Last night, I helped my friend’s daughter with her maths homework. Algebra. 

“So what?” I hear you say…

Well, she lives over an hour away and we did it via MSN. (I don’t know what’s more noteworthy – the MSN homework help or the fact that I can still remember how to do algebra 20+ years down the track…) We worked out the answer, she worked out what I was doing and it was all good. At the same time, I was chatting to another friend and comparing really bad family snap shots. This friend’s at least 200km away and here we were, comparing family shots like we were sharing a cuppa and a biscuit.

Now, I am not a total weirdo, I do have real life, flesh and blood friends that I interact with on a face to face basis. But what with one thing and another; my friends seem to be scattered far and wide across the countryside. Even the closest one at 5km away is still a tiny bit too far to just pop in for five minutes and a cuppa. Assuming she’s home…

Since I started delving into the World of Flylady, though, I have discovered the joys of chatting whilst I do my housework with a pack of semi-strangers. These are a group of women brought together by the simple fact we’re reluctant housekeepers who forgot to queue up on the day they were handing out the Domestic Goddess Badges. All of us can think of a thousand million bazillion things we’d rather be doing than cleaning up after other people. A few of us work as well, which brings its own particular challenges – juggling those domestic responsibilities in the limited time remaining after putting in a 30 hour week. So we chat to each other… Encourage each other on a bad day; reward each other with coffee breaks and loads of virtual vodka.

Back in the Olden Days, people tended to grow up, go to school, go to work and raise their own families in the same area for generations. In fact, in some places – they still do. But lots of people move around, be it for education, work opportunities, for love for just the simple fact that they CAN. In the Olden Days, too, it was customary for Mother to stay home with the kids, and for Father to go out and work. 

So people stayed closer to home and they knew their neighbours. Pop in for a quick cuppa tea and a biscuit; borrow a cup of flour, pinch that recipe for Aunty Edna’s Prize Winning Scones, quick whinge about Little Johnny tracking mud through the house *again* and back into your own place. Have a chat over the fence whilst you hang out the washing, watch the kids playing some death defying game involving sticks and rocks. There was a sense of community.

Now though, people are in and out of their cars in their driveways or straight into the two car garage and inside the house. Mothers are just as likely to be at work as Fathers, and children move away from their families. People don’t talk to other people. Ok, they nod and wave; but that’s the limit of their interactions. One of my neighbours is an octogenarian dope fiend – not the type of person I’d be hitting up for recipe tips – gardening tips, maybe, but not cooking. My other neighbour plays drums. Badly. And the only reason I know his first name is because I can see his wireless internet connection.

But my on line buddies are like my “neighbours”. We hang out over our virtual fences and chat about the kids, pinch recipes from each other. Ok, it’s a tiny bit difficult to borrow that cup of flour when you need one, but hey the service station round the corner has all of that. When you’re having a bad day, the kids are finger-painting with your $100 a jar moisturiser, you’ve just dropped a brand new box of Rice Bubbles all over the floor and you just discovered the neighbour’s cat has killed a bird in the laundry. And in the bathroom. And is eating the head in the middle of your bed…

*PING* there’s one of Lovely Ladies calling out “You Flying today, Harriet? Come and join us…” I get it off my chest, and 15 minutes later, the cat is evicted, the Rice Bubbles are swept and the soft and sweet smelling children are doing something less expensive.

The Bloke of the House calls them my Imaginary Friends. He also doesn’t quite understand how my chatting to Imaginary People means the housework gets done… However he’s conceded that if the cost of a clean house is having the Missus on the computer; it may well be a small price to pay. 

There’s something about a burden shared being a burden halved or something – and whilst we’re not *really* sharing the housework, we are. We are sharing the drudgery and the repetition. Taking the mindlessness out of it… Work for 15 minutes, chat for 5, work for another 15 and brag about what you achieved (or moan about what you didn’t) and at the end of the hour or the day, the washing’s done and kitchen is shiny; dinner’s on the table and hey, we’ve actually eaten lunch. One of us will remember, for sure. 

And it’s not all about doing the housework…

Sometimes, we play Pirates!

(Arrrrr)