The reason to do housework on weeknights is so it's done for the weekend. I'm not proud of spending the week rereading Harry Potter and watching television, but so it went. By the weekend I was way too much in my head and mindless crap like that wasn't keeping me out of it. Now, Sunday evening, the house is clean (even the bathroom and the birdcage), the weedcrop is weedwhacked (except for the bachelor's button, which is too pretty to be a weed), the trees and gardens are watered, a quart of cherries are in the freezer, the day's raspberries are in a bowl near to hand, the laundry's done (though just piled on the bed with its flipped, notated mattress and clean line-dried linens), groceries are bought and away, the drainage ditch is full of gravel, and if 80 pounds of birdseed are still in Cassidy, well, the baby shower was really nice.