Cool Coffee Cups and Carrying the Mental Load

My cool 70's mug

Coffee time this morning is being punctuated by the "thunk, thunk" of walnut tree junk falling on the roof overhead. One landed in my lap yesterday as I sat on the deck. Might need a hard hat for the next week.

I love different coffee cups. This is one I found in Goodwill years ago. Normally, I get cross-eyed in thrift stores because it's a dang wreck, and there's never anything I really want. I just don't have the mental capacity to sort through racks of who-knows-what and still keep my sanity.

For the record, I can't sort through clearance racks at normal stores. Too chaotic. (I'm looking at you, Kohl's!) The thrill of a deal just isn't there for me to deal with that.

If I do happen to step into a thrift store, I head straight for the dishes and hang out there until Kris finally is ready to leave. I find beautiful and interesting dishes all the time. For now, though, my kitchen cabinet space is so minuscule, I had to get rid of most of those beautiful and interesting dishes when we moved here.

This cup was spared the knife. It has to be the colors that speak to me. I'm a late-70's kid, so everybody had house wares in these colors, and this cup takes me back to a carefree childhood, even though I didn't drink coffee then.

On to the next topic on my mind: I've been reading a blog series from To Love, Honor, and Vacuum about the emotional labor of the mental load.

In short, usually one partner (very often the woman) in the household carries the invisible mental load of making the entire house run smoothly. It's exhausting work that never goes away.

Sheila Gregoire puts much better words to my thoughts than I have been able to do. It's not a whine-fest, just a way to acknowledge the load and work out different solutions for keeping the household going without one person shouldering all that mental load. There are more posts to come in June, but for now, the first four are informative reading. Here is the link for the first in the series: https://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2020/06/mental-load-emotional-labor-fair-play-rodsky/

Now I'm off to check off the next item in the mental load list--after a coffee refill in my cool 70's cup.