The Young and The Restless | Time is never time enough, until you burn your eyeball

By Bree Harding

Apr 29, 2025

No matter how busy I am, if there’s a nice sunset, I always take time to climb on to my roof for a quick pic.

I can never quite fathom the method in my own seeming madness why it’s always been more common for us to have takeaway on a weekend than on a weekday.

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I probably should be saving the extra ‘spare’ time we have on a weekend for cooking something a bit more extravagant and keeping that quick, easy meal up my sleeve for one of those demanding and lengthy work days where running three teenagers here, there and everywhere ensues late into the night?

Maybe my body is preparing for some kind of winter hibernation, given when the weekend rolled around I pretty much fell into a heap.

A friend asked me to go to a fundraiser on Friday night. Normally if I didn’t already have plans, it would be an immediate yes, but this time I needed quite a bit of convincing.

It was fun, but it tired me out more for Saturday.

The perpetually needy grass beckons me from the earth to show it some attention.

I looked at my lawns and talked myself into leaving them for a second week as they hadn’t grown too much, all the while dreading that my temperamental electric mower will chuck a hissy fit this weekend if the grass is so much as a millimetre taller than I usually let it grow.

I got as far as cleaning my toilets and basins, but not the showers.

I washed sheets, towels and a couple of loads of clothes, but didn’t quite get to vacuuming.

I ran kids to and from work, ordered groceries and made school lunches.

It truly was an achievement of the bare minimum, yet I still felt like I had no time left over to even play a board game, go for a bike ride, or attempt to watch a movie early enough for me not to fall asleep on the couch as soon as I stopped.

How did we used to go away for a weekend, or at least one of the two days, and still manage to fit most of these things in?

Is the post-COVID effect still affecting me? Am I still readjusting to ‘normal’ life?

Am I just getting old?

Do I need a holiday?

This space was named The Young and The Restless to represent my children (the first half, the young) and me (the second half, the restless).

Its name is still apt, given I feel more restless than ever as I struggle being tied to home mostly because of the kids’ weekend working commitments and the never-ending list of domestic chores.

Each time my arm is elbow-deep in a toilet scrubbing, or while I waste too much time on a futile quest to locate a missing sock from a pair, or get tangled frustratingly in a doona cover while trying to bag up the damn doona that belongs in it, a little something dies inside of me.

I am certain I was put on this Earth to do things other than housework.

Look, I am grateful I have a toilet to scrub, a washer to eat socks and a warm doona to tame, but I long for the magic of Bewitched and Samantha’s wiggling nose to be an actual thing.

I thought I hadn’t achieved much on the weekend until I looked back through some photos. I, or at least my breadmaker (named Martha Stewart), did get some baking done.

The darkening bananas on my bench also urged me to spare some time to breathe new life into them by turning them into cakes for kids and workmates.

Cleaning is hazardous to my health, too, did you know?

On Sunday, I was trying to freshen up my kitchen sink with some bi-carb soda and peppermint oil when I had a little mishap.

I accidentally touched my eye ever so briefly as I brushed hair from my face.

I didn’t even realise I’d gotten any oil on my fingers until about half a second after that when the burn took my breath (and vision) away.

I ran to my freshly cleaned bathroom basin and madly irrigated the eye as the burn intensified for the next five minutes before it peaked, then eased, while the voice in my head mocked me amusingly.

“Some people will do almost anything to get out of housework, hey?”

Anyway, I phoned Nurse-On-Call simply for reassurance that I wasn’t going to go blind, and was shocked that the operator directed me to my closest emergency department.

What? No! I’d rather clean 20 toilets in the homes where three teenage boys each live than spend the last quarter of my weekend in a waiting room.

Thankfully, the advice had changed by the end of the call and I was referred to the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department for the first time, where I could wait in a line virtually on my phone as I continued carrying out my chores, sans the aid of peppermint oil.

I used the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department service for the first time at the weekend, after being referred to it by Nurse-on-Call when I had a mishap with essential oil.

Within half an hour I’d been seen, reassured and dismissed with advice that didn’t involve presenting in person at the local ER.

All of a sudden, I’d regained the half day I thought had been snatched by my clumsiness.

And that kind of felt like winning a lottery of time.

Though it took burning my eyeballs to shunt the view, perspective really is everything.

Yet, still, l can’t shake the feeling that a holiday is overdue for this restless and ageing, now red-eyed and oily-fingered klutz before that winter hibernation begins.