Monday, June 19, 2006

Italian Guilt

This morning I was raring to go to the gym but woke up and my entire body was aching! How inconvenient! I was a revved up last night for this week, I packed my work bag, my gym bag, went to bed nice and early to get a great sleep, but my body has let me down. I was going to go into work late this morning as I couldn’t do the groceries on the weekend as I was setting up my Mother in-Law’s 50th, but after that I was going to roar down to Freo and get on with things. The gym? Well the alarm went off at 5:45am and I was going to head out to pump some iron (little irons). But...I could not move!

Bodies are funny things, and lately I have realised that I don’t really take care of mine as much as I should do, particularly when it comes to exercising and also relaxing. I don’t do enough quality exercise and I don’t do enough quality relaxing. The exercise thing I have no excuse for as I have a gym membership, and the gym really close to my house. The relaxing thing…well, that is the Italian guilt!

Let me explain…part of my Mum’s family is Italian and all of the women in her family seem to have this inability to slow down, relax, and let go of the fact that there is one speck of dust on the otherwise perfect hardwood floor. See, we all have a cleaning disorder! Not because we can’t clean, but because we can’t stop cleaning. I remember when I was a teenager I used to laugh as my Mum ran around cleaning her house like crazy before her mother came over (or the cleaner arrived) and now, I do the same thing when my mother comes round, or anyone else for that matter! If we eventually are satisfied with the cleaning we start with the sorting and the chucking out of junk. So we do have perfect homes, but no time to relax, or exercise.

I actually find my eye begins to twitch if I have a load of dirty dishes, or if I see a mark on the floor. But the killer for me is dust! I will one day be able to combat dust! But at the moment it is beating my head against the tile floor. I have tried wet cloths andnormal dusters, now I am onto those dusters that actually “grab” the dust. I also have electro-static dusting cloths that suck the dust into their clutches (and they smell like orange…mmmmm…orange)

So the above cleaning disorder, driven by Italian guilt (that your house is your temple and it should never be dirty) is the reason why I can’t relax, and possibly the reason that I am so achy today. As this weekend I experienced Italian guilt in my home and also in my in-laws home as I cleaned before the 50th party. Mmmm, perhaps I can have the Italian guilt exorcised out of me?

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