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