.  TEN rooms?  Surely not. This is a tiny house lived in by one person.  How can I have 11 rooms?  And now I have to decide which chocolate to have with my morning coffee.  OK.  That should be easy.  There are only 5 left.


Tomorrow friends are coming for dinner.  They are both excellent cooks.  Not that that intimidates me at all.  I love cooking and I'm not aware of having made anyone too ill yet.  But Steve did once comment that I seemed to feed him nothing but chicken - even though he did concede that I'd cooked it several dozen different ways.  I told him he was lucky to get fed every Tuesday.  He pointed out in reply that he did contribute an excellent bottle of wine from his extensive (and expensive) cellar each week and that it was usually different.  'But' I rejoined 'always red'.  And a meal isn't one decision either:  starter, main, desert.  At least cheese isn't a decision.  I always have enough different types in the house to feed any taste.

During my recent cardiac MoT the nurse asked if I ate cheese more than three times.  I replied that it was usually only twice.  I got lots of brownie points until she realised I was talking about twice a day and she was talking about twice a week.  Who only eats cheese twice a week?

This post was supposed to be about decisions but I seem to have strayed.  I am also really embarrassed that I told you that I'd get all the spring cleaning done today.  I really shouldn't have done that.  I'm just too optimistic, that's my problem.  By lunchtime I'd done two rooms: the bathroom and the front porch. OK perhaps that's not even strictly speaking a room but it took for ever to clean into every nook and cranny of every one of its 9 windows and two doors: all that plastic with rubber seals.  Nightmare stuff.

Ah well.  There's a whole lifetime to get the remaining 5 done.  After all when I surveyed them this evening I thought they looked pretty clean.  Yes.  They must be.  It's only a year since I did them last time. 

12 comments:

  1. As for the choccies, that would have been the easiest decision for me: just have them all, there were only five left, after all...

    Spring cleaning is something I have skipped this year. I did it last year extremely thoroughly, less because of the season and more because of the seven weeks of paid leave I had between my former job and my current one.

    Now, my place is usually tidy and clean enough to suit me and gets a proper cleaning every week; what really needs doing though is windows and the outside window sills. But can you believe it - every time I decide I'll do them, it rains... and who would be cleaning their windows and outside sills in the rain? Not me!

    So, yes, decisions. I read a whole book on that topic ("Smart Choices") and reviewed it on my blog last year in September. So far, I don't think it has changed much about how I take decisions.

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    1. I used to be a choloholic Meike so I'm very careful not to eat more than one, or at most two, with my morning coffee. I've had that box, opened, since I arrived back on Lewis at the start of May.

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  2. I think there is something wrong with my arithmetic - I can't balance the number of cleaned and uncleaned rooms. Spring cleaned that is, I'm sure they were clean to start with. I made a pretty major decision today and suspect I am come to regret it but, as I'm telling myself, all my decisions are the right ones for me at the time.

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  3. I'm sure, Pauline, that your arithmetic will be correct. I rather lost count and, by the need of the day, some of my earlier enthusiasm had waned too! Now you've got me wondering about your pretty major decision.

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  4. Seems to me you must have one of those magic houses in which the number of rooms keeps changing every time you count! Once upon a time at the beginning of our aquaintance I think you mentioned in some post that there were nine; which seemed plenty to me for one person (at least from cleaning point of view). At the beginning of this post you had eleven of them, at the end of the day you had "done" two, and had five left... Yes, optimist you are!!! :)

    But of course, the question of how many rooms a house has is really nothing compared to the question of how many decisions we have to make every day. Phew. I feel I have hardly started my decision making process for the day yet (at 9.30 am) and yet I've already made several of them, since I'm up, breakfasted, medicated, dressed, and sitting at the computer...

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    Replies
    1. I'm just terrible at counting Monica. Once again your remarkable memory prevails. I have just checked. I have a living room, study, kitchen, three bedrooms, bath and shower room (not counting the en-suite in my bedroom 'cos it's part of the room), large conservatory (which doubles as a lounge and dining room), hall, utility room and a sizeable porch. That's eleven. I've got a sizeable, floored and windowed loft as well. In fact I have two but only one has a fixed retractable loft ladder and is used for storage. I probably don't always count the porch or utility room.

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    2. I shall start thinking of my flat as having six rooms instead of three - sounds so much more impressive. :)

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  5. Bet you didn't "do" the skirting boards!!!!!! (Remember?)

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    1. Spesh, how could I ever forget! After all it's not many men get told off for not cleaning their skirting boards. So of course, I've done the skirting boards. I even do them between 'spring' cleans - sometimes.

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  6. A dozen Brownie points for you then my friend.

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  7. And you said you wouldn't need to clean after we'd left. Dog hair DOES get everywhere. And sand...and midges.

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  8. AND where were you hiding the chocolates ?

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