Those Three Minutes

Sunday evening, standing at the sink, staring out the window. It had been a lovely family dinner - quick simple food thrown together - barbequed chicken in lemon and garlic and stirfried green vegetables. The dishwasher is stacked, the counter is clear and yet - I cannot bring myself to move.

There are only a handful of tasks left to be done - the knives to be washed by hand, dried and put away. The counter to be wiped and the Plumbaby's highchair scrubbed of all those little handprints. The last vegetable peelings and scraps to be lifted out of the sink and put in the bin. That's all. Three minutes tops. Then I will have a clean kitchen, that won't irk me when I walk in for a glass of water and spy all the mess lying around. But it seems too much, too hard right now.

Maybe it's that I just spent six hours on my feet at the largest shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere. Sheer foolishness at this time of year, but I needed a few bits and pieces from there before promotions stopped. Burst in on in a change room (once). Sneezed on in the toy department (once). Car park space swiped from under my nose (once). These are all trivial things but that, and the great hordes of Christmas shoppers made it a rather tiresome experience.

I spend four or five minutes at the bench, talking myself into it. And then, it is done. Clean. Sparkling. Finished. But why was it so hard to do? And does anyone else feel like this?