The Joyful Housewife

Last year, my older sister spent months learning about smart phones with the idea that we could get mom one to help with losing things and paper clutter, and that she and I would also get one so that we can help mom use it. We went with the Palm Centro for various reasons (namely, that it didn’t require the $35 a month data plan) and I’ve spent several hours over the phone guiding my mom through its many uses (as well as helping her move from a PC to her new MacBook). She is finally coming around to liking it - it is not the simplest phone to use - but it has great capabilities.

Last night on my way to bed, my phone slid off the couch into a tall glass of water! It was very surreal. I had felt something slide of the couch when I was getting up, and heard a strange noise, so I turned around to see my phone completely submerged in a tall, wide Collins glass full to the brim with water. I actually heard it go GLUG! GLUG! GLUG! before I got my brain to tell my hand to fish it out and begin frantically wiping it dry. I so badly wanted to take a picture for my blog (!) but I knew I had to hurry. I tore of the back and left the pieces lying out to dry. This morning I realized that I hadn’t removed the SIM card, but it seems to be okay, as I put it in my ancient, primitive, Cingular phone that I used up until I got this one.

Then today, when I finally got a hold of all my loved ones through Gmail and Facebook, I learned that the thing to do is to put it in a bowl of rice to draw out the moisture. I hope it works.

Picture via popularmechanics.com. Click on photo to learn how it works.

I would have taken a picture of my own phone, but I left my camera battery charger at mom’s house in California when I was there over Christmas and haven’t gotten it back yet. It’s always something.

I hope this works. I’ll let you all know.

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There you have it ladies and gents. I just took this quiz about whether or not I would make a good retro housewife and the results are not at all surprising!

You Would Make a Horrible 1930’s Wife

You are way too non conformist, independent, and sassy to be an ideal retro wife. You may be so wild that you aren’t even considering marriage! Good thing we don’t live in the 1930s anymore!

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If I were going to knit up some gifts for Christmas this year, rather than socks, hats, or mittens, I’d want to make cute toys like this:

by Susan B. Anderson

This pattern is available from Knit Picks.

But I thought I’d pass along the deal being offered at Knitpicks right now anyway. Click on the banner below or to go to the Knit Picks website and browse their quick knits books which are 40% or MORE off!

When I saw the add in my email, I got all excited and thought it would be the perfect way to spend some of the birthday gift certificate that my mother bought me AND to knit up some quick knitted gifts for my loved ones this year.

Then I thought, “Who am I kidding?” I don’t have enough time to finish ANY knitted gifts before Christmas. Well, most likely not. There are only two weeks of the semester left, I have tons of lessons plans and grading to finish before grades are due, then I’m off to California to help my mom with her hoarding!

So, it probably isn’t going to happen for me this year, but I still might buy one or two of the books for next year… since they’re on sale… We’ll see.

Just thought I’d pass on the savings to those who are interested.

I just realized this whole post looks like an advertisement because of that banner. Not my intention - I just like pics in my posts.

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The fun, feverish, hallucinatory, meditative part of my illness has quickly left me for a scratchy throated, crappy feeling, in which I am fully cognizant of every darn thing I should be doing, but am not right now. I desperately need to clean my house this weekend. 

And so - for those of you who have been anxiously awaiting them since my post yesterday - my candid, kitchen photos!!! Please, do click on them to see them in their fully enlarged splendor.

I think the photos speak for themselves. Now, my housework experiment: Will posting these pics make me more motivated to clean this mess up by Monday? I’ll post pics Sunday night to prove whether or not I clean this weekend. 

Cheers!

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How to avoid doing housework #1: Get really sick. 

I’m sick today. Thank you elementary school kids! Sitting around in my PJs, coughing and feeling sorry for myself, I’m reminded of all the things I have to do. My computer has finally been fixed (Sort of - Hubby spilled liquid on it and the internal airport card no longer works and cannot be replaced - thank goodness they have this wireless USB thingy that allows me to use the Internet!). Anyway, I’ve always gotten some twisted (sick?!) pleasure out of getting sick. Before college, it meant that I could get out of going to school and turning things in on time. (In grad school, that never worked though.) And now, I feel like I’m actually justified in laying around feeling sorry for myself (heaven for a chronic depressive). But, I’m weird, and somehow, as I feel my body ache and tingle with fever, I manage to get into a meditative state and reflect on life and even feel some sort of pleasure and positivity. Maybe it’s the forced rest. 

And yet, my house looks like drug addicts live here. I’m serious. I was watching season five of Nip/Tuck on DVD yesterday, while imobile on the couch after work, and one of the charaters and his wife are addicted to meth and live in a pig-sty.

I looked into my kitchen….There isn’t a room in this house that isn’t riddled with clutter and neglect. 

If I were feeling better, I’d take a candid photo (see also) of it. But I’m sick and it’s just too much trouble (which is just an excuse, albeit a good one, because I don’t know if I’m brave enough to take a picture of all this). 

I talked to my mom a couple of days ago and she’s really struggling with work and trying to make progress on her house and hoarding situation. I wish life weren’t so cluttered with one thing after another, after another. I thought that going home with my older sister to help mom with her hoarding at the beginning of the summer was a life-changing event, but now, I’m almost worse off than I was before that. 

I know it’s just transition and not permanent, but damn it’s hard to keep it all together sometimes. How will I ever survive kids if I can’t even keep it together with just Hubby, Doggie, and me?!?

On a happier note, here is another beautiful mountain photo from our last summer trip:

PS. The title of this post came from an old nightgown I got for Christmas when I was thirteen and had stopped eating meat. It had a Far Side comic of cows standing on hind legs. One of them was grilling a hamburger and caption was of the other cow saying “You’re sick, Jessie! Sick, sick, sick!”

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Must what always be this hard, you ask? Um, life! Yeah, life is a big, old, suck-fest.

It’s always something and I’m perpetually learning ways to cope. As you may know, I’m prone to depression, dysfunctionalism, and I like to mix my optimism with a healthy dose of “realism” and helplessness. But I’m always trying.

And, yes, it’s been a long, hard summer. I’m back to teaching again and we’ve recently gone on a Colorado mini-vacation during Tim’s most recent week off. Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera before we left. I’ve been really trying to loosen up and not make a big deal out of things.I packed my bag in 10 minutes without giving it as much obsessive thought as I usually do (although we did have to turn back to grab my meds) but the result was a useless, dead camera. I didn’t let it get me down though - we made the best of it with my Palm Centro and his iPhone and I’ll try to post more of our beautiful photos soon.

Below are some picks of a hike near Crested Butte. We tried to coax Casey, the pooper, into crossing a stream on his own, but he whimped out.

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Wow! I blink my eyes and weeks have passed since I last posted. It’s been so long that I’ve begun to develop anxiety about posting again. It all started when I worked some extra hours at work. Then we acquired ants in the kitchen and I was battling them for days! Then the weather was bad here in Denver, a snow storm that cut out our Internet for a couple of days. Then, I started to develop carpal tunnel like pain in my arm and gave up knitting and typing for a while. Then there was the funk I was in. I get those from time to time. Finally, my husband bought me a terrific book (which I’ll post about soon) which inspired me to go to the library and bring home a giant stack of books to read…instead of writing myself.

Well, I think those are all the reasons for my absence. Since I’ve been gone, we’ve been doing some exciting things, though.We are still trying new grains and new greens in the kitchen. I wish I could say that my house was getting cleaned and organized during this time, but it’s been two steps forward, one step back with that area of my life. We invited friends over to grill with us and I cleaned voraciously. I managed to get through a very, very large pile of mail that has plagued our dining room, organized and stack them neatly in a box that could be hidden away when company comes, but when I lifted the box a day later, the bottom fell out and the mail is now in a nasty heap on the floor of the sun room. But, I’m making an effort, and that’s all I can do really. Move forward one step at a time. 

There is another excitement in my house these days. We are growing heirloom vegetables from seed and our seedlings are sprouting and growing strong! My husband and I literally sit and stare at them, maybe not for hours, but for a surprisingly long time! 

So, there you have it. I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long. I’ll try to catch up. Pictures of things we’ve cooked, the book Tim bought me, and the seedling we are growing are forthcoming.

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This picture is an illustration of the kind of week it has been. Tim is post-call today and is napping; Casey is always napping; I’m trying to get something productive done today, but can’t seem to get out of my pajamas. 

Today is the kind of day where you feel dirty even though you’ve actually managed to shower. Actually, it’s been a real effort to shower lately. While usually, I crawl out of my skin if I don’t manage to shower by 10 AM, lately, I’ve been disinterested in the whole process. But, I did manage to shower today, and I still feel gross! My hair feels limp and yucky. I’m too fat for all of my clothes and can’t stand wearing the one pair of jeans which actually fit me because they need to be washed. I feel frumpy and dumpy - I guess this is a call to start integrating exercise and healthy eating into my life. 

As for integrating productivity into the rest of today, I’ll spend it making plans for the rest of my week - see, I have the luxury of a spring break since I’m a teacher, but somehow it’s Tuesday already, and I’ve done almost nothing I’d hoped to do. I’d like to blame it on the weather and the flat tire I got last week, but I’m sure it’s really just laziness. (I haven’t even managed to post the recipe for the beet salad I wrote about last week, and all I really need to do is post a link to the New York Times page which it’s on.)

At the moment, I’m taking a break from washing dishes (while those in the tiny dish drainer are drying), watching Disney’s The Rescuers, and trying to interest myself in making lists. I’ve never been a good list-maker - just like I’ve never been a good diary-writer - but I think the reason I never get anything done is because I do nothing for a long time (days, weeks), and then want to do everything I’m not doing all at once. Like now: I simultaneously want to learn to cook, clean my house, finish my lesson plans early, exercise, eat more healthfully, and lose weight. Plus, my husband and I want to start a container garden this year. So, what I end up doing is picking up fifty books from the library on all of these subjects and then perusing them until I’ve lost all motivation to do any of these things (since you may not believe me about the quantity of books, I’ll try to post an actual picture of all the books I have out from the library tomorrow - if I can get off my butt). 

Alrighty then! I shall spend the rest of the evening making lists and dividing goals into doable steps. We’ll see how it goes!

(P.S. My husband is not very happy that I posted these pics. But my snoozing lads are soooo cute!)

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I’ve really fallen off the cooking wagon. I guess I’m just incredibly overwhelmed. I’ve been having trouble sleeping at night and I’m having chronic tension headaches. My headaches are confined to the muscles of my scalp - for those of you who aren’t sure if there really are muscles up there, I assure you - they’re there! I suppose this is an improvement over the excruciating jaw that pain I used to get when I let stress overtake me, but it’s still no fun. I think I need a new pillow.

Moving on, I was up in the night again tossing and turning and I felt really overwhelmed by life.

Wait, before I regale you with the thoughts that press on me in the night, let me continue with the original purpose of this post: I want to start cooking again. I’ve found a couple of recipes on new blogs (new to me) that I’m interested in trying. 

Tico Tilapia with Gallo Pinto, by My Sphere of Domesticity ~This one is nice because fish is the only meat I eat, but I need courage to buy it and cook it. It helps to know that others are doing it too.

Cake aux Olives et au Jambon, by Dedene of Soyez le Bienenvenue Chez Moi, in yesterday’s post: How much do I hate housework?, ~ I like this because it’s a quick bread and has olives in it. I’ve been craving olive bread. Don’t eat ham though….

So I’ll be sure and let you know if I ever, ever make these dishes. (Let’s hope so.)

Back to my insomniac worries. It’s always something you know? We’ve gotten two tickets in the past two days because I didn’t realize that my car registration was expired. ARGH! (Now we are cleverly parking the car in back of our house where the cops can’t see it, take that! - We used to park there all the time until we realized that we would rather park on the street and avoid our crummy neighbors, than park in our shared lot.) We already have stupid bills that we shouldn’t even owe, because try as I might, I just can’t NOT get screwed over by phone and cable companies! They hate me! The bills are just growing and growing and I’m not working full time….

But then I decided I’m not going to let this defeated feeling drag me down. One thing I’ve learned in life, that I find hard to remember, is that life is equally horrible and wonderful at the same time all the time. It’s really your choice which side of it to see. 

So I choose to bring my self back up! I choose to believe that life is really very easy! I mean, I get to wake up most days and choose what to do with my day. The whole bill thing is simple, really - start paying them off! Spending money on bills doesn’t have to feel this terrible. I can apply myself and work out a budget, I do have a master’s degree for goodness sake!

And on that note. I don’t have to feel dragged down about the state of my kitchen, or the fact that I don’t cook anymore. I choose to be positive. I’m going to clean and I’m going to cook….someday.

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I’ve been bad again, not blogging the way I thought I would when I started this adventure. And the day is so incredibly sunny, so unbelievable, that part of me wanted to feel upset about the state of my house. This should be a day where I open up every window and let the air flow through my sparkling domain. But it ain’t gonna happen today, and I’m not going to allow myself to get upset about it. Yes, that part keeps tugging at me: that part of me that is embarrassed and feels guilty about the pile of dishes, the insane pile of mail, the shoes that are overtaking every inch of the downstairs, the crumby, spilled-upon countertops, the fact that I’ve not mopped my kitchen floor once since we’ve moved in. Not once! (We’ll talk more about that in another post.)

I’m not going to bother being upset by the way air flowing through the house might just be spreading the dust and filth around. Anyway, it’s bad. The house is bad. I couldn’t possibly entertain a guest that might stop by - I’d have to grab my purse and recommend that we go down the street for coffee. And what if my landlord stops by to pick up her mail??? (The pieces of her mail that I have been collecting since Christmas! and that I can’t find because they’re spread out in numerous piles throughout the downstairs.) 

But I’m choosing to ignore all that, because I want to relax outside in this healing sunshine for awhile, and then I’ve got a ton of school work to do, so I’m not going to waste my day trying to  clean the awful, awful house. I’m hoping that after taking care of myself so beautifully and getting some schoolwork done, I’ll be able to pour a glass of wine this evening, turn up the music and tackle the house once more. 

And here is the reason why that just might work: This is the first day my husband has been on call for a couple of months, meaning he’s not coming home tonight, meaning, I can have an unconventional, answer-to-nobody-but-myself day today. I can eat cottage cheese and fruit for dinner and then tackle the dish pile, instead of making more dishes by cooking. So, I choose to have hope today - that I will get to the bottom of it all eventually - just not right at this moment - when the breezy  air is tinkling in my neighbors wooden wind chimes and  it feels like a day to be spent poolside - at the beginning of March!

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