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.