One of the main reasons I hate housework is I am never finished with it. If I empty the clothes hampers, wash, dry, fold, hang up, or otherwise put away every item, I am at the same time wearing clothes and thus creating more laundry. The dishes I washed this morning will need to be washed again this evening. Floors swept today will need to be swept again tomorrow.

Dusting is the worst. In fact, dusting is the ultimate effort in futility. Even if all the dust in a house could be magically sucked out, within less than a minute more dust would appear to take its place.

Dan never mentions the dust in our house, so it apparently doesn’t bother him. The grandkids don’t give a hoot about it. In fact, they enjoy writing their names in it. We have few guests, and those who do visit don’t appear interested in dust. So I am the only one who is bothered by it.

Following this line of reasoning, I sometimes think I should stop fighting an unwinnable war. So I wave a dusty white flag in the air, declare dust the winner, and vow never to dust again.

But, the resolve never to dust again usually lasts about one day. The next day I declare outright war on it. I pull out the big guns: two vacuums, various brooms, dust mops, dust rags, window cleaner, furniture polish, long-handled spider web destroyers, Febreze, and every Swiffer product on the market.

I start and finish in the master bedroom. I don’t mean I start in that room and move through the whole house until I reach that bedroom again. I mean I start in that room and never move to another one.

I take everything off tabletops and dressers, take down the curtains, strip the bed, remove all wall hangings, pull every loose item out of the closet, disassemble lamps, pull heavy furniture away from the walls, collect all dried and silk flowers for dusting, and open the windows and remove the screens for cleaning.

By the time I get everything ready to be dusted, I’m too tired to lift a dust rag.

Frustration overwhelms me. If I resisted dusting a tidy room, what made me think I would want to dust one that was in complete disarray and barely navigable?

I sweep the books, lamps, flower arrangements, wall hangings, and window screens off the bed onto the floor. I lie down on the bare mattress and cover myself with a window curtain.

Dan usually comes home to find me there curled up in the fetal position. It doesn’t take him long to figure out what happened.

He gently awakens me, gets me to a sitting position, and asks, “You decided to dust again?”

I nod.

“It’s okay,” he says, “We’ll go get something to eat, just as soon as I return the ladders, the air compressor, the tool chest, and the appliance dolly to the garage.”

I drag myself off the bed and say, “But we can’t possibly sleep in here tonight.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “We can sleep in the spare bedroom.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s awfully dusty in there.”

The arguments my husband and I have usually begin with something trivial. One of us figuratively steps on the other’s toes. The offended one complains and the offender goes into defense mode. Before we know it, we are airing grievances going back 15 or 20 years. We resolve nothing but simply decide to move on.

I wish neither one of us would step on the other’s toes. I wish when one of us does step on the other’s toes, the offender would apologize, the offended one would graciously accept that apology, and life would move on.

That has not been our history.

I have a friend who has been married to the same man longer than I have been married to Dan. She told me, “My husband and I never fight. We had one argument shortly after we married. The argument was over which one of us had left the donut box open. We realized later how silly that spat was and vowed never to have another one, and we never have.”

Good for them.

Surely no couple has ever divorced because of one single argument over an open donut box. But I suspect that many, many couples have divorced after having multiple arguments of the “donut box” variety every day for several years.

I know couples like this. They appear to agree on nothing, argue over every trivial matter and then sulk and go for days without speaking to each other. These couples either eventually divorce or decide to remain in an unhappy  marriage.

I don’t want either of those eventualities to occur in my marriage or in yours.

If your spouse is unfaithful, a habitual liar, an abuser, or a wanted felon, I have no advice for you.

I will, however, share with you some basic rules that Dan and I have established in order to ward off silly arguments.

1. No spouse is allowed to leave one small 5 x 5-inch sheet of toilet paper on a roll and claim, when asked why he/she didn’t replace the roll, “There was paper on the roll when I left the bathroom.”
2. Similarly, no spouse is allowed to leave a tablespoon of milk in the jug in the refrigerator and claim, “I left some milk for you.”
3. No spouse is to pretend she/he didn’t clean up the big blue glob of toothpaste left on the white bathroom sink, claiming, “I didn’t see it.”
4. No spouse is allowed to drive home and park in the driveway a vehicle whose gas level indicator is in the red zone.
5. The spouse who does not return the TV remote controls to their designated place on the round table beside the recliner will be hanged by the neck until dead.
6. Any spouse who washes a load of clothes is required to dry, hang up, fold, and put away those same clothes. (This admonition is aimed at the spouse who says, “I thought I would help you with the laundry by starting a load of clothes.”)
7. The spouse who wants to cut open an old metal can is not allowed to do so using the nice Fiskars scissors from the sewing basket. In a related vein, no spouse is permitted to borrow a wrench from the garage in order to remove a stuck-on lid on a bottle of nail polish and leave the wrench inside the bathroom linen closet.
8. It is considered courteous to announce when you are eating the last Oreo, “I am eating the last Oreo.”
9. A spouse sitting on the living room couch is not allowed to criticize the other spouse who is productively working. I remember as a child watching my mother work to get Sunday dinner on the table. Whenever she turned on the mixer, my dad shouted from the living room, “Turn off that mixer! It’s messing up the TV and I’m missing the game!”
10. No spouse is allowed to sit idly by and watch the other spouse carry in armloads of groceries from the car.
11. If one spouse says, “When you are reading in bed while I am still up, please do not use my pillow to prop up your head. It makes my pillow hot and I like to sleep on a cool pillow,” the other spouse should comply, regardless of how silly he/she believes the request to be.

During our minister’s sermon last Sunday morning, I felt the need for a breath mint. I take a medication that makes my mouth as dry as cotton, so I carry with me wintergreen flavored mints.

I quietly opened my purse in order to withdraw my little round box of mints, but it wasn’t there. I looked in both large compartments of my purse, and inside the small zippered section, twice. The mints simply were not there, so I did without.

When we got home from church, I opened my purse for some reason or another, and there, in plain view, was my box of wintergreen breath mints.

On Monday I bought each of our four grandchildren a pair of pajamas. When I paid for them, I asked the clerk to give me gift receipts, which she did. I dropped the receipts into my purse.

That evening when I gave the kids their pj’s, I looked inside my purse for those gift receipts. They were not there. I withdrew grocery lists, cash register receipts, gum wrappers, tissues, and various other papers from my purse, but the gift receipts simply were not there.

Before I went to bed that night, I opened my purse for some reason or another, and there, as clear as day, were the gift receipts for the four pairs of pajamas.

I wanted to scream!

Recently I went to lunch at Panera Bread with two friends. As we sipped our soup and munched on Italian bread, another customer stood and addressed the entire dining room.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but I’ve lost my keys. I know I brought them in here with me, but now I can’t find them anywhere. There are about eight keys on the key ring, and a heart-shaped charm hangs on it. Will you please look around you for a set of keys?”

Forty or so diners rose from their chairs, dropped to their knees, and crawled under their tables to search for the keys. They were not to be found.

I sympathized with the woman. I have some experience with lost items.

I left Panera Bread and drove home.

Later that day I opened my purse for some reason or another. There I saw two sets of keys, my own familiar set and an unfamiliar set attached to a heart-shaped charm.

As the puzzle pieces fell into place mentally, my stomach sank.

I am not believing this, I thought.

Through a gym membership card attached to the key chain, I was able to locate the owner of the keys. I called her and apologized my head off.

Apparently, she and I had paid for our purchases at the same time. She had laid her keys on the counter and I picked them up, thinking they were mine.

I returned the keys to their owner, along with a Panera Bread gift card as an added apology.

What is it with me and my purse? Are my planets misaligned? Am I suffering bad luck from walking under too many ladders and seeing too many black cats? Is Satan so intent on harassing me that he takes my breath mints out of my purse and replaces them with keys?

Earlier today I went to my purse to get my good pen, the one I paid $12 for. I wanted to use it to sign a birthday card for my aunt. Again, I searched every compartment but couldn’t find the pen that is always, always in my purse.

But I am not panicking. Sometime later today I will once again open my purse for some reason or another and there, standing upright and waving its tiny little pen arms, will be my good pen.

I am going to hate reciting this story to a police officer when he asks me to show him my driver’s license.

“You see, it’s like this, officer . . .”

When I was at the Children’s Museum with my grandchildren a few months ago, I noticed a woman, a nicely-dressed, normal-looking woman, who had on her arm a tattoo of a large housefly. I hope I didn’t stare but for several minutes I contemplated the question: Why would anyone want to sport a tattoo of a housefly?

And recently I chit-chatted with a young woman who was helping me download photos from my phone in order to make prints. She mentioned to me that she and her fiancé had recently had a party to celebrate their engagement. I asked her when the wedding would take place and she told me August 24.

“Wow, that’s coming up very soon,” I said. The girl smiled and explained, “Oh, we are definitely getting married on August 24, but we haven’t decided yet on the year.” Why would anyone choose the month and day for a wedding but not the year?

Most of us have read about people who amass collections of unusual things, and again we ask why.

Why would anyone collect:

Umbrella cover sleeves? One woman has over 700.

Banana stickers? Someone has more than 7000.

Airline barf bags? One man has over 6,000 (hopefully empty) such bags from over 200 countries.

Admittedly, most of us occasionally save too many or too much of a thing. A friend told me several years ago that her mother always saved the TV Listing Guide that came in her newspaper. To designate which guide was the current one, she wrote on the front of the guide with a wide-tipped, black marker the words: THIS ONE. But she never threw an old guide away. Therefore, at any given time the woman had in her living room numerous TV Listing Guides all labeled: THIS ONE.

I too have collections of things I would never consciously choose to collect: plastic grocery bags, paper clips, twist ties, and shoe boxes. Those things are all useful given the right circumstance and the right time, so I hang on to a few to too many of them.

I even indulge in a few ridiculous practices. Whenever I read a book that I did not find particularly entertaining, I write inside the front cover of the book the initials N.E.G., which stand for “Not Especially Good.”

I do the same thing with recipes that turn out to be flops. But do I get rid of the books and recipes I have designated to be not especially good? Of course not! I put them right back onto my bookshelf or into a kitchen drawer.

It is as if I think that some night when I want to try a new recipe for a broccoli casserole or want to read a book for relaxation, I will choose one I have labeled N.E.G.

Why do I do that?

Maybe I am as weird as the woman with the housefly tattoo and the man with 6000 barf bags. But I don’t think so.

The difference between being odd and being weird is this: When I or people I love demonstrate unusual characteristics, we are simply odd. When other people do strange things, they are weird.

I don’t like to travel. Being in my own space, with my own things, following my usual routine is both comfortable and comforting. For me, spending a week away from home is equivalent to having a  dental appointment seven days in a row.

I enjoy looking at pretty scenery as much as the next person. But I prefer looking at it via my television or computer screen. If it were up to me, I would travel occasionally to visit relatives in Arkansas and Missouri and that would be it.

My husband, on the other hand, lives to travel. He wants to see every beautiful sight on earth—several times. Maps, travel brochures, and adventure magazines are his favorite reading materials. If it were up to him, he would visit home occasionally to see the grandkids, and the rest of the time he would be traveling.

I remind Dan that travel is expensive. Plus, making pre-travel arrangements is a hassle.  Someone must be asked to mow the yard, water the plants, and collect the mail.

The person who stays at home incurs no new expenses and needs to make no pre-staying-at-home arrangements. She simply does what she usually does.

Dan reminds me that most people enjoy a break from the ordinary and an opportunity to see the glories of nature on display. The hassle of making pre-travel arrangements is well worth it, he says, and money used for vacationing is well spent.

Since neither of us is keen on the idea of Dan making long trips alone, my husband and I must compromise.

Over the years, we have set up guidelines to follow when we are negotiating compromises. Perhaps you and your spouse will find these rules helpful.

• Agree that the relationship itself is more important than any choice we make about traveling or not traveling. Neither one of us will say, “That’s it! If I don’t get my way, I’m chucking this 44-year marriage!” (No one gets to act like an idiot.)
• Agree that liking or disliking travel is a matter of opinion. Neither person is right or wrong. (There will be no name-calling.)
• Agree that each partner gets some of what he or she wants. (No one gets his or her way 100% of the time.)
• Agree that in this game of give and take, each partner remains pleasant and cooperative both at home and away from home. (There is to be no pouting.)

Of course we developed these rules of behavior only after we realized that acting like an idiot, indulging in name-calling, demanding our own way, and pouting didn’t work for us.

It takes a while to hammer out a good marriage.

I am a loser and I can prove it.

About half an hour ago, I made myself a glass of iced tea. Then I lost it before taking a single drink. At the time, I was moving back and forth between cleaning my kitchen, responding to texts, and working on blog pieces.

I searched through every room that I had been in this morning. I searched through each of those rooms again. I searched through rooms I didn’t remember having been in today. For a third time, I searched through the rooms I had been in.

Just as I was giving up and heading to the kitchen to make myself a new glass of tea, I saw the top two inches of a drinking glass sticking up out of a deep-pocketed drink holder in our double recliner.

Losing my glass of tea is not a big problem. I endured no unwanted consequences from that loss other than realizing that, once again, I had lost something I should not have lost.

Yesterday, I took my granddaughters to the splash park in Greenwood. Before we left the house, I gathered swimsuits, towels, sunscreen, my purse, some ice water, my phone, and my two girls.

The younger girl, Twinkle, was wearing her sunglasses. I put the sunglasses belonging to the older girl, Sparkle, into the Wal-Mart bag with the towels and other things.

When we got out of the car at the park, Twinkle was not wearing her sunglasses.

“Where are your sunglasses?” I asked her.

“I don’t know.”

“Weren’t you wearing them when we left the house?”

“I don’t know.”

I did a cursory search of the back seat of my car. No sunglasses.

I opened the bag containing the towels, etc. to get Sparkle’s sunglasses. They were not there.

“Do you know where your sunglasses are?” I asked her.

“No. You had them.”

I got Twinkle changed into her swimsuit in the back seat of the car. Sparkle had decided she would not splash; she would just play on the playground. I greased both girls down with sunscreen, particularly the pale-skinned redhead.

I dumped the contents of the Wal-mart bag out into the back of my car to conduct another search for Sparkle’s sunglasses. No luck.

I positioned both girls safely on the sidewalk away from traffic and re-searched the back seat more thoroughly for Twinkle’s glasses. In the netherworld beneath her carseat,  I found the sunglasses, along with three crayons, several pretzel pieces, some melted M&M’s, and a dime-store necklace.

I returned to the sidewalk to retrieve the girls. There I opened my purse to drop in my car keys, and I spotted Sparkle’s sunglasses inside my purse.

We spent about an hour playing at the park and about an hour looking for things so we could play at the park. I guess it all came out evenly.

Earlier this week I lost a can of cream of mushroom soup I had taken from my pantry to use in making a crock-pot dinner. I also lost my gardening gloves, my earphones, my house slippers, my toilet scrubber, the necklace my husband brought me from the Dominican Republic, my white sweater that does not have the stained front, and my eyeglasses. I estimate I lost my phone approximately 176 times.

The world moves on. People feed the hungry, rescue the stranded, start and end wars, and work to shut down Planned Parenthood. They watch baby giraffes being born, princesses showing off their babies, and movie stars throwing temper tantrums. They clip coupons and buy gas. They smile and wish everyone a nice day.

Me? I look for things I’ve lost.

I always wanted to play the piano. I love its sound, and my fingers are long and slender, well-suited to piano playing, I am told. When our daughter took piano lessons many years ago, I signed up for lessons too, but I was a busy mom and rarely practiced. After going to class a few times and demonstrating to the teacher that I was unable to play the assigned piece, Mary Had a Little Lamb, for example, I quit.

I always wanted to sew clothes for my grandchildren. I like selecting sweet, simple patterns for sun suits, pants, and dresses. I like choosing fabric and notions (buttons, lace, etc.). I do not, however, like the sewing part. Constantly picking up pieces of thread, fabric scraps, and straight pins scattered across the room, not to mention dealing with my fury when an outfit didn’t turn out right, was too hard. I quit.

I always wanted to grow plants. Nothing is prettier than a multicolored plot of irises or a well weeded vegetable garden. Nothing is tastier than fresh, garden-grown tomatoes and green beans. I like everything about plants except the work that goes into growing my own. After laboring in the hot sun for a growing season, killing insects, pulling weeds, and faithfully watering the ever-needy little seedlings, I quit.

I always wanted to scrapbook. I am creative, love taking family photos, and like the idea of having scrapbooks that document the changes in our family. I like the cutesy craft paper used in scrapbooking, the stencils, the stickers, the fancy cutting implements, and the various page layouts shown in books. What I don’t love is cleaning the mess created when photos get mixed together with scraps of paper, and glue gets stuck to all the wrong pieces, and my creations fail to match the patterns I faithfully followed. Thus, I quit.

Life is too short for me to waste time doing non-compulsory tasks that give me no pleasure. I can enjoy listening to piano played by professionals; dress my grandchildren in adorable outfits from Kohl’s; buy fruits, vegetables, and flowers at Kroger; and look at family photos any time I want. What is more, I can enjoy these life-enhancing activities without stressing myself, destroying my house, and burdening my husband with an angry and depressed wife whose efforts at some project failed.

Writing is the one non-compulsory activity I refuse to quit practicing. I can open my laptop, pull up a clean sheet of paper, write, rewrite, delete, cut and paste, italicize, underline, change fonts, consult a dictionary and thesaurus, research ideas on Google, spell check my work, and save my piece for later without leaving any mess.

When I close my laptop, my room is not littered with scraps of fabric, gluey bits of paper, or piano pieces begging to be practiced. I don’t have to weed my laptop or kill squash bugs or tomato worms on its surface. The only time it gets watered is when I accidentally spill a glass of iced tea on the keyboard.

After much experimenting, I have found that writing is the pastime that makes me happy. I hope you have a pastime that does the same for you.

Clothing designers do not consider women of my age and shape when they decide which styles to offer to female shoppers. They aim for another group of women entirely: the young and thin.

I have spent hours searching for shirts, blouses, and dresses that have sleeves. By sleeves I mean an adequate length of fabric to cover the upper arm. I find sleeveless tops, tops with spaghetti straps, tops with one- and two-inch-wide straps, and tops with so-called “cap” sleeves. The “cap” is simply a half-moon piece of fabric extending about one inch from the end of each shoulder seam and covering the tip of the shoulder blade. It has no business calling itself a sleeve.

I looked up the word sleeve in my Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. The definition reads: the part of a shirt, jacket, etc., that covers all or part of your arm. For clarity’s sake and in order to avoid any confusion, I also looked up the word arm. The definition given is: a human upper limb; especially the part between the shoulder and the waist. Surely designers can find a way to make available to us garments with sleeves.

I won’t elaborate on the reasons why I like sleeves. I don’t feel the need to justify my preferences in clothing. I do, however, feel the need to make heard my voice and the voices of countless other women who are not young and thin, and we are legion. To clothing designers everywhere we say, “Give us sleeves, please!”

We also want the waist of our slacks to circle our middles, the area of the body that contains the belly button. We consider pants whose waist is made to sit on the hipbone to be objects of torture.

I see young women wearing jeans that are basically two stovepipe pieces of denim with a waistband attached to their tops. How do these women manage to walk or even to breathe? When I sit down, I want the seat of my pants to accompany me into the chair. A person sitting behind me should not see any skin between the bottom of my shirt (with sleeves) and the top of my pants.

We also would appreciate some consideration from shoe manufacturers. We don’t like wearing shoes whose soles are six-inch-thick platforms made of cork. Neither do we want shoes that define themselves as sandals but in addition to the strap that goes between the toes, have another strap that makes several circles around the lower leg all the way up to the knee.

We value our health and safety too much to buy stilettos. We are not looking for flashy, sparkly, sexy shoes that cry out “Look at me!”  We are looking for stylish little numbers that whisper, “Comfort.”

I suspect that all clothing and shoe designers are engaged in a conspiracy to make older women look hideous. We don’t need any help. Time and gravity have done that for us.

We do not aim to look young, nor is it our goal to look sexy. We don’t wish to look hip, or to show portions of our hips. We want to feel comfortable, to look our rightful ages, to appear neat and coordinated, and to find clothing and shoes that will allow us to meet those goals.

Women, put on your pants with a natural-fitting waist, a top with three-quarter-length or longer sleeves, and a pair of comfortable walking shoes. Join me in the march to end discrimination against the not-young-not-thin women shoppers.

If those in charge of making and selling women’s clothes do not comply with our demands, we may boycott dress shops entirely and stop wearing clothes at all.

Nobody wants to see that.

Our minister is leading us in a verse-by-verse study of the Book of Matthew. The study is expected to take about a year to complete. I take notes each Sunday using the printed outline the minister provides.

In addition to filling in the blanks in the outline, I also cover the top, bottom, and side margins of the paper with other pieces of information I want to remember.

My intention when this sermon series started was to use the outline as a study guide during the week. I planned each day to reread the Scripture passage and gradually transfer my scrappy written notes into a neatly typed outline.

On Monday morning I scanned my written notes from the first sermon on Matthew. Wanting to be thorough in my study, I decided to read other reference books in order to gain even more insight into the passage.

From my bookshelves I pulled these titles: MacArthur Bible Commentary, Believer’s Commentary, J. Vernon McGee’s Thru the Bible, The Everyday Life Bible, and the Life Application Bible.

I dutifully opened my reference books and began to work. Three hours later I had in front of me on my kitchen table five opened reference books and three sheets of lined, yellow, legal pad paper covered with more scrappy notes.

That was enough for one day. I had studied Matthew 1:1-17. A good start, I thought. I pushed the books and legal pad to the back of the table so we could eat dinner later.

Early on Tuesday I looked at the books and papers stacked on my kitchen table and felt like the miller’s daughter surveying the straw she was supposed to spin into gold. Is this really what I had signed on to do for a whole  year?

I decided to run some errands.

On Wednesday morning I surveyed the same items and decided to thoroughly clean two bathrooms. On Thursday and Friday I followed the same pattern.

It was at this point I realized my plan was doomed.

How I wished on that first Monday I had simply reviewed the lesson and rewritten some notes.

In like manner, on Wednesday of this week, I took my yellow Swiffer duster into my bedroom to do some dusting.

First, I stripped the bed and washed the sheets. Then I pushed all the furniture to the center of the room and vacuumed thoroughly. I took down the drapes and tossed them into the dryer to fluff them up and remove the dust.

Next, I carted all the lampshades, artificial greenery, silk flowers, and candle creations out into the yard and blew the dust off of them using my husband’s high-powered air compressor.

By 3:00 p.m. I was exhausted. The room had not been dusted and would not be. I couldn’t find my Swiffer duster under all the mess.

How I wished I had simply dusted the bedroom.

My plans often fail because I make easy things hard. I take a doable idea and turn it into a gargantuan endeavor that would challenge even the most disciplined person.

In an effort to curb this tendency to take on too much, I have composed what I hope is a reasonable to-do list for today.

1. Get dressed.