TheBanyanTree: High Maintenance

[Julie Anna Teague]

> Why do people use their cars as trash receptacles?  How hard is to just
> throw your trash into the garbage can when you get home?  Then the car stays
> clean and neat all the time.

Sigh.  How hard?  Hard enough.  Where do I start?  Because sometimes 
the only time I have to drink a cup of coffee or eat a sandwich in 
peace is when I'm in my jeep?  Because the kids have stuffed trash, 
candy, french fries, school papers, broken pens, and birthday treat 
bags down in the seats for the eight years I've owned it?  Because 
since my partner has moved in, there is nowhere else to store my 
climbing gear or rollerblades?  Because in the last couple of months 
I've hauled chicken feed, boxes of plants, bags of potting soil, a bale 
of straw, the entire contents of my old office in boxes and bags, six 
different teenagers, a bass guitar with amps and wires, a motorcycle 
tire, and a greasy bicycle?

Because when I pull up at home, after working for eight hours, I'm 
struggling out of the car, juggling my backpack or purse, my lunch bag, 
a coat or jacket, some groceries, and the day's mail?  Because once I 
make it in with all that crap, put it all away, make dinner, clean up 
dinner, make a pass through the house picking up stuff, squeeze in 
twenty minutes of an aerobics dvd in the bedroom so I don't die of 
heart disease, spend some quality time talking to my partner and my 
son, do a load or three of laundry, and let the cat in and out five 
times, I am too damned tire to worry about that coffee cup and bagel 
bag I left in the car.  Those gas receipts that have fluttered to the 
floor. That junk mail that fell in the cracks between the seats.  The 
second I get out of the car, there is something or someone who needs 
me, and sometimes it's me who needs me.

If I gave over fifteen minutes to cleaning out the car, I might work on 
getting the stain out of the back seat.  That would be nice.  If I had 
forty-five minutes, maybe I'd run it by the car wash with the big 
sucking sweepers and get the multi-colored nerds candy out of the front 
floorboards.  It's not that I don't think about it.  It's that I don't 
have time.  Period.  I know this is hard for people with different 
kinds of lives to comprehend, but I honest to goodness do not have time 
to clean out my car.  This is the way my life is right now.  On the 
rare-ish days that I do have a little time for myself, I might paint, 
bake a pie, putter in my garden, or read or have wine with friends or 
take a nap, and blissfully ignore the trash in the car as one more 
drudgey task that has to drop off the list if I am to remain sane.  I 
guess the bottom line is that a clean car is low on my priority list.  
I choose not to stress about it.  And knowing this about myself gives 
me a lot of understanding for other people's messy lives.  Most of us, 
by the grace of God, are doing what we can do, and then some.

Julie