To be an overfed white woman or not to be an overfed white woman: that is the question

So my daughter has gone off to kindergarten and I am sitting here waiting for my housekeepers to show up. They’ve been coming at 8:30 a.m. for the last month, so it’s about time for them to change things up a bit and start coming at 3 p.m. again. That will not be convenient, as I have not arranged for my children to be someplace else during the hours of 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. I should have done that. I should have been doing that for the last five years, just arranging to have my children go someplace else after school every other Wednesday on the off chance that that will be when the housekeepers show up. That’s what a smart person does, but I’m not smart. At least the weather’s nice today, so in theory I can threaten them with bodily harm if they do not go to the park instead of hanging around the house getting in the way of it being cleaned. When it’s raining, I don’t feel as comfortable with that option.

It’s reminding me that in one month’s time I will have the kids home with me all day every day, and I don’t know what I’m going to do then. It is very difficult to plan activities for four people ages 6-14 that last all day long. Correction: it is very difficult for me to plan activities for four people ages 6-14 that last all day long. It doesn’t seem like it should be, and yet it is. Probably because there isn’t anywhere I want to go all day. What’s a good all-day trip that will appeal to children of all ages that won’t make me want to freaking kill myself 30 minutes into it? The beach is an all-day trip. All the kids would enjoy going to the beach. I don’t like the beach, and moreover, I don’t feel confident in my ability to provide adequate supervision for four children in the ocean simultaneously. In theory, the older two shouldn’t need that much supervision. But the younger two might need enough supervision for four. But now we’re getting away from the fact that I just don’t like the beach, and moreover, coming home with a bunch of sandy people sort of defeats the purpose of having the house cleaned while you’re gone. So forget it. No beach. Not that I was ever in a million years going to take the children to the beach because I don’t like it there.

Why don’t I like the beach? Because it’s sandy and windy and in Oregon usually cold. But mostly it’s the sand thing. And then there’s the water factor. Water always complicates everything. And I’m no fun, but that goes without saying by now, or at least it should.

So what else is there? The zoo. The zoo can be an all-day thing. I don’t like the zoo either, and it’s expensive, but in theory I could take them all there and at least they wouldn’t be sandy when they came home. But gah, the freaking zoo.

I’m sorry, but at a certain point in my life I became okay with the fact that I’m not any fun. After a couple decades or so of trying to be fun because I felt guilty about not being fun, I realized that it just wasn’t working. So now I go through the motions of doing fun things but I no longer try to pretend that I’m enjoying it. I don’t sit around and whine about it once I’m committed to the activity. I just don’t pretend that I’m going to like it because I won’t. Fifty-seven trips to the zoo later, I know I’m not having fun. Call it a moral failing or a psychological defect, pity me or despise me, but this is what I am. I’m too old to make like something else.

I just remembered that my mother-in-law will be back up here next month, so in theory I could ask her to come with us wherever we end up going. Or I could just send the kids over to her house to make her crazy. As if I won’t be doing that every single day anyway. Ha ha.

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last couple hours. A lot of soul-searching, in addition to the usual pre-housekeeper tasks like wondering how hard it is to put your toothbrush in the toothbrush holder or flush the toilet when appropriate or keep your STUPID crap off the STUPID floor for more than five STUPID FRACKING SECONDS at a time. My kids will all be in school full-time in September. In theory, I will then have enough time alone in my house when I could clean it my damn self. I think, actually, that that is what my husband is counting on. Part of me feels like that would be very liberating. The rational part of me thinks, “What, are you kidding? That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. Who willingly gives up a lifestyle where other people mop your floors?” Well, I might. I think I probably should, in fact.

Especially if they’re not going to show up until all the kids are home from school anyway.

Here are the relevant facts:

1. Currently the housekeepers keep me on a schedule of making sure that the house is in a state of relative order every two weeks. I can’t emphasize the value of this service enough. If the housekeepers don’t provide it, who will? No one, that’s who. I will have to make myself do it. I can’t even make myself take a trip to the beach. What do you think is going to happen when I’m in charge of my own schedule?

2. The only housekeeping tasks I really mind doing myself are cleaning the bathtub and shower and mopping the floors. I absolutely despise mopping floors. And cleaning the tub and shower are way up there on the despise-o-meter. Perhaps the thing I despise more than anything else, though, is picking up everybody’s stupid crap off the floor–which I’m already doing anyway, so whatever.

3. Everyone else should be picking their own stupid crap off the floor. Don’t you think I know that?

4. Everyone else should be doing their share of the dishes and the laundry and the toilet bowl cleaning, too, now that I think about it. I mean, this is hardly the first time I’ve thought about this. I think about it almost every day, how much housework my children don’t do and how much they complain about the little they’re asked to do. As much as they complain about how little they’re asked to do, I may as well ask them to do more. Don’t you think I know that?

5. I am a complete failure as a parent and possibly as a human being. Oh, wait, this isn’t a fact, it’s just my opinion after marinating in the juices of my own inadequacies for the last couple hours. But it’s still relevant.

Inadequacy juice doesn’t seem like something you want to be anywhere around, does it? It’s really kind of a gross metaphor, when I reflect on it.

I could save about $2600 a year, give or take, by giving up my housekeeping service. But what would it cost me in sanity dollars? That’s the question. With all the existential angst that surrounds the housekeeping-service issue, could I actually save sanity dollars by giving it up? What would the debit and credit columns look like in the sanity ledger? There’s really only one way to find out.

But if I wanted to experiment, I would have been a scientist.

Avoiding the laundry

There is a lot of laundry piling up in the living room. Why the living room? Because there’s more room there. At least there used to be, before I put all the laundry there.

At least it’s clean laundry in the living room. The dirty laundry is in a big pile upstairs.

It’s not that difficult to fold laundry. I kind of enjoy it, actually. Or I did enjoy it, when I could listen to my iPod while I folded. This was before I dropped the iPod in the toilet. Now I don’t have anything to listen to. I guess I could listen to my iTunes library on the computer. It’s not like I have to move around the house to fold laundry. Only to put it away. For some reason putting away laundry is so much more odious a chore than actually folding it. Though you wouldn’t know the difference judging by the enormous amount of unfolded laundry in the living room.

But as I was saying, putting away the clean laundry after it has been folded is something that apparently no one wants to do. Why should this be? My kids all groan when I tell them to put away their clean clothes. I feel like they shouldn’t complain, since they didn’t have to wash or fold any of it–and yet, the only reason I’m asking them to put it away is because I myself don’t want to do it. Theoretically, I should have more sympathy for them. And yet, somehow I do not.

Every time I have this conversation with myself, I am reminded that my children really need to start doing their own laundry. I started doing laundry when I was six. It’s not that hard. I’m continuously amazing myself with the number of things I have not managed to teach my children to do over the years. What the crap have I been doing?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I’d repent right now by getting off the internet and conducting an impromptu laundry class, but they’re all in school at the moment. So. Later.

Today I have to remember that I’m picking Elvis up from school and taking him to Cub Scouts. I’m just telling you that so I don’t forget.

Today is a very busy day. Elvis usually takes the bus home from school, but today he has Cub Scouts, which starts at 3:30 p.m., which is seven minutes earlier than his bus gets home, so I have to pick him up from school so he can get to Cub Scouts on time. His school gets out at 3:05 p.m., but I have to leave here at 2:30 p.m. if I want to get there early enough to snag a parking space so I don’t have to go through the circle of hell that is the pick-up line. The pick-up line! I have never been able to figure out the pick-up line. Not at any school any of my children has ever attended. It just doesn’t make sense to me. There’s this big line of cars driven by parents waiting for children who haven’t come out of their classrooms yet and a bunch of children waiting on the pavement for parents who can’t get into the parking lot because of all the cars that are already in there and aren’t going anywhere until their kids show up. I understand why there’s a pick-up line. I just don’t understand how anyone manages to ever get out of it. It makes me claustrophobic to think about it. I avoid it altogether by parking off campus and walking in, or alternatively, being so late that there are no other cars left in the parking lot. That works, too. But it won’t work for Elvis on Cub Scout day, so I must leave at 2:30 p.m.

Which is the time I would ordinarily be picking up Mister Bubby and Girlfriend from school, but obviously I can’t be both places at once, so the babysitter is picking up MB and GF while I pick up Elvis. And obviously I’m taking Elvis to Cub Scouts. Elvis has a thing about using the restroom at school, so he always has to pee as soon as he gets home, but since we’re not coming home, he will need to pee as soon as he gets to Cub Scouts. Cub Scouts is usually at the church, so that wouldn’t be a problem, but last time it wasn’t at the church but at a neighboring school (long story) but not inside the school, only at the outdoor part of the school, and I didn’t know if the school would even be open for him to pee in there (and it just now occurred to me that maybe he wouldn’t want to pee at a strange school, either, but maybe he would, who knows), so to avoid any sort of emergency-type disappointment situation, I took him to pee at the Fred Meyer on the way. (He doesn’t have a problem with using restrooms at stores or restaurants.) Since they are doing a bike-riding activity today, which will not be inside the church, I don’t know if the church will be unlocked or not–although the den leader should have a key, since they usually meet inside, but who knows if she will bring her key if she’s not expecting to have to go in–so again I am wondering whether or not there will be an emergency-type disappointment situation, and I may need to have him pee at the Fred Meyer again. I don’t know. The uncertainty is wearing on me.

We have to leave Cub Scouts early so that Elvis can go to his social group, which starts at 4:30 p.m. I know it sounds weird to take him out of one presumably-social activity to take him to another one, but the social group is his speech therapy, so he can’t miss it and moreover, he doesn’t want to. So we’ll be leaving Cub Scouts early and going to social group, and then after social group we will go to the Safeway because that is his routine and if I change it there will be heartache (mostly mine), so we will get home around 6:30 p.m. Which is usual for a Tuesday. But it will feel like a very busy day. I haven’t even gotten to the part where we have to do homework and crap.

Which is why I should go do the laundry now.

 

Another thing that is stressing me out that I had forgotten but now remember

Princess Zurg has wanted to learn to sew for the longest time. For Christmas 2010 we gave her a sewing machine. I really, really intended to teach her how to use it. It’s not like I don’t know anything about sewing. I know a few things. I’ve used sewing machines before. Specifically, I used a sewing machine when I took Home Economics in the eighth grade, and I also used a sewing machine when I decided to sew my own temple dress in 1996 and I stitched half the bodice before my mother took pity on me and finished the whole thing herself. So yes, I have some sewing experience. No, I was not under the illusion that I had extensive sewing knowledge that I would simply pass on to my daughter. I knew that I would need to give myself a, ah, refresher course before I could tutor PZ in the womanly art of sewing. I didn’t think it would be like riding a bike. I did think it would be a bit more like doing algebra. You know, a little perusal of the material and it would all come back to me. I did it before, I could do it again.

So. Sewing. It’s not at all like algebra.

I figured we’d start small, with simple projects. For instance, we made Girlfriend a pillowcase for Christmas. (With puppies on it! It’s so cute.) That went well. I figured we would gradually work our way up from there, eventually ending up in the arena of actual apparel. But PZ has been wanting to do actual apparel for such a long time that she just isn’t willing to wait any longer. She told me she wanted to make herself a new Sunday dress. I figured, okay, that’s fine. I’m a grown woman who’s used a sewing machine before. I passed 8th grade Home Ec. I think I might have gotten an A. Surely I can fumble my way through a basic dress pattern.

Because I am a terrible mother who lacks enthusiasm for her daughter’s sewing project, my MIL took pity on PZ (and me) and took PZ to the fabric store to select an appropriate pattern and the appropriate fabric. PZ had this particular vision in mind–being that she intends to become a fashion designer someday (hence the interest in sewing, which I have not nurtured nearly as much as I’d hoped I would)–so my MIL tried her best to help her find materials that would approximate that vision. They came home with the pattern and the fabric, and my MIL volunteered to take the boys this evening so PZ and I could examine the materials in more detail before beginning the project in earnest.

Well, I’ve spent the last hour or so examining the materials, and I very much want to cry right now.

It’s not at all like algebra. It’s not at all a basic dress pattern. It’s a dress with a fitted bodice and a skirt comprised of many panels, and oh by the way she will need to add sleeves to it, so voila, here’s another pattern for some other item of apparel that does have sleeves, so we can just do a mash-up of those two patterns, okay, only incidentally this dress laces up the front and she doesn’t want it to lace up the front because that looks like a corset and that will look slutty, so we’re going to have to figure out some other mode of fastening (whatever I think is best, she’s not really that picky).

This is impossible. This is Just.Not.Possible. I read the pattern instructions. They’re in English, but I don’t know all the words. The sentences don’t make sense to me. There are diagrams, but I can’t discern the relationship of the diagrams to reality. It’s not at all like algebra. It’s very, very complicated. I don’t remember it being this complicated in the eighth grade. I don’t remember integral calculus being this complicated.

I can’t do this.

I can’t.

I don’t mean that I don’t want to. I don’t want to, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that I can’t. I can’t do it. It’s above my pay grade. It’s above my level of expertise. It’s above my level of intelligence. There is no possible way I can accomplish this task.

The fabric’s been bought. There’s fabric and lace and interfacing and…something else I don’t even know what it is. It’s very unclear. I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to my daughter. She’s going to need another sewing mentor, and I need to find one fast.

Just as soon as I throw my son a birthday party and make a fool of myself clogging in front of a bunch of old people and throw my daughter a birthday party the following week and then I think the housekeepers come again OH CRAP WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME???

Easter! I still haven’t shopped for Easter!

I should be sleeping

…but I took a stupid nap this afternoon, which was more like early evening and when I woke up it was 7 p.m. Oops.

You know what the problem is? The house is too cold, so I sit curled up on the couch with a book and possibly a blanket, and then what am I supposed to do? Huh?

On the other hand, if I turn up the heat and therefore (theoretically) stay awake, the house will be too hot for me to move around and do stuff. Therefore, theoretically, I should make myself warmer by moving around and doing stuff instead of curling up on the couch and reading. But I hate to do stuff!

Case in point: We are going on a little trip tomorrow, the Madhousefam + MadhouseMIL. Just a little trip, out to The Dalles. Someone heard we were going to The Dalles and said, “Why?” I dunno. Because it’s close and low-impact and we’re going to fool our kids into thinking it’s a real vacation. We’re going to stay overnight in a hotel and swim in the swimming pool, and that’s pretty much all our kids require in a vacation that’s only going to last two days. More than two days and there’s gonna need to be roller coasters.

Have I mentioned lately that I don’t enjoy swimming? But this vacation isn’t for me.

Anyway, we’re going on a little trip tomorrow, and I’m supposed to be packing right now. I was packing earlier, but then I stopped. I had some laundry to do, as it’s been piling up. I was only going to do one load, but then I realized that somehow, all of Elvis’s socks ended up in the laundry hamper. Every last one! This wouldn’t be remarkable except that he has about 20,000 pairs of socks. We all do, except for Mister Bubby, who is very particular about his socks and therefore only has about half a dozen that he’s willing to wear. It wouldn’t be remarkable if all of his socks wound up in the laundry at once. But anyone else, it’s kind of amazing. And suspicious. I doubt very much that all of those socks were dirty. That seems kind of impossible. And yet, there they all were. And I wasn’t about to start subjecting them to the smell test one by one. It was easier to just wash all of them. Are you beginning to see why I have so much laundry all the time? I suspect a conspiracy, but I don’t know who all is in on it.

Anyway, I’m waiting for the socks to dry so I can pack some. I really dislike packing. I do it because I’m the only one I trust to make sure everything gets packed that needs to get packed. I very rarely forget anything. But that’s because I almost always overpack. Often I overpack grossly. I just can’t not think of all the contingencies. We’re only going to be gone overnight and come back on Tuesday evening. Theoretically we should be able to get away with just one change of clothes and the clothes on our backs, shouldn’t we? Everyone’s toilet trained and no one wets the bed anymore. And yet…what if something happens? Something could happen that would make it so we needed more clothes. Something like what? I don’t know. We’re going to Multnomah Falls tomorrow–what if someone…falls in? Well, I reckon we’ll have bigger problems on our hands than wet clothes in that case, but you know what I mean. Something could happen. And if we don’t have spare clothes, it’s all on me.

It means I am overpacking again.

More than once in the past year our family has gone on a day trip and there’s been some event that caused someone to need spare clothes, but of course we didn’t have any because it was a freaking day trip and everyone’s toilet trained. I can’t even remember what any of these events were, just that Sugar Daddy would always turn to me and say, “Do you have any extra pants for Girlfriend/Elvis/whoever in the car?” and I’d be like, “Noooo [tone clearly implying "Why would I have extra clothes in the car when we're on a freaking day trip and everyone's toilet trained?"].” Well, clearly I ought to have. Not that SD was blaming me or anything–he was just being hopeful. But I hate to disappoint people. Also, I hate to be personally inconvenienced because I’ve disappointed people. So why haven’t I learned my lesson about the day trips? Always have extra clothes. Yes.

But if you’re going on a two-day trip, does that mean you need twice as many extra clothes? I just don’t know!

I have some banana-chocolate chip cookie bars sitting on my counter that are going to be stale by the time we come back from our trip. I don’t suppose I can talk people into eating them in the car. I can’t talk people into eating them while they’re sitting on their cans inside the house. I gave some to my MIL and some to our neighbors, but no one in the family wants to eat them. I take it back. SD had one last night. He’s still on his diet, but he’s relaxing a little lately because he’s so close to the end and he’s so far ahead of everyone else in his challenge group that something really crazy and unlikely would have to happen for him not to win.

Something crazy and unlikely like needing extra clothes on a freaking day trip when everyone is toilet trained!

I’m packing his gym shorts so he can exercise in the gym at the hotel. That’s how hardcore he’s gotten. He’s going to exercise on vacation. (A two-day vacation!) On the other hand, I am not packing my tap shoes so I can practice my clogging routine while we’re at the hotel. One of us had to make a sacrifice.

I want to eat one of those cookie bars, but I’m in the living room with the new carpet and I shouldn’t eat in here, and I don’t want to move the laptop into the kitchen. I’m too warm where I am. But I’m not falling asleep, no sir.

I’m telling you people, those cookie bars are good. They deserve to be eaten. I’m just saying this because I have such a hard time getting people to eat my baked goods. I’m not like the world’s most magnificent cook, but I know how to bake cakes and freaking cookies. Come on. This crap is hard to mess up. It’s not brain surgery or pie crust. And yet no one will eat what I bake. I know how that looks, and I know what you’re thinking: “If nobody’s eating them, that means they’re no good.” But you’re wrong! I eat them myself. Would I eat stuff that didn’t taste good? High-calorie stuff that doesn’t taste good? Do you really know so little about me? Please. No, the rest of my family is just obnoxious.

Yesterday I spent all day in my bedroom cleaning out my desk. It’s actually a desk with…I dunno…would you call it a hutch? There’s drawers and shelves and crap over it. It’s a big freaking thing that holds a bunch of crap, and I spent all of yesterday cleaning it out and didn’t finish. I kind of hate myself. But I hate my crap more. Why does it have to taunt me? This is the same problem I have with the packing. I want to toss out 90 percent of these papers, but I just don’t know which ones I’ll need ever again. I do not want to find myself standing around someday and SD turns to me and says, “Did you keep the EOB forms for Elvis’s speech therapy from 2007?” and I have to say, “Nooo [tone clearly implying "Why would I have saved those things when I obviously wasn't ever going to need them again?"].”

As it is, if he ever does turn to me and ask that question, I will have to say, “Yes, but hell if I remember where they are.”

Which should tell me something, but something in my soul doesn’t believe it. What’s wrong with my soul? I should probably get some professional help specifically for this problem.

And please, please, please do not ask me if I’ve seen Hoarders. One, my house is disorganized and often a wreck, but I’m not a hoarder like you see on Hoarders. I’m only a mini-hoarder. I like to dabble in hoarding on the side. Two, I have a limited amount of time to watch television and why would I watch anything so depressing and close to home? I may be some kind of masochist, but I’m not that kind. I like to dabble in masochism on the side.

Which reminds me of a tangentially-related-but-not-really anecdote. SD and I teach the ten-year-olds at church and today we were telling the story of some people in the Book of Mormon who were in bondage, and one of the boys in the class was surprised to learn the meaning of bondage because he’d assumed that it meant “like you bond with a friend.” And I, being so very articulate, said something like, “No, usually when people speak of bondage, they’re not talking about the good kind…of…bonding…” and then I had to explain the difference between good bondage and bad bondage while my husband just sat there giggling.

I didn’t do very well, by the way. I eventually just had to change the subject so SD wouldn’t wet himself. (‘Cause then he probably would have asked if I happened to pack him a spare pair of dress pants in my purse, and I would have had to say, “Nooo…”)

The socks are probably dry now, and I’m starting to feel sleepy.

I’m too busy and demoralized to title this post

So with the installation of the new, not-yet-gross carpet, we have become a no-shoes-on-the-carpet house, and I’m telling you kids it’s going to kill me. I feel like I’m constantly taking my shoes off and putting them back on, and to avoid having to take them off and put them back on quite so much I am spending a lot of time walking around my kitchen in my bare feet or socks, which I don’t like, and I’m constantly stepping on things I don’t want to and my socks are getting filthy and sticky, and it’s gross. Seriously, the kitchen floor–which we originally intended to replace first–is perpetually disgusting. Even when it’s been cleaned, it isn’t clean. It is the hosting site of all our unforgivable sins. I hate walking on it with my feet unprotected.

I have some issues.

Speaking of which, we spent Saturday de-crappifying our upstairs rooms. We made not-insignificant progress in some places, but there is still much left to do before we are ready to have the appraiser come to the house. I worked all day Saturday and into the night, and it was depressing and exhausting, but at the end of the day, all I wanted was another six days exactly like it, except no children to feed or bathe or love, so that I could actually finish the stupid job instead of letting it sit there waiting to be undone before it could be done.

I won’t be able to finish the job before the housekeepers come tomorrow, so I’m going to have to do a different job, which is “hide the crap before the housekeepers get here, but without undoing all the de-crappifying work that was done three days ago.” I don’t like that job. Can I have another job? Even though I’m in a perfectly ruthless mood that says any item that doesn’t have personal significance to me can just go in the dumpster–usefulness be damned, screw the environment and who cares about the waste, just get it out of my freaking house–when the moment of truth comes, I find I just can’t do this. I just can’t, and I don’t even know why not. The frustration of it just makes me want to cry. I will probably cry before this day is over.

Right now I should be getting ready to go to my oral surgery consult because that is happening today. I have to go to the dentist tomorrow morning, which means I can’t spend tomorrow morning frantically hiding the craptastic craploads of crap that still loiters about the home, which means that before I go to bed I will need to have finished hiding the crap just in case the housekeepers come at 8:30 a.m. but they will probably come closer to 3 p.m. Not that it matters, and I should probably stop thinking about it because I’m not accomplishing anything and I have too many other things to do.

You know what’s really inconvenient? Showering. Who needs the hassle?

New carpet smell–YUM!

Sugar Daddy: So, how were the installers? Were they professional?

Madhousewife: Yes.

SD: Did they have you sign anything?

Mad: Yes, I signed their little paper, and I rated them a 10. I hope that was okay.

SD: Jeez, just give it away, why don’t you. Did you sleep with them too?

Mad: Yes. Both of them. The man and the woman.

.

So I came back from my California trip on Tuesday night, but I’ve been busy busy busy since then. Had to catch up with the kids, who were feeling unloved after a mother-free week. More urgently, had to prepare the house to have new carpet installed. Good news: it was only the downstairs that was getting new carpet. Bad news: There was a lot of crap and furniture downstairs that needed to go somewhere else. We don’t have that many elsewheres on our property. The garage and upstairs were already full of crap. And being that it’s only March, we can’t very well leave our furniture and crap on the front lawn. Or the back lawn, for that matter. (Full disclosure, the front and back lawn are also semi-full of crap, but it’s crap that we’ve more or less given up on. Don’t you wish you were our neighbors? You know you do!)

There are few things more depressing than the process of rendering a room completely empty. An empty room is not itself depressing. Quite the opposite, as far as I’m concerned: an empty room is a thing of beauty. It may be the most beautiful thing in the world. But getting to this point is a soul-killer. It’s the thing I hate about moving. Moving would be a piece of cake if it weren’t for the fact that you have to somehow get all the crap out of the place you’re living so you can go live somewhere else. If I could just pick up and leave and by leave I mean “leave most of my crap behind,” the thought of moving wouldn’t horrify me at all. But no–people tend to insist that if you leave, you leave completely. No traces of your crap-filled life may remain. Since we only had to empty two rooms–albeit two very crap-infested rooms–this experience was only a fraction as horrifying as an actual household relocation would have been. But it was still horrible.

Too many toys, too many papers, too many containers, too many lids that may have container counterparts somewhere in the house but who knows anymore, too many crayons and pencils and markers and pens and scissors and glue sticks and magnets and stickers and screws and nails and random plastic thingies that might be important but I can’t remember why, too many books, too many knick-knacks–and I really actually hate knick-knacks and actively avoid accumulating them but somehow I still do–and too many…things, just things that defy categorization which is why they’ve never been corralled into a box somewhere, but they just roam freely about the cabin like they own the place. Well, they DO own the place. Why shouldn’t they roam about accordingly? It’s just a hopeless situation.

What I want is for someone to come in and magically vaporize everything that I’d never miss. I don’t even care if it’s valuable or useful, just as long as I’d never know the difference. This is why I can’t get rid of the stuff myself. I overthink everything. I know I don’t want this stuff, but I can’t just throw it away. Why can’t I? I DON’T KNOW. It’s not like I care about using up valuable landfill space. They’re going to name our local landfill after us, probably. I don’t know. I grew up in a home where you’d take the butter out of its wax/foil wrapping and then scrape every last bit of butter that clung to said wrapping off of said wrapping so that none of it would be wasted. Do you know how many years it took for me to stop doing that? Do you know that I still have the instinct to do that every time I unwrap a new cube of butter? It’s no wonder I own so many ball point pens, and yet I never have one when I need one. And playing cards. Jeez louise, how many playing cards are lying randomly about this house? None of us even plays cards anymore, and yet I can’t throw out any playing cards because if I’m able to gather all the playing cards together, there must be at least one full deck in there, and a person ought to have a full deck of playing cards, just in case…something…happens, and you need a deck of playing cards. Don’t you? NO, YOU DON’T. And anyway, I can’t make a full deck, even if I wanted playing cards. There’s a metaphor in here somewhere. I’ve lost track of what I was saying.

Anyway, we were ripping out the old carpet late last night–or more accurately, SD was ripping up the old carpet and I was moving crap around, and then I was sweeping up the dust and debris left behind by the old carpet. This was the original carpet from when the house was built in 1987. It looked fine when we moved in, but after eight years of Madhousewear it looks…about 25 years old. We had the upstairs carpet replaced after the fire, of course, which made the downstairs carpet look that much worse, but you don’t really know how horribly you treated your carpet until you see what lies beneath. (Remember that movie, What Lies Beneath? It wasn’t about carpet, but maybe it would have been scarier that way.) You can see every place where somebody spilled something and whatever spilled seeped through the carpet and the padding and muddied up the dirt underneath and then hardened into a concrete-ish substance. It’s one of those things that isn’t surprising but is nevertheless dismaying. I mean, it’s not like you can be proud of it.

I spent about an hour scraping that crud off the family room floor last night. And I had a little epiphany. I’ve spent so many years wondering what I should do with my life, rejecting option after option and recently coming to the conclusion that I’m good for just about nothing, so maybe it’s better if I don’t think about it at all. And then there I was, scraping crud off the floor, giving myself some pretty neat blisters in the process, and I realized that there was something immensely satisfying about it–much more satisfying than the process of emptying the room of all the crap, because it was a discrete goal with a foreseeable end. I knew at some point I would be finished and wouldn’t have to immediately start over. More to the point, I may never have to do it ever again. (You only have to replace carpet every 25 years, right? I should be dead by then. Or so infirm that my husband won’t solicit my labor just to save $400 on the installation.)

What makes housekeeping so unsatisfying and so unfulfilling isn’t that it’s menial drudgery; it’s that so much of it is just perpetual chaos management. Not bringing order to chaos, which is something else entirely, but just managing chaos. Like herding cats for eternity. You and the cats are never going to go anywhere; you’re just going to herd them. Until you die. Or become so infirm that you become one of the cats that someone else has to herd. Or something like that. It’s a metaphor kit; I don’t have instructions for you, just improvise. Anyway, scraping the crud off the bare floor was the opposite of what I usually do, which is play musical chairs with an endless supply of crap. Now I’m throwing in another metaphor. Don’t get confused. It’s not even really a complete metaphor; don’t try to do too much with it. I’m just saying. It felt good to do something that wasn’t going to be undone just as soon as I’d done it. No one was standing over my shoulder pouring more 25-years-worth-of-filth onto the floor as I worked. It was very…empowering.

And I thought to myself, “This might be my calling. Scraping crud that I can walk away from. And just think if I were a professional crud-scraper, I would probably have much better tools and could do an even better job. But the important thing would be that I would love what I did and be proud of it.”

Back in November SD and I went through my MIL’s new house with the home inspector, and he (the home inspector) and SD got to talking about careers and stuff, and he–I’ll just call him Mr. Home Inspector–said something to the effect of “I didn’t have what it takes to go to college, which is how I ended up doing this,” and he said it all self-deprecating-like, but I was thinking, “Man, this guy knows so much stuff–all these codes and requirements and such–and he performs a valuable service, unlike some people I could mention *cough* English majors *cough*. I wish I had a purpose in life.”

I’m telling you, kids. My so-called “writing career”–meh. My even-more-so-called “housekeeping” career–meh. Bringing four human beings into the world–meh. Scraping crud off the family room floor–I felt like I really accomplished something last night. And I rewarded myself with chocolate cake, even though it was 12:30 a.m. because I didn’t just need it–I really believed I deserved it. It just doesn’t get any better than that. No, it doesn’t.

Mid-life crisis #437

I may have posted MLC #437 already.  This might be MLC #492.  It’s hard to keep track these days.

So my laptop is fixed.  For now, anyway.  Who knows what the future holds?  If only I felt like blogging anymore.  Ha ha.  You know, I have a lot of thoughts during the day.  Thoughts that I should probably write down.  That’s what I used to do, back when I actually blogged on a regular basis.  For a while I was thinking that I had run out of things to talk about, but the truth is that I have plenty of things to talk about, but I just can’t talk myself into the proposition that they are worth talking about.  Worth the trouble of talking about, I mean.  I don’t know if I type slower these days or what, but I can’t seem to snap off these blog posts like I used to.  That is pretty sad when you can’t even toss off a blog post anymore.  I mean, not being able to sit down for five minutes and toss off a novel or a coherent article or essay or whatever–that’s not such a big deal.  Plenty of people can’t toss off that stuff.  But blog-writing is not supposed to be that intensive.  It didn’t used to be for me.  That’s how I was able to blog just about every day. But blah blah blah another post about how I can’t seem to write posts anymore.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I AM BORING THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF MYSELF.  When will it end???

The kids are back in school, but Wendell, I am not content.  I am committed to taking Girlfriend to swimming lessons two mornings a week for the next…however many weeks.  I don’t remember.  Four, maybe?  Could it be as long as six?  I hope not.  It shouldn’t be horrible.  I won’t have any other kids around cramping my style.  That has historically been the big pain in the you-know-what when it comes to swimming lessons–having to contain the non-swimming children for the half-hour that seems like half your life while the swimming children are learning to swim.  And now there won’t be any non-swimming children to deal with, so this should be a piece of cake, shouldn’t it?  My mind knows not to dread it, but someone forgot to tell my subconscious mind, which has come to associate “swimming lessons” with “living nightmare,” and so I just cannot stop dreading it, no matter how hard I try.  The mind is a powerful thing, but the subconscious mind is the One To Rule Them All.

And before you ask, yes, swimming lessons are a thing people usually do in the summer, if they’re not married to someone who realizes during the summer that his five-year-old is totally ready to take swimming lessons but it’s too late to sign up for summer swimming lessons and so it becomes very important that his five-year-old take swimming lessons in the fall, before her readiness to take swimming lessons completely disappears.  Besides, I need something to get me out of the house.  (Or so I understand.)

I just don’t like having my life scheduled for me.  I mean, this is why I quit working in the first place, because I was tired of being hassled by the Man.  Oh, wait, that’s not why I quit working.  I quit working so I could be there for my kids and do things like take them to swimming lessons.  But nobody told me I’d be taking them in September and October!  I was misled!  But it’s too late to do anything about it now.

So I think I may have told you this already, back in May, but my tap instructor decided to retire from teaching tap at the rec center so that she could pursue other opportunities.  One can’t blame her.  Teaching at the rec center is a thankless proposition, financially speaking, and she’s a talented woman in her prime who should be pursuing the opportunities she would like to pursue.  The only problem is that now I have nowhere to take tap classes.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  There is a school of dance on the other side (the FAR other side) of Portland that has a tap class for teens and adults every Tuesday during rush hour traffic.  This would, of course, be totally convenient if it weren’t for the fact that I am already committed every other Tuesday to tearing out my hair and deciding I have no reason to live, in preparation for the housekeepers coming on Wednesday.  I know, I know–why don’t I just move the day the housekeepers come and tear out my hair and lose my will to live on a different night?  Because I fear change, ladies and gentlemen.  I don’t like to trade the hell I know for some as-yet-unknown hell.  It makes me very, very nervous.

There is a group of Mormon ladies who clog every Monday morning, or at least that’s what I’ve heard.  They are on this side of Portland–the NEAR side–which is an advantage.  Clogging is not tapping, of course.  It’s similar, but not the same.  I guess I am just in denial about the fact that I will have to make some choices here.  Continue tapping, which will involve a great deal more money and driving and hair-tearing-out management, or take up clogging, which is not the same as tap dancing, but may be close enough for horseshoes.  So to speak.  I don’t imagine one can clog in horse shoes literally or anything like that, but since I know jack crap about clogging, maybe I shouldn’t shoot my mouth off until I’ve had a few lessons.  Obviously, I could also choose to do both, but that would be like some…crazy super-choice or something.  I think I should probably pace myself.

I should also probably go to bed because I’m tired now.  I’ll save my whining about how I don’t have any friends for tomorrow.

Laundry marathon

I have decided to devote today to catching up on the laundry.  I have about eight loads of laundry slated for today.  I’m on load #1 right now.  This whole endeavor is going to take 8-9 hours.  That’s the trouble with having only one washer.  I like my new front-loading, high-efficiency washer.  I haven’t had any problems with it (yet).  But it does take 58 minutes to wash a load of clothes.  That seems crazy.  At least the new dryer is very fast at drying, so the freshly-washed clothes can go directly into drying mode.  My old washer washed clothes in about 25 minutes, but the old dryer took about 2 hours to dry clothes, so that was extra-inefficient.  Wow, this paragraph is making me fall asleep.  How are you all doing?

Anyway, I have decided to devote today to the laundry.  Often I intend to catch up on the laundry but get distracted by other things and end up doing only one load, maybe two if I’m really on the ball.  After all, I have to wait around 58 minutes for the clothes to finish washing.  What am I supposed to do, stand there and stare at the washing machine for 58 minutes?  The washing machine has a little alarm that goes off when the laundry is finished–it plays a little song, which is a nice touch.  But the washing machine makes a lot of little song-sounds, and I’ve learned to ignore them.  So the alarm isn’t helping me remember to put in the next load of laundry.  It just gets ignored, along with the rest of my family.  That makes it sound like I consider the washing machine a part of my family.  Well, it may as well be.  The only member of the family that earns its keep around here!  (Except for my husband, who has a job.  I haven’t forgotten that.)

So I have decided not to do any other chores today, just so I can focus on listening to the laundry alarm and getting my laundry washed in the most efficient manner.  Isn’t that smart of me?  It’s only a pleasant coincidence that it also allows me to be as lazy as I want to be.

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Did you notice that little lull in the post?  That was me noticing that the washer had gone off and remembering to put in the next load of laundry.  I just bleached my husband’s grilling apron.  Is that silly?  No sillier than having a white grilling apron in the first place, I reckon.

Grilling aprons are funny.  They have to be all masculine because they’re for men (because a grilling apron for women would just be an apron).  They all say something like “Master of the Grill” or “Keeper of the Flame” or “Grill Sergeant.”  I don’t remember what SD’s says.  It’s in the washer now, so I can’t check.  It isn’t anything special, or I would remember.  It might just have some random company logo on it.  For a writer I can be an extremely unobservant person.

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No, that wasn’t me putting in another load of laundry.  I just wanted to change the subject.  School starts September 6.  And not a minute too soon.  Well, technically school starts September 6 for Elvis and Mister Bubby.  Girlfriend and Princess Zurg start on September 7.  Why is this?  Well.  Girlfriend is starting kindergarten, and they always have half the kindergarteners start on the first day and the other half start on the second day.  (Kindergarteners who went the first day stay home on the second day.)  Then they all go together on the third day.  The rationale is so there will be fewer confused kindergarteners and confused parents milling about and it won’t be totally overwhelming for everyone.  Historically, kindergarteners with last names beginning with A-L (or something) went the first day and kindergarteners with last names beginning with M-Z went the second day.  But this year they’re having AM kindergarteners go the first day and PM kindergarteners go the second day.  So there will be a full class of kindergarteners starting on the first day, and a full class of kindergarteners starting on the second day, rather than just half of each class starting on each day.  So technically we are keeping up a time-honored tradition, only now there is, apparently, no rationale for it.  Not one that I can discern, anyway.  If one of you can help me sort out the logic here, I’d appreciate it.

As for PZ, the middle school has decided that this year, for the first time, they will have only sixth graders start on the first day of school.  I guess that makes enough sense.  It just means Summer With PZ is one day longer this year.  I don’t feel that is strictly necessary, but I may as well enjoy it, mayn’t I?

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Speaking of PZ (I’m still on my second load of laundry, just so you know), I need to take her shopping so she can get herself a cool outfit for when she goes to see My Chemical Romance next week.  I don’t like shopping with PZ because she always has a specific vision in mind when she goes shopping, and the mercantile reality never lines up with her vision.  She’s kind of like me that way, only instead of shrugging her shoulders and making do with her current wardrobe for another year, she has to start moaning and whining and railing against the system that is keeping her from realizing her fashion ambitions.  And she doesn’t stop.  She just keeps going and going and going until I think I must have died and gone to hell, or else I’m surely going to die and go there because I will freaking kill her if she doesn’t shut up soon.  My husband handles most of the PZ shopping, in case you were wondering.  That is probably the only reason she is still alive.

SD is also going to the concert with her.  I have this recurring nightmare that he gets called out of town on business and I have to take her myself.  If I type that out loud, is it bad luck?

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Well, there’s 1,000+ words on nothing.  I’d better get back to watching the washing machine.  Gentle readers, adieu.

Random randomness

Mister Bubby:  Did you know that your body can’t digest corn?

Madhousewife:  I don’t want to take this discussion any further.

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Princess Zurg:  What if you had infinity brains?

Mad:  I don’t know.  What?

PZ:  Well, you’d be really smart.

Mad:  Or you’d be infinity-times as dumb.

PZ:  Well, what if the brains were all really big?

Mad:  As long as they weren’t all big, dumb brains.

PZ:  But what if they were all big, smart brains?

Mad:  Then I guess you’d be really smart.

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According to my Facebook news feed, a friend of mine “likes” Epilepsy.  I don’t think that’s quite right.  On the other hand, my news feed also tells me that my husband “likes” Sniffing Glue.  I know that is accurate.

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Speaking of sniffing glue, or rather, speaking of my husband, he is going to be out of town next week on business.  Next week Elvis will not be in camp anymore.  The housekeepers come on Wednesday.  I am a little nervous because this housekeeping visit may be coinciding with my crazy time of the month.  It’s probably best that my husband is going out of town.  I promise to be a raving lunatic by Tuesday evening, screaming and crying and cursing all of my possessions.  I do worry a little about the children.

I used to think that if I could predict something, I could at least prepare for it and minimize the impact on innocent bystanders, not to mention myself.  But so far it’s not working.

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I had an epiphany the other night.  It wasn’t really an epiphany, I guess.  It was just a moment of clarity.  Something OBL-worthy.  I am an under-credentialed woman who has been out of the workforce for more than thirteen years.  My husband is insured for a lot of money, so if he died, I’d be okay (financially speaking–personally, I’d be lonely).  If he left me for another woman, I could probably sue him for a lot of alimony and crap–but my husband 1) doesn’t meet many women in his line of work and 2) is more likely to end up in the emergency room with a guilt-induced panic attack than completing a rendezvous with a woman not his wife–so I don’t worry about this.  If he decided to become a drug addict and/or gamble our life savings away, I’d be pretty screwed–but fortunately this scenario is even less likely than the other two.  The thing is, my marriage is good–but if it weren’t good, I wouldn’t be able to leave.  I mean, I could, but…I really couldn’t.  I’d be unemployable and uninsurable (not a good combination).  It’s a very scary thought.  My husband depends on me for a lot of things, but he will never know this kind of vulnerability.  The fact is, aside from my sparkling personality, I’m replaceable–for a fee that he can easily afford.  I, on the other hand, can’t afford to replace him.  Good thing we’re not planning to replace each other.  [Insert nervous laughter]

Why is this on my mind?  Maybe because my husband and I were discussing some friends of ours whose marriage is…how shall I put this?  On the rocks.  I was going to say “in the toilet,” but that seemed disgusting, even if it is more accurate.  “On the rocks” makes it sound like a rough patch.  These are some big, sharp, pointy rocks that this marriage is on.  It would appear that the only thing keeping it together is that the wife has a chronic medical condition and the husband is too decent to leave her stranded without insurance.  That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?  Anyway, my epiphany, or moment of clarity, was that it’s not enough to be confident that your husband’s going to stick around and take care of you.  I know, because I am confident about that, and yet there’s something about knowing that I’m just one step away from being totally screwed in a major way that just leaves me…deeply dissatisfied.

But I’m not going to read The Feminine Mystique.  I finished that crap in college.  (College–huh!  For all the good it did me.)

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Right now my daughter is watching a video called “Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf.”  Is there any werewolf who is not reluctant?  Anyone who says, “Hey, lycanthropy!  Cool!  I’ve always wanted to turn into a ravenous beast who eats people once a month”?  Anyone?

Being a werewolf seems a lot more manageable than being a vampire, though.  Do you agree?

Thither Thursday

I am using “thither” as an adverb–as in “that’s where Thursday went.”  You don’t hear a lot of people using “thither” anymore, as an adverb or otherwise.  It’s pretty much a dead word.  I don’t know that it needs to be revived, either.  But it’s alliterative, and I’m feeling that today.

Why am I feeling alliterative?  Because I can’t think up a title for this post.  It’s pretty much going to be about nothing.

This morning I spent three hours cleaning out the refrigerator.  Just so you understand, I did a really good job.  I won’t tell you about all the moldy stuff I found.  Except I will tell you about the moldy Foitella that I bought for Sugar Daddy as a Christmas gift.  It cost $22 for a wee jar, and I think I dumped at least $18 worth of it down the garbage disposal.  I think my husband is congenitally incapable of eating perishable food in a timely fashion.  I will probably not buy him another jar of Foitella…until Christmas rolls around again and I can’t think of anything else to buy him.

Three hours still seems like an awful lot of time to spend cleaning a refrigerator.  Well, it was really filthy.  Disgustingly filthy.  I deserve an award.

As it happens, I did get an award.  My sweet husband–he of Foitella fame–called me on the phone this afternoon and asked if I’d meet him at the Banana Republic so I could try on this dress he thought would look good on me.  So being the obedient wife that I am, I did as he requested, and now I have a new dress.  How does it look on me?  Awesome.  Thanks for asking.  Trust me, that one word is more accurate than any photo could be.  (I don’t photograph well.)

It looks better on me than it does on her!

And the best part is that he didn’t even know that I’d cleaned out the fridge.  He just sensed that I deserved an award.  Actually, he’s not that sensitive.  He’s just a nice husband who occasionally gives me things that I don’t deserve, and it’s just a coincidence that today I did deserve it.

You know what’s better than first-world problems?  First-world benefits!

He’s not coming home tonight, which means I can get away with feeding the kids crap for dinner.  Which reminds me, I have seen these news ads for Carl’s Jr.’s hand-breaded chicken tenders and whatnot on public benches.  Yeah, public benches.  You know what I mean, right?  Those benches that are just out there in public, like at bus stops?  Why does “public bench” not sound like a real thing?  I don’t know.  But I assure you, it is.  And there are ads on such things, which is where I’m seeing the Carl’s Jr. ads that I’m talking about.  One of the ads says, “Because machines make terrible chefs,” and another of the ads says, “Because machines make crappy co-workers.”  Two things:

1) I don’t know that machines make crappy co-workers.  I mean, certainly some machines do, but the majority of machines I work with do a very good job, and there is little in the way of “office politics” with machines.  At least that is my experience.  I’m sure there are many of you out there who would gladly trade at least one of your co-workers for a nice robot.

2) Since when is “crappy” appropriate copy for an advertisement that appears in the public space?  I guess Carl’s Jr. is supposed to be the “edgy” fast-food place, and I suppose they don’t have a history of genteel advertising–and who am I to talk, when I use the word crap all the time?  But like I tell my kids,  just because I say it doesn’t make it okay.  I don’t know.  It just seems like another symptom of our society’s decaying moral fiber.  No class, I tell you.  No. Class.

I guess there might be a third thing:  3)  Machines don’t necessarily make terrible chefs.  My waffler makes a much better waffle than I ever could by hand.  Machines get a bad rap, all in all.  Except for those evil Cylons on Battlestar Galactica.  But even some of them might have been good chefs.  It’s hard to say, as the show didn’t really focus that much on its characters’ culinary lives.  But I digress.

Getting back to my original point, I still don’t know what I’m going to make for dinner tonight.  I will probably have to go to the store and buy some food.  I will have to take Elvis with me, and that promises to be more trouble than it’s worth.  Elvis has a new obsession with the automatic doors.  He wants them to open just for him.  So he will stand there, several feet away from the door, and wait as long as it takes for them to close again so that he can run up and make them open just for him.  Of course, the more people going in and out of the store, the longer it takes for the automatic doors to shut.  They may start to shut, but as soon as someone trips the sensor, they’re going to open right back up again.  Elvis finds this very frustrating.  Do you know how many people go in and out of a grocery store on your average afternoon?  A lot.  The doors stay open most of the time because people are always going in and out.  It’s a problem, if you’re autistic and crazy.

Talking of which, I have one of Princess Zurg’s friends over at the house this afternoon.  She’s staying for dinner.  I hope she likes crap.  In any case, it will be crap prepared by a real human, so I guess I’d better get on the stick if we’re going to eat before midnight.  Gentle readers, adieu.