I'm Still Here

I'm still here.

I just haven't been housewifing very well. Hence the lack of blog posts.

See, one of the things that has happened this year is that I've started making up crazy stories in my head again. I haven't done this for quite some time, but running around delivering newspapers at 4 AM actually gives your brain a lot of time to fly free, and when mine flies free it starts making up stories featuring fictional characters.

So when November came around, I decided to try something a little different, and actually write one of my crazy all-in-my-head stories. Unlike what I imagine a Good Novel to be, these are more like a cross between Gone With the Wind and something VC Andrews would put out. Hence why they stay in my head and entertain me when I'm bored. It has occurred to me that there is probably some similarity between my doing this and my 5-year-old running around the house muttering to himself for hours at a time, fighting imaginary... whatevers. I discussed this with the husband and he assured me that no, everyone does not go around inventing characters in their minds while they do the dishes. So, I figure I might as well put them out on paper and see what happens.

I don't know yet if this is a good or a bad thing. My not-literary-masterpiece stories are approximately 80 times more fun to write and edit than the stuff I was trying to write before, and I don't think they're that much worse. This means that I spend easily several hours a day writing. The first story rapidly soared past meeting my NaNoWriMo word count goal, and I was even excited to edit it.

But actually enjoying writing means that I have to drag myself away from it to do all that housewifey stuff like making dinner or going shopping. Or parenting stuff like entertaining my 1-year-old. So... it's kind of taking over my life, like Candy Crush once did.

I've also let the bathroom kind of stagnate in its half-renovated state for two months now.

Ultimately, I'm just not sure if what I'm doing counts as work or not. Am I being lazy? Selfish? It feels like too much fun to be sending my fictional friends on adventures. I hope I can justify continuing this endeavor by editing one of their stories into something that makes a dime or two.

I must go now, to prevent the baby from writing all over the house in red ink. He's just made some sort of illegible entry on our family fridge calendar. 

Then, I'll probably see how I can get my new set of characters to kiss. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to get there today... 

Things I Stink At

I would not be a good General Contractor.

This is too bad, because I harbored a secret ambition to make this my new career. Another dream shattered.

I realized my inability in this area when I started attempting to oversee renovations in my bathroom. As you may recall, I ripped down the wallpaper border months ago with plans to repaint the walls. This was either a success or a failure, depending how you look at it. I learned that there was wallpaper under the wallpaper border, not paint as I'd thought, and I had to spend hours removing wallpaper (and wallpaper glue) from all the walls. Once this was done, I was left with a beautiful purple wall - marred with scratches and non-purple sections.

The purple has actually grown on all of us and we love it, but it doesn't go with the tile.

You know what doesn't go with aqua and black? Lavender.

Before painting, though, I decided to see about getting the shower I wanted put in. And while things were getting repainted, I might as well replace the ceiling fixture with a fan to solve our mold problem, right?

All good in theory. But then the electrician did this to my ceiling:

I don't think cutting drywall is his specialty?

 Which was really my first failure as a GC, because he really should have discussed things with me before relocating the fixture and destroying my ceiling.

And then the plumber came and put in the shower, but that left me with this:



Do you see the holes in the tile? Look closely...

 

Which was almost exactly what I asked for. Old taps out, new shower in.

"I'll just swap out those holey tiles with ones from under the sink, behind the vanity," I said.

"No, no you won't," the wall said. "I, Wall, will break long before you shatter one of the tiles. And removing them in one piece? Hahaha! Not if I have anything to do with it!"
And then I bashed those babies with a sledgehammer and wound up with this.

Success! For now...

Which, um, takes us to today. I have holes in my ceiling and my wall, a shower that's not totally functional because it will get the walls soaked, the walls are still not one color, and the tub refinisher dude is coming in two weeks.

And I'm over here blogging. Which just goes to prove that I stink at renovations and should stick with attempting to write my novel. It's almost November, folks. Will this year be the year? I finished editing novel one and it stank. I finished novel two and it stunk, too. I am halfway through writing a third novel and it is so boring that I am having trouble finishing it.

(I also agreed to coordinate field trips again, which is also stinking, just in case you were curious.)

The husband has completely given up on the bathroom. "Call a GC," he told me last night. "Have someone come fix this mess you made."

Has it come to that?

I might be terrible at many jobs; at least I can still fall back on being a

-Real Housewife of the North Shore.

Housewife Responsibility #2: Groceries

Today our local Hannaford's (regional division of international grocery store) reopened as a Big Y (local chain of grocery store) and grocery shopping is on my mind.

I also hate the new novel I'm attempting to write and am avoiding looking into field trips or dealing with the mysterious maggot-laden bags that I found in the basement and threw outside into the yard, so it's Blog Time.

Grocery Shopping!

I think when I was about eight or ten or so, grocery shopping was fun. You have a list and you go on a quest through the store to buy all the right items at the right prices. You get to push the items around in a big cart that you can get going and jump onto and ride down the aisle. Also, I don't think I was allowed to accompany my mother to the grocery store until I was an older child, so it carried an air of grown-upness that is always appealing when you're not a grown-up.

Sometimes, we even went to this awesome grocery store that took your bags of groceries and sent them outside for you. You'd pull your car around to the side of the building and your groceries would come out in paper bags on a conveyor belt. Then someone would help put them in the car. It was super cool.

Grocery Shopping...

Fast forward to being an adult. I am now responsible for making a list of what to buy - and I frequently don't make one. I default to buying the same foods again, and again, and again. I can always use an onion. I always drink milk. Must have Diet Coke. I become familiar with grocery store layouts, able to hunt down cooking wine and peanut butter. I start to memorize prices of items.

Hannaford has always been one of my favorites because they don't put 6000 items on sale every week or have ridiculous activities like "Mix and Match! Buy 10 of these 25 different items and get them all for $2 each!" ... I invariably wind up buying 9 items and paying full price. Grocery shopping is already complicated, and I'm always in a rush, and I have to time to fulfill quests.

I get my groceries in a slew of plastic bags that rip before I can get the groceries into my house. Some bored-looking teenager puts the cans on top of my bread and we have weird-shaped sandwiches all week. I save the plastic bags that don't rip and they fill half my hall closet.

Grocery Shopping with Things and Baby

One of the first things I did as a newly-minted housewife was organize the coupon holders that The Husband got me for my birthday. I also started keeping a notepad on the fridge where I write the items we run out of or are running low on, so I have to make fewer substitutions in recipes. I feel confident and capable.

Then I go shopping with Thing 1, Thing 2, and the Baby.

It turns out every child, including Things 1 and 2, wants to ride the cart up and down the aisles. And if they don't ride it, they try to push it and run into little old ladies or grouchy men, or hit the shelves and send food flying everywhere. They also argue -
"I want to pull the number at the deli counter!"
"I hate that kind of Pop-Tarts!"
"It's my turn to ride the cart!"
"He said I smell!"
"Why does she always get to put the onion dip in the cart!?"

Then Baby gets fed up with sitting still and starts pulling items out of the back of the cart and eating them - "No! Not the box of rice! Here, try this green onion!" - or throwing them on the floor - "Now we have to buy a bruised apple!" - and screaming when you take away the jar he was about to throw to the floor.

Oh, and those belts they put on the seats? Those do not contain a small wriggling child. He stands up in that seat faster than you can say:

"Grocery Shopping Sucks!"

It's not my favorite task, that's for sure.

But today we needed milk (like always) and muffins (like always) and also a lemon, so Baby and I went to this new Big Y and I was wandering around trying to make sense of their sales. Is the unit price of 3 Danimals Six Packs-for-$6 cheaper than the unit price in a 12-pack? Why don't they have a generic soy sauce?

Since I'm an experienced shopper, we found all the items (soy sauce is with Asian; cooking wine is in baking; rice vinegar is in the aisle labeled Vinegar), and made it through the jungle without maiming anyone or overspending.

...And then I get to the checkout and they handed me a gold coin along with a flyer explaining what you can do with a gold coin. I'm a nice person on the outside so I said nothing, but on the inside I had some not-so-nice thoughts about what the folks who run with Big Y should do with their gold coins. Now I have to keep track of gold coins on top of everything else?!

They also have a slot machine game that you can play to win a reusable bag. I did not participate.

I'm going to start sending my children in to do grocery shopping while I wait in the car reading a book. I'll just tell them it's a treasure hunt. They'll be thrilled with the gold coins and they can practice their reading and math skills.


Srsly?

Non-Green Thumbs

We've been dealing with a drought this summer, and not just in blogging (that's the one reference I'll make to the fact that I haven't posted in over two months). So I have a helpful tip for everyone who's also suffering through an extended dry spell: you can turn potatoes into water.

Apparently, all you have to do is buy a bag of potatoes - they're often on sale for a couple dollars - and put them on your basement stairs. Wait a few weeks - about three - and then voilà! Water.

I discovered this magic yesterday. Something foul was in the air. At first I blamed the cat, but his litter box was nice and tidy. Which left the potatoes. Mind you, I walk by the potatoes numerous times a day, you would think I'd have noticed that they were liquefying, but from a cursory glance, all that was visible was the presence of a few eyes, no big deal. Potatoes with eyes are still useful potatoes, so long as the eyes haven't taken over completely. But the smell did seem to be coming from the potatoes, so I decided they should go to the compost. I picked up the bag and water started pouring out of the holes.

It's a mystery to me why this is occurring - and also how the water stayed in the holey bag until I picked it up - but if you're in a severe enough drought, this seems like it could be useful.

Our drought isn't that severe, so the potatoes went in the trash.

The drought is severe enough that it almost killed our baby apple tree. Every single leaf dried up and fell off, and I was afraid that it was dead. But I lugged the bucket of water from our dehumidifier up out of the basement and dumped it on that baby tree for two weeks and it came back to life with even more leaves than before.

It failed to rain just about at all in July, so the plants are confused and blooming late. The morning glories and hostas are a month behind. Our pumpkin plants somehow miraculously survived but are also flowering late, so here we are in September with nary a pumpkin on the vines.

This after one cucumber plant came up out of the entire package (it fell victim to the drought), and two basil plants managed to come up out of two dozen seeds.

The dill was doing okay, but in the last two weeks it all shriveled up and died, I have no idea why. And that's how our first attempt at gardening has gone.

I would make a terrible farmer. Plants commit suicide when they find out I'll be taking care of them. Or, rather, failing to take care of them. The lady who owned the house before us cultivated beautiful gardens with carefully selected annuals that bloom in succession so that there are always flowers, from March through October. I've managed to kill a rose bush, a clematis, and for some reason none of the irises bloom anymore. We planted daffodils one year; none of them came up. We planted thrift; it died. I tried growing garlic and got the world's tiniest garlic ever.

It's been a bad year for indoor plants, as well. I somehow murdered my poinsettia plant, along with my last remaining Christmas cactus. The skeleton of the poinsettia is in my kitchen window, haunting me. I haven't thrown it out because I'm still hoping it comes back to life like the magical apple tree. The only plant you can trust me with is a spider plant. Those things could survive nuclear war.

Perhaps I need to try growing potatoes...

At any rate, it's a good thing we live within spitting distance of several grocery stores, because we'd all be starving if I had to grow our food. In that regard, I'm grateful to be a Modern-Day

-Real Housewife of the North Shore

Housewife Responsibility #1: Cooking

Note: This title is not meant to imply that my most important responsibility is Cooking, it's to indicate that this is the first in a series of posts about Housewife Responsibilities.

I dislike cooking.

I dislike doing the dishes, and cleaning, and changing diapers, but if I were ever to hire household help, the person I would hire first would be a chef. Because I really do not like to cook.

I love eating. I love eating multi-course meals. I love eating desserts. I love eating all kinds of meats and veggies and pastas. I love trying new foods!

I just wish someone else would cook them up for me. I find no joy in peeling potatoes or chopping onions, or browning meat.

That someone else doesn't exist, though, so I go on cooking.

About a year and a half ago, I got really sick of cooking the same 10 meals. I'd been cooking the same 10 meals since getting married 9 years earlier, and it was just too much, like when you hear a song you like on the radio four times a day for six months and start to hate it.

I'm not a good cook.

I'd tried to cook new, exciting meals before. Someone gave me a Rachel Ray cookbook, and I attempted to use it. The problem was, I never had the right ingredients, so I had to improvise, and her ingredient lists are literally a page long and consist of things like "chopped arugula" which implies that you just keep chopped arugula sitting around. Except that you don't, which meant that when I got to that part of the recipe, I'd wind up finding something I had close to arugula (lettuce?) and then madly chopping it while overcooking whatever meat was in the pan.

No, I don't keep lemon zest around. Can I use orange juice instead?

"You should get the ingredients together ahead of time," you say, wise reader. And I agree. But she still uses way too many ingredients in most of her recipes, and all of them have been prepared in some way ahead of time, and while she claims her recipes take 20 minutes, that's after an hour of chopping and slicing and zesting and goodness knows what else.

So I very quickly gave up on Rachel Ray, and went back to my same 10 meals.

But I really wanted to eat new foods.

Last year, I discovered these 30-minute meals that promised to be easy in Good Housekeeping. "Easy Weeknights!" they promised. And instead of a page-long ingredient list, they had like, six to ten ingredients. One of which is usually salt - an easy to use, always-available ingredient! And to make it even easier for fools like me, they write the recipe out with the ingredients inside it, in bold, so you don't have to go looking back and forth between the list and the instructions. What a genius idea!

I tried one recipe. I tried another. They were actually easy! They actually took... well, not always half an hour, but never more than 45 minutes, even with preparing ingredients! And now I have a whole binder full of the good ones, and closer to 50 recipes in rotation, so that when I decide to make steak-marinated-in-Italian-dressing, it's for the first time in two months instead of the first time that week, and it tastes delicious once again.

I say this five times before it sinks in and people sit at the table.

I do need to plan ahead.

I need to pick about a week's worth of recipes and make my grocery list off of that, because sometimes the recipe wants arugula (no, I lie, they never want arugula, but sometimes they do require spinach). It's not much more work - it takes me about twenty minutes a week, which is not too steep a price to pay for having the right ingredients for five or six recipes.

And Things 1 and 2 aren't always on board.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 would much rather make macaroni and cheese with broccoli three nights a week and eat hot dogs another two, and maybe McDonald's all weekend. I try not to let it get me down - the good thing about having Husband, two Things, and Baby all eating meals now is that at least one of them is bound to like whatever it is, and that makes it all worth it.

But I still dislike cooking.

Taking Action!

The Husband got me a book for mother's day to show that he listens to me. It's Writing Fiction for Dummies. This is because a few weeks ago, I confronted him with the statement that he's not supportive of me in my endeavors. Since then, he's actually asked me about whether or not I had time to work on my writing during our Family Dinner Debriefings, and offered on the weekends to watch The Baby so I can work on writing.

In short, he's become supportive.

This does put pressure on me to up my game. So I actually read the section in the book on submitting your work to agents, and started the process. In tandem, I'm going to work on editing my second book, which I think has more potential than the first.

I'm not sure that I'm ready to elevate writing to the level of a job, though. Because then I'd have three jobs: Housewife, Paper Deliveryperson, Writer. And there are still only 24 hours in a day.

But I'm taking action!

Actually, I've tackled a lot of things lately. And I do mean tackled - something needs doing and I'm all over it like white on rice, without thinking too much about it.

First, the car's headlight

I noticed it was kind of dark during my paper route one morning. "That's weird," I thought, "The moon is even out. Why's it so dark?" And then I saw that one of my headlights was dead.

This is the sort of repair that old me would normally advise the Husband of, remind him of six times, and maybe one of us would get around to fixing it a month or so later. (Don't tell anyone, but I have been known to put off my annual car inspections for up to 9 months.) But this Housewife is now Taking Action!

We live within spitting distance of two auto parts stores. I dragged Thing 1, Thing 2 and Baby to one of them that very day. I marched in with my vehicle owner's manual in one hand, Baby in the other, and was immediately accosted by an employee.

"Can I help you?"

"Oh, I'm just looking for a headlight bulb."

"I can help you with that," said the employee. "It will be easier for me to look it up in the computer!" He was overeager and a little pushy, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to have him pull the right bulb for me, so I agreed. He entered my vehicle into the computer, and a long list of parts came up.

"Is it the high beam or the low beam?" He asked. I advised him it was the low beam.

"There are a lot of options," the man said, "How much do you want to spend?"

I stared at the computer screen. He chose one of them, and I pointed out that it was clearly labeled "High Beam."

"Oh, you're right," he said, and went back to the list. I began to feel uneasy about his abilities to assist me. But he chose a bulb that did not contain "High Beam" in the description, and we located it on the wall. I summoned Thing 1 and Thing 2 and we took the bulb home.

Following the instructions in the owner's manual, I removed the dead light bulb, opened the package for the new light bulb, pulled it out and stared at it.

The bulb I had purchased looked completely different. It was labeled with a different wattage. It had a different tip. And, most fatally, it had a different pin connector, so there was no way it was going to fit.

Grousing all the while, I rounded up Thing 1 and Thing 2, shoved the sleeping Baby back into the car, and we went to the OTHER auto parts store. (I refuse to patronize establishments that staff themselves with inept employees.) Thing 1 and Thing 2 ran into auto parts store #2 like hellions, and I hauled in the sleeping Baby and the owner's manual. Once again, an employee accosted me immediately.

"Can I help you?"

I warned him that I had already been not-helped once today. Again, relying on his magical computer, this employee looked up the part I would need. Once again, we walked to a wall of bulbs. This time, I was armed with the knowledge of what the bulb should look like. When he handed it to me, I was sure it was the right one.

So I replaced that bulb. But I do have some extra high-beam bulbs for a Mazda 3 if you're interested.

Second, the flagpole.

The flagpole holder we have was screwed into the siding, but not the house, and it was ripping the siding off the house when the wind was strong. So after asking the Husband to fix this for a year, I Took Action! On the advice of my father, I purchased longer screws and I found the power drill and I screwed those puppies into the house. Now the flag is up.

Perhaps the screws could have been shorter.

Third, the dresser

We purchased a dresser (Our first dresser purchase ever!) We had to wait several weeks for it to arrive - which worked out well, because during the wait, we procured the spaceship to pick it up. I arranged to bring it home on a weekday by myself, having grown overly confident in my ability to handle things since accomplishing the aforementioned tasks.

I called to advise the furniture warehouse I was on my way for pickup and began to have misgivings.

"How heavy is it?" I asked.

It is 179 pounds.

This should have frightened me more than it did. I just said, "okay," and stuck Baby in the spaceship. I maneuvered all the "magically" stowing seats and removed one of the second row seats, and off we went to fetch the dresser. 

Dressers are very, very big. Two men put it in my car, but it was even too large for the spaceship (at least with the Baby occupying a seat). One of the men was super helpful and tied the trunk down, which I think the vehicle manufacturer frowns upon. But I wasn't going to give in to reason and come back on the weekend without Baby. So Baby, dresser and I then took backroads very slowly all the way home. It was a harrowing half-hour during which I kept staring in the rearview mirror trying to decide if the rope holding down the trunk was getting looser or not, and wincing at every bump in the road. If the dresser fell out, the Husband would surely be furious with me for overreaching on this one.

Fortunately, we made it home. I untied the trunk and attempted to remove the dresser from the trunk. It was not a success, because I am not eight feet tall and can barely lift 55 pounds. I had to take my little old car (with its new light bulb) to pick up the children from school, because I was not driving another inch with that monstrosity dangling out the rear end of the spaceship.

The dresser is so huge and heavy that even with the Husband, we could not move that box inside. We had to strip it of its the packaging, remove all the drawers, and then we were able to maneuver it slowly inside.

Housewife Tip: Don't Attempt to Move a Dresser Alone.

The dresser in its new home. I made the bed just for this picture.

Up next: I ruin a bathroom

Inspired by the fact that everything has survived through my earlier actions, I am about to embark on the task of fixing the plaster walls in the bathroom, and possibly put in an exhaust fan. The stakes are high here, and the likelihood that the Husband winds up sending me back to work in an office is great. This may be my last post as

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

The Silver Spaceship

I feel spoiled. Not in a good way, but in the way when you get something you really don't deserve and you're having trouble mustering the appropriate thankfulness for your good fortune. You know... when someone offers you your third lollipop of the day and you're thinking, "I really don't need to have three lollipops in one day. One lollipop a day is really enough. Maybe two." But you say "thank you," and take it anyway.

Except I didn't get a third lollipop, we bought a minivan.

Large and in charge.

Need versus want

I mean, the extent to which you need a minivan is usually debatable, unless you have four or more children, and I only have three. Everyone fits safely and comfortably in my little car. They are small and have tiny butts.

We have been debating the minivan merits nonetheless because we don't own a truck, and neither of our cars can carry large items (like sheets of drywall). Also, when we vacation with three children, our largest preexisting car was packed to the gills (since it's a car and not a fish could you say packed to the grills?) In fact, the last time we went camping, we were forced to take two cars so we didn't have to strap the baby to the roof, a la Mitt Romney's poor dog.

But we've been making do for a year, and we have two cars running perfectly fine, so minivan did not reach the level of NEED.

Also, it's questionable how much we wanted one, since I have spent the last fifteen years insisting that I will never, ever, ever buy a minivan.

Never, ever, ever has arrived

And a giant silver spaceship has landed in my driveway. It is huge. It has insane cargo capacities. It has doors and a tailgate that open with the press of a button. I insisted, for my own sanity, that it have a moonroof. Actually, I think they call it a sunroof, but the difference seems arbitrary. I once read that moonroofs open and sunroofs don't, and this opens, so I think we can agree that it's as much a moonroof as a sunroof.

The silver spaceship has a built-in cooler and remarkable beverage-holding capacity. You could perhaps invent a very exciting game of beer pong involving the many cup holders. It has built in window shades. As you can see, this has reached the level of three lollipops and then some.

But it's still a minivan

No matter what I choose to call it, no matter how many bells and whistles, it's still a minivan. It drives like a minivan. It has the turning radius of a minivan. It chugs its way up to highway speed respectably, but it's no car. It's here for its utility, so we can take trips as a family in one car, in comfort, and each have two cup holders. And while it's a blessing that we can afford this amazing level of utility, I find myself accepting it much like that third lollipop. I feel like I am not grateful enough, and I am trying to focus on the amazing positives it brings to the table.

My car still smiles at me. The spaceship, meanwhile, looks like it means business.

At any rate, as I drive around now noticing every Honda Odyssey that I pass, I find that I'm in good company. I'm becoming

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

Festering

There is a lot of unfinished business this week, in all areas of my life, and it's driving me a little crazy. A couple jobs ago, my boss was a big advocate of not letting things fester, and I try to emulate him in getting things wrapped up, with or without a bow, as quickly as possible, and moving on to the next task. It's less stressful... if you can manage it.

But this week, there's a lot of festering. I put a load of laundry in last night (extenuating circumstances; I try to stick to only laundering on laundry days) and had to remove that this morning to start the day's laundry, only to find when I moved it to the dryer that I'd left laundry from Monday in the dryer. Festering.

I've studiously avoided taking the next steps with my novel-writing, choosing instead to putter around with removing wallpaper in the bathroom. But since I don't have the time to finish that, it's just a giant purple disaster right now.




This is what Festering looks like


I attempted to finish field trip planning for the year, to at least cross that off the list finally. Here's how it went:

Me: Do you do any educational programs?
Zoo Lady: Sure, we can do them in this tent blah blah blah rain date blah blah
Me: How about May 26th? I'll confirm it with the teachers and let you know. Should I call you or email you?
Zoo Lady: Sure! Probably both, just to be safe, haha. (This should have been a red flag)
Me: Okay. (does just that)

I then proceeded to call about five more times in an attempt to discuss the details, meanwhile:
---
Me: Free bus fairy, do you have a bus on May 26?
Bus Fairy: No, sorry.
Me: Bus dude, I need two busses on May 26.
Bus Dude: No can do.
Me: Bus lady, Do you have two busses on May 26?
Bus Lady: I do. You want em?
Me: Yes.
--
This morning I finally reach Zoo Lady again.

Me: I wanted to discuss the details of our educational program on the 26th.
Zoo Lady: Sure! Um... what school was this?
Me: Blah blah blah details.
Zoo Lady: Oh, okay, right! Let me fill out the contract. Then I'll see if the tent is available.
Me: Excuse me? I thought I booked the tent last week; I've already lined up the busses and everything.
Zoo Lady: Oh... well, I'll have to check and give you a call back. Maybe tomorrow. (Here is someone who doesn't mind festering)

--
I bet you can guess what happened. So... instead of that being wrapped up this morning, it was ripped wide open. The laundry is sitting in my kitchen. The bathroom is awful. The breakfast dishes are festering on the counter. I haven't touched anything resembling a novel all week. My efforts at tidying up have stalled. The filter to the vacuum that I purchased three months ago is buried somewhere in the basement now. I attempted to fix a pair of pants and they have been festering on the coffee table since last week.

The Baby is currently trying to crawl up the back of my shirt, so this will have to suffice as a blog post. Off I go to entertain him with folding laundry.

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore




Tidying Up

I've been trying to purge things from the house, which is one of the aspects of housewifing that is a never-ending slog. I totally understand how hoarder homes wind up looking the way that they do. If I just don't throw things out or donate them for a week or two, I realize I've started having to weave through mounds of clutter to get around. And at some point, you just stop caring, or it just becomes too overwhelming, and you wind up not eating at the dining room table anymore because it's the end of the day and you're too tired to move the piles of now-you-don't-even-know-what off of it.

Or if you're lucky enough to have a basement, like me, you shove a whole bunch of not-very-organized stuff into a box and stick it in the basement and say, "I'll go through that later." And you use your table, but getting to the laundry machine starts to be an obstacle course. And then the basement floods, and the box gets wet, and now Later turns into Never because you're moldphobic (there is probably a real word for that, but if I used it we'd both have to look it up).

Well, I recently read a years-old magazine and came across an article on Marie Kondo, an expert on what she calls Tidying Up. Which sounds so pleasant. I want to be a person who tidies up, not a borderline hoarder who has to purge. Her method of organizing is called KonMari. (I am totally naming a method of doing something after myself someday.) And somehow, she managed to take folding clothes to a whole new level. The internet has been raving about this folding, so I watched a random YouTube video and gave it a shot.

Holy Carp.

If you don't think that a new folding method can be life-changing... you need to try this. (Perhaps you already have. If so, why didn't you tell me about it??)

I spent hours yesterday and today KonMari-ing drawers. Now, I'm not even doing the tidying method right, you're supposed to gather all the clothes in your house and put them in a big pile somewhere and wade through them, getting rid of anything that doesn't spark joy inside you. I am not in a place to make that time commitment right now, we'd just have a huge pile of clothes sitting around getting cat-hairy for months if I tried that. And the Baby would run around with everyone's underwear on his head and we'd find it months later in his toy bin or the bookshelf. (He seriously loves to put underwear on his head.) And then at some point I would get fed up and stick them all back where they came from.

Also, her second step is to get rid of books, and I can't do that. The solution to not having enough room for books is to build a bigger bookshelf. Maybe that'll be the Schweitzer method.

But this folding business? Who knew you could fold so wrong for so long?

I could actually fit more clothes in my drawers!

And you can see all the clothes without digging!



Thing 1's shirts fit better!



And storing the tights sideways actually saved room somehow!

Even better, these were items that I was already folding, just differently. So it shouldn't be hard to maintain the new setup. I am so excited about this folding business that I want to go fold more things now just to see the transformation, instead of working on my novel.

It's also re-inspiring me to continue "tidying up" via getting rid of things.

For further inspiration, I picked up a toy work bench for the Baby, with the intent that its home would be the basement. We can build things together! So... I need to make room in the basement.

With tidings of tidiness -

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

A Foul Stench

The Scene is Set

So, basements. Basements are one of the best bonus spaces of any house. We have a fabulous basement, if you discount the fact that it floods occasionally. It's huge and unfinished, a blank canvas. Basements can serve so many purposes simultaneously. Ours is a hoarder space / laundry room / cat zone / tertiary play area / former bunny abode. Also, the tools live there. And the chest freezer. And furniture that I'm supposed to be refinishing. Also, my extensive collection of tissue paper, boxes, bows, and gift bags.

A New Smell

There is so much going on in the basement, that it is hard to keep track of, and it has started to take on a life of its own. So when it started to smell really foul a couple weeks ago, I had no idea what was causing the stench. I emptied Cat's litter box. I sprayed some rogue mold with bleach. I looked for dead mice (this is not a regular occurrence, but it's happened once before).

Given the fact that it floods and has been inhabited by domestic animals (and wild spiders) for years, the basement never smells like roses. Occasionally, it smells like anise. I have yet to figure out why. But this was an entirely new smell, and a really awful one at that. I finally decided it must be coming from the dehumidifier, which is cleaned with less frequency than the manual recommends. Since it's supposed to be cleaned with vinegar and I abhor the smell of vinegar, I asked the Husband to handle it at the weekend.

The Smell is Unmasked

The weekend came, and the husband cleaned the dehumidifier and left it in the sun to dry. The horrible stench was fading slightly, but it was still there. I don't normally touch the Husband's laundry, but I went to move it from the washer to the dryer, and I had to place some of it on the chest freezer, which is next to the washing machine (it's a power outlet issue; there are only two outlets, so anything that requires electricity is relegated to one of two locales in the basement). I glanced down and saw a slab of meat lying next to the freezer, hiding between the freezer and a towering stack of boxes.

The slab of meat was two pork chops from 2012 (one of my decent Housewife skills is writing dates on things, otherwise it would have been anyone's guess how old they were), which I had pulled out of the freezer to throw away... oh, a couple weeks ago (another Housewife skill: I don't serve 4-year-old meat to my family). Since I did not throw the meat onto the floor myself, I will paint a picture of what I believe happened:

It's a Tale with a Tail

I left the meat lying on the freezer by accident, instead of bringing it upstairs to the trash. Cat, who thinks he's being starved to death, saw the meat, recognized it as such, failing to read the date. Cat then attacked the meat, knocking it into submission on the ground, and bit into the bag. He tasted the meat, realized it was no good, and promptly commenced eating Easter grass to barf it up. Several barfs later, he went about his merry way, leaving behind a holey bag with 4-year-old meat to grace the basement with its fragrance.

The End.

The meat was removed from the basement and the smell vanished.

This is a good thing, because we are having a party Sunday and I don't need to be dealing with a smelly basement. I have a long list of things to do already.



The list. It's very detailed, as you can see.

 Writing a blog post is not one of the things to-do, so I'd better get back to the business of being

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

Cake and the ocean

There is a song that I hear at least once every morning while I do the paper route called Cake by the Ocean. Perhaps you've heard it. Cake by the ocean starts out sounding great and then ends up a sandy mess, like my Saturday.

The Ocean

Saturday started out relatively successfully; I woke up later than normal, flew through the paper route in under three hours, most of which was during daylight. Daylight - so I could see the ocean, not just hear the waves in the dark, and there were all sorts of birds noisily flapping about: a duck that refused to move from a driveway, so he nearly got hit by my car; some birds prettier than seagulls that I will refer to as terns, floating on the breeze; the owl-like cry of a mourning dove; a random woodpecker.

It was as good as one can hope for in a newspaper route. I came home, was greeted by Thing 2, and made the family French toast and bacon. I gave myself a syrupy pat on the back.

Cake

Now, the cake was another matter entirely. I didn't start out with lofty ambitions for the cake or anything, it was just going to be a nice two-layer, box-mix, frosting-from-a-can cake. I know my limits.

I solicited Thing 1 and Thing 2's input and they reminded me that the recipient - my father in law - likes purple, so we bought some purple icing and purple decorating gel. Thing 1 helped me mix the cake, we poured it in the pans, and popped it in the oven. Twenty-six minutes later, two delicious pans of cake were set to cool on the stovetop.

Several minutes after that, The Cat appeared on the scene. He's on a strict diet due to his adult-onset diabetes, and he seems to believe we're starving him, so he ravenously devours any crumbs we leave lying around on the floor, and licks clean empty yogurt containers. I give him insulin twice a day and bought this expensive, diabetes-friendly cat food; but, given all the food scraps he steals, I'm not sure that his prognosis is good.

You can see where this is going. But before you tell me I ought to have known better, I will clarify that while The Cat adores muffins and crescent rolls, he has never once before eaten cake.

Saturday was his inaugural cake eating. His "cake smash," if you will. I returned to put the cakes away until I could frost them with Thing 1's help, when I discovered the evidence of The Cat's latest mission to further his diabetes. There was some screaming (from me).

But all was not lost! The Cat had restricted his dining to a relatively small section of one cake, so I felt that, with frosting, the cake could still pass muster. Perhaps a carefully removed section of cake would not only eliminate the cat cooties, but also add an element of design. I went to work.

Cat cooties - isolated and eliminated!

It became clear to me, as I slathered on the first can of frosting, that the removal of an eighth of the cake was not, by itself, a design element. I soldiered on, determined to fix the situation with a second can of frosting. Thing 1 arrived on scene and I explained the situation to her. She had some helpful suggestions.

Between the two of us, we frosted and iced the crap out of the cake until it looked like a masterpiece.


Just kidding!



Good thing I never got around to opening that bakery I dreamed about running when I was a kid. I'm no baker, I'm just a

-Real Housewife of the North Shore.

All the Small Things

Maybe it's because nothing dramatic or big is going down right now in my life, but the last week has really been all about the small things. I am like this Market Basket employee who went bananas over bananas:

Do you see it? Taste the rainbow... tastes like bananas.

It's like the brain, craving stimulation, finds excitement in the tiniest things.

I earned a $2 tip on the newspaper route!

I didn't fall down today on the newspaper route!

The Baby took a two-hour nap!

I saw a skunk!

It was also my birthday week, which was full of small things that meant a lot to me. Friends came over and brought dinner and cakes. The Husband remembered my birthday for the first time ever (it has only taken him 11 years). My parents gave me a nice raincoat and socks.

And so I stumble onwards (literally; this newspaper route is making me feel old and clumsy) happily.

This afternoon we're going to slosh through the April snow and buy some of those exciting bananas.

That's the life of

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

What was I thinking?!

This post is worthy of an interrobang.

I've been out of "the workforce" for just about a year and as the Baby starts to walk and act more human, I felt like taking on a small part-time job was feasible, and would allow me to justify - to myself - spending time working on my non-money earning writing craft for a half-hour to an hour a day.

A newspaper route!

For some reason that I cannot at this moment fathom, this sounded somewhat exotic. (?!) Perhaps this is a sign that I have been living in what I once heard referred to as "the baby cave" for too long, or perhaps I have just lost my mind.

The reality is that I got up this morning at 2 AM, having barely slept from being so nervous about this new venture, my stomach in knots, got in my car without showering, and drove to the newspaper place to pick up 119 papers.

I sat in the parking lot stuffing the papers into the plastic bags, while several other cars arrived, picked up papers, and then left. So, I thought, I must be doing something wrong... they told me I could sit in the parking lot and stuff them in bags, but clearly I am the only one doing so.

So I left, and started the route. It was okay for about five minutes. I mean, I pretty much expected it to be hard. Despite the street lights, people's house numbers don't exactly glow in the dark (they totally should) and I had a headlamp to help me see. But the houses are far enough apart that it's unrealistic to walk the route, so I had to keep getting in and out of my running car, walking up to houses to try to see what number they wore (and guessing wrong a lot).

I started out carefully setting the papers on the doorsteps. This lasted from about 3:30 to 5:30 AM, at which point I started freaking out a little because I was only about half done and I am supposed to be done by 6:00. It was at this point that the Husband texted to let me know that the Baby had been screaming since I left three and a half hours ago. He was not pleased. (this is a gross understatement)

Not seeing any way out other than to deliver the papers, I began hurling them a little more haphazardly. It was just about 5:45 when some other car delivering Wall Street Journals basically lapped me. While I sat in my car about to cry, he delivered three papers in about a minute and vanished into the dawn.

He was a shining example of speedy paper delivery. I don't know what I was thinking. (Did I say that? I've still barely slept) I had to finish the stupid paper route, though, so I sadly/angrily bagged the rest of my papers - I had about 30 left - and stormed out of my car to find the next house number.

Suddenly, though, the sun started to clear the horizon, and I could read the house numbers from my car. It was like magic. I flew around the last section of the neighborhood, tossing newspapers with relative abandon (in the driveway! No steps, sorry... after all, my newspaper hero did not bother with that precision) and found - almost too easily - the houses I'd spent precious minutes searching for in the dark without luck. And then it was 6:45, and I was headed home.

I DID IT.

Was it worth it? Totally not. If this does not get easier FAST, I am quitting. That's if the Husband even lets me continue after Baby's lack of sleeping abilities.

I'm not cut out to deliver newspapers. I'm just

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

A Mixed Bag

So much of life feels like treading water. You're trying to keep your head above water but you aren't really getting anywhere. Then suddenly a helpful current comes along and - whee! I'm swimming somewhere! - and then the current stops and it's back to treading water. Or a big wave comes along and you get saltwater in your mouth.

It's been like that here.

Wave 1: Wallpaper

I decided it would be a good idea to remove this wallpaper border in the bathroom that's been driving me insane since we moved in almost 5 years ago. But then, as I'm removing it, I realize that the walls are covered in wallpaper. And the main wallpaper is coming off much easier than the border, leaving this exciting mess:

According to my mother, we have replaced the seashell border
with a squid or a whale

So, like so many of my renovation projects, I put this on pause to call in a plumber.

(No, I do not expect the plumber to weigh in on wallpapering. We were talking about renovating the bathroom in its entirety, and I need to know what's happening on the walls plumbing-wise before I spend time stripping and painting them. Thing 1 did ask the plumber about the wallpaper, though. And Thing 2 wanted to show the plumber his bedroom. I don't think they understand what plumbers do).

Wave 2: So Many Bags, So Little Time

Tuesday is our gymnastics/shopping extravaganza day (Drop Thing 1 off at gymnastics, run to grocery store with Thing 2 and Baby, race through the aisles, run back to gymnastics). This Tuesday it was raining, which makes everything worse.

I got the groceries in time, but then we get to checkout and the guy doing the bagging was awful. Awful. As the groceries start getting rung through, he is loading up stacks of plastic bags on that metal frame they have and going, "It's reloading time! Time to reload. Reloading happening now." So I said, "Actually, I'd like paper, please, after you fill the cloth bags I brought." To which he was like, "Okay! Still reloading time!"

At which point I got distracted by the Baby, who was insisting on playing the I-Throw-Things-Onto-The-Floor game, punctuated by screaming every time I didn't hand him something else to throw onto the floor.

So while I'm stuck in an endless loop of handing Baby my credit card, then retrieving it from the floor to hand it back to Baby to be thrown on the floor again, Bagger actually says to the cashier, "Are you gonna help me out? I can't do this all by myself."

At which point I look at the bagging situation to see:
-half-filled cloth bags (like, four items, when they normally hold ten to fifteen)
-paper bags inside plastic bags (no!! We don't need more plastic bags in our house!)
-a huge and growing pile of scanned items that are not bagged

Just general bagging chaos. The cashier kind of stared at Bagger like, "Are you kidding me?" which is what I wanted to say, but didn't. Then he did start helping, bless his soul. But the damage was already done.

Basically, I don't know what Bagger was doing, but the cashier wound up doing 75% of the bagging, which meant it took an extra five minutes to check out, and we were late returning to gymnastics.

We get home, Baby is screaming that he wants to be fed, the bags are in chaos all over the floor, everything is wet because of the rain, and the Husband calls to ask what's for dinner and did I get ferret litter today. So we got in a fight and had Five Guys for dinner.

(Five Guys Burgers and Fries, not like, random male visitors)

Wednesday was supposed to be better.

I had planned a vegetarian Irish Bean Stew and some delicious Irish Soda Buns (I've made them before, so I KNOW they're delicious).

Baby takes a good nap, I'm chopping veggies, following a recipe, everything is going great. The plumber comes to check out my bathroom situation, he's going to give me an estimate, all's well. The stew is simmering away fabulously.

Looks amazing, right?

Our dinner guest comes over; I make the soda buns; the Husband comes home and we sit down to eat the stew.

And it is awful. Why? I do not know. It looks so good. But it tastes so wrong. Thing 2, bless his little heart, ate most of his, as did I, and our guest ate hers, but Thing 1 and Husband merely poked at it with a spoon. So... we ordered pizza.

And then the cat - who was recently diagnosed with diabetes - eats two and a half soda buns, which is neither good for him nor for me.

The rest of the stew went in the compost. At least that's better than the trash, but still very sad.

It's Friday now; several chores to finish up today as we swim onward to the weekend, and I'm hoping for some good currents.

I hope you get some, too.

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

Occupation: Housewife

Transitioning from having a 9-to-5 job (or, more typically, a 7:30-to-4:30 job) to being a Housewife has been one of the hardest adjustments I've been through. As I've noted, this was at first a temporary assignment, which was how I talked myself into it. But as its become more and more permanent, I can't keep claiming I'm going back to work "in a few months."

Outlining the tasks.

My new coping mechanism has been to think of Housewife as an occupation. In my prior occupation, I used to have certain days I paid the bills and days that I ordered supplies; times of the day that I opened mail and that I devoted to making phone calls; days of the month that I reconciled accounts and that I ran payroll. So it's relatively unsurprising, I suppose, that I started organizing Housewifing the same way. I have laundry days, vacuum days, shopping days, bill-paying days. There's school drop-off time and pick-up time, dinner time, and now even writing time. This all makes it more palatable for me and lets me feel like I accomplish things. Without setting times and days for tasks, Housewife really tends to feel like a never-ending slog.

It's especially hard because there is no leaving work at work when you're a Housewife. You never get to walk out the door and drive home, leaving your pile of unfinished tasks behind. Nope, if you don't wash the dishes, they sit right on the counter and stare you in the face until you clean 'em. (And as soon as you do, another one pops up - it's like playing Whack-a-Mole - but that's another subject entirely).

So setting specific times for tasks - that keeps me sane.

But whose turn is it to do those dishes?

Before taking on the Housewife job, the Husband and I split a lot of responsibilities (and argued about them). I insisted that being Housewife made me Boss of the House, which everyone agreed to in the household. This means that pretty much every aspect of taking care of the house and kids is my responsibility, which is a bit of a hard pill to swallow some days. The upside of this is that I can assign tasks to the Husband (which, to his credit, he almost always accepts). Before, I saw this as getting the short end of the stick. Now, I choose to think of it as part of the job. The Husband makes the money; I make sure we have toilet paper. We're both contributing to having a nice life.

But all that responsibility, and the sheer quantity of tasks that need doing every day, can be exhausting.

All Housewives deserve some vacation time.

I realized I had succeeded at making Housewife my occupation when I was preparing to leave town to visit my parents last week. Just like I would do with any job, I moved some of my scheduled tasks around so that the important things were done ahead of time (in this case: laundry). And I knew there'd be some catching up to do when I returned (vacuuming). But for three days, I was Off The Clock! No laundry, no dishwashing, no breakfast-making, no planning dinners, no grocery shopping, no school pickup or drop off. (It was fabulous, by the way.)

It was during this vacation-prep time that I really felt I was succeeding at Housewifing.

Is Housewife a 9-to-5 job? No. It's usually more of a 7:30-to-8:30 deal. But it is a job, and I do think it "counts" as such. It takes a little time to get used to, but there are ways to grow through it, just like any position I've had.

So, when it came time to fill out my passport application, I didn't even have to think about what to put in the Occupation box...I wrote:

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore  

Snow days are not for the weak

I try not to blog about my children directly (even though they are the reason for my being a housewife) but they are, in fact the central point of our household, around which everything revolves.

First Example: Furniture

Our current couch was chosen when we had one child. I wanted something nice looking, but functional. The husband is allergic to life itself, so we were limited to leather. We got this gorgeous curved couch. The three of us fit on it perfectly. Enter Thing 2: we still fit on the couch. However, as Thing 1 and Thing 2 have grown, and now with the arrival of the Baby, it's become clear a three-cushion couch is not enough for a family of five.

We are receiving a sizeable tax refund - due almost entirely to the Baby - and so we went shopping for a new couch. A couch that fits five. Without the children, we'd be looking for two chairs, which would fit in our house a lot better. Or we could get one of those couches with a cup holder console. I love the idea of a cup holder console, as I am never without a beverage, but it's just not practical when you're trying to fit five people onto a relatively small piece of furniture.

Perhaps I can designate Thing 1 as my own personal cup holder.

Second Example: Snow

Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a snow day on Friday. That's all cool, right? Three day weekend. Send them out to play in the snow. Good times.

Sunday night, I got the call that today would be another snow day. Four day weekend? Not cool. After three days, I was so ready to send them back to school and get the laundry done (half of which is the children's). Dashed are my hopes of doing any book-editing. Gone is the possibility of a blog post about my excitement to rearrange the furniture!

Instead, it's 4 pm and I've spent the day negotiating disputes and attempting to get the Baby to nap, unsuccessfully.  I've picked up dozens of Thing 1's tissues and hung up wet snow clothes twice. The laundry is only half done. Anyone who has spent four days wrangling three or more children ... join me when I help myself to a heavy pour of wine in an hour (counting the minutes). And those of you who work in daycare, God bless you.

If this post is less than stellar, I apologize. I am writing it while playing napkin tag with the Baby.

Next week is School Vacation Week. I will be MIA, buried in snot, arrowroot cookies, and nutella. See you on the other side, when I reemerge with my sanity shredded.

-A Real Housewife of the (Snowy) North Shore

Hostessing!

I'm putting on my Hostess hat this week!

Full disclosure: I am an awkward human being. I am bad at hugs. I don't know what to do with my arms when I dance. I smile when I get nervous, which goes over poorly when I try to express sympathy. And we never hosted much when I was growing up, so it's not in my blood.

But I really like hosting things, regardless of all this. And this week we're having people over to dinner THREE times!

Which is great, except that my house is pretty much always like this:

I just now noticed the cat in this photo. And yes, he's pretty much always like that.

So whenever we have someone over, I have to spend hours finding homes for all the clutter. It's exhausting, mentally more than physically, because I am also a bit of a hoarder. And today I just don't have that mental energy.

Don't go in the basement

For your own safety. The cat reigns down there, so it's all danderiffic, and there are a lot of shifty piles on the verge of collapse. And spider webs. We had a spider population, but they were all eaten by the house centipedes, so now just their webs are left.

Also, I'm totally about to hide the clutter down there, so please just stay upstairs if you visit and we can have coffee and wine and pretend that we have it all together.

It's going to be a wonderful time!

I dusted, I'm about to throw food in the crock pot, and I have three kinds of seltzer. We have a bar full of liquor - even if the bar is on an old desk. Roomba is vacuuming for me. I even cleaned the coffee table. There may be beard bits in the bathroom, but that is totally the Husband's fault, and I can never seem to clean them all up by the time he shaves again. We have multi-grain Tostitos because we are so hip (and the kids like them better).

But mostly, it's about good company

And after hanging out with a baby and Thing 1 and Thing 2 for days on end, it's super fabulous to have adult conversation! Come, join me, and see what it's like wine-and-dining with

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

Fiona and I

Winter has officially arrived, with weekly snowfalls and frigid temperatures. It's one of the features of New England. And despite the fact that my car, Tres, performs only marginally better in the slick weather than my Ford Mustang did (before I totaled it in a way-too-dramatic fashion during a snowstorm), winter is a feature of New England that I enjoy. And by enjoy, I mean enjoy the New England way - that "I'll complain about it frequently but you'll never catch me moving to California" way.

The New England Way!

Winter is like a battle to win each year; something to come out of the other side of comparing chilblains and sore muscles from shoveling and swapping tales of how high the snow was and supermarket skirmishes for the last bag of ice melt in the store. Last year, we all got to share our tales of woe about ice dams and leaking roofs, and my lesser-used pots found a use collecting the interior rainfall.

Hopefully that aspect of winter stays in the past...

But this year has already reunited me with my now-familiar acquaintance, who I finally decided to name. She is Fiona, and she's a 60-year-old broad who lives in my basement. She's been here as long as the house itself, and she's growly and temperamental, an artifact of a bygone era who plans to live forever. And I'm cool with all of this, because she keeps us warm.

What's the name of your heating system?

Yes, Fiona is our furnace - or, more accurately, our boiler. She runs on oil and a measure of determination and is simple enough for even me to understand the basics of. She's got dials that do things and dials that have stopped working and sit there unused. The real secret of Fiona seems to be knowing which dials to trust. Last winter, we had ongoing issues with Fiona that the service team could not seem to figure out. Every time they came to the house, the heat worked fine. They'd leave, and Fiona would refuse to kick herself into gear. So during this time, I spent countless hours hauling my pregnant butt up and down the basement stairs, trying to figure out what Fiona SHOULD be doing, and whether or not she was actually doing it, and if not, why not... and never resolving the issue.

Fiona, doing what she does best.

During our plumbing adventure this fall, my father located a broken wire that he fixed, and that seems to have resolved at least one of Fiona's issues. She now fires up reliably. But every month or two, she hums new tunes, quite literally. This month she switched to a new one quite suddenly, which caused me to run up and down the stairs several times to check on her, but she seems to be doing just fine. The husband thinks I am insane, so it's okay if you think that, too.

Just keepin' on

Now that winter's arrived, Fiona and I are trying to kick it into high gear inside the house. I cleaned my desk and the junk drawer. Fiona got a new tune and kept the house toasty despite the single-digit temperatures. We're tight, because it's just us two girls during the day...  

I might need to get out more, but it's just so cold. If you want to brave the cold, you can come visit us; if Tres and I aren't running taxi service for Thing 1, Thing 2 or the Baby, I'll be here keeping Fiona company. I think she gets lonely down there in the basement.

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore

Post-Holiday Funk

Full disclosure: I am writing this post while drinking my coffee so that I can bravely tackle the Christmas lights next. Every year it's the same; the lights come down and they sit forlornly on my kitchen floor for days (sometimes weeks) until I get it together enough to carefully roll them up and put them away.

Insert lame joke about how they're hanging over my head here

Part of the problem is that I insist on putting them away in their original boxes. I've debated ending this practice, but that's just pushing the chaos of tangled wires to November, and I try to keep the Hanging of Lights Fun to a maximum. So every January 'tis the season for re-packaging hundreds of lights...

I think this is why people make New Year's resolutions. They're like mental coffee, spurring you into action in the dark days of winter when all you really want to do is curl up in front of a toasty fire with a blanket and slippers and sip something that warms you up from the inside. (Maybe this is just a Northeast Thing? I don't know if the same sentiment rings true if you live in Arizona.)

The gingerbread's been eaten, the lights are down - if not away - and the carols have all been wrung out of us. I somehow let New Year's slip by without making a resolution, and now I just feel purposeless. I've managed to be just good enough at being a Housewife that I can't dismiss continuing on in this fashion as an option. I don't really want to add daycare, after school care, and a 9-5 to my daily repertoire. But I also can't see myself being a Housewife for the next couple years, so it's going to have to happen at some point. Is it time to find a job, or do I refocus on writing, like I did in November? Can we afford to continue to have me stay at home?

For now, I'll resolve to write at least one post a week. Unless I get that job, because then I won't be "just"

-A Real Housewife of the North Shore