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