Starring In My Own Miniseries

I suppose you could say I'm anti-trendy - if everyone is doing it, I'm much too busy.  If everyone eats there, I've never tried it.  If everyone plays that game, I'm sidelined with injuries.  And most of all, if everyone is watching it, I'm doing something, anything else.  I'm not much of a series TV watcher.  If I watch at all, I come to popular shows a few years after they start. I never saw "Cheers" until Diane left, the first time I watched "The Simpsons" was when I saw the theatrical movie, and Scully was an already an abductee by the time I watched my first "X-Files."  Being "in-the-know" about popular shows has never been a priority for me.

I don't think the rest of the TV generation is like me.  Raised on series TV of the 1970s, my family watched very few interesting shows.  Carol Burnett was the highlight of my week.  My parents didn't allow "All in the Family," "Soap" or "One Day at a Time," because characters on those shows espoused subversive, non-traditional views that could be damaging to the values of growing children.  Bah! It just made those shows seem more attractive to the loser who had to go to school not knowing if Barbara took "The Pill" or Archie  invited Mr. Jefferson into the house.

In my teens, the American mini-series was very popular. "Roots" is some people's idea of the definitive mini-series, and I know it is a classic on many levels, but it didn't typify the popular mini-series because it was so good, so worthwhile, so educational.  Most of the minis that I remember had more superficial values - good-looking leads, exotic locales, tried-and-true storylines.

I'm not sure about the evolution of the mini, whether it was an outgrowth of the TV-movie or a genre of its own. I only know that when they began to appear in my house, family life was scheduled around these ground-breaking events.

The first mini I remember well is "Rich Man, Poor Man," based on the Irwin Shaw novel of the same name. Peter Strauss and Nick Nolte played brothers who take vastly different paths on their route to happiness and success. Who ends up rich, who ends up poor? That's about the only nuanced message of the opus, but I won't spoil it for you. It celebrated many things Americans love to observe - hard work, education, sex, greed, running away from your problems and revenge. My family ate it up.

Others I recall from that era are "The Thorn Birds," "North and South,"  and "Holocaust." Somehow, the phenomenon of extended storytelling was re-invented for the TV generation.

There have been many more worthy titles in the miniseries category, but as I reached adulthood, I lost interest in TV for many years, and cannot comment sensibly on anything from the middle 80s to the late 90s.  It wasn't until the BBC/A&E production of "Pride and Prejudice" was on its second or third running in the US that I finally heard that my favorite novel had been made into a miniseries worth watching.

My devotion to all things P&P is a source of embarrassment to my family, so I won't dwell on it at this time (I have something planned for later, though). Suffice to say that the beautifully-produced and essentially true-to-the-book adaptation simultaneously revived the miniseries, the American love of the miniseries, American interest in all things upper-crust British, the book and movie career of Jane Austen, and spillover rediscoveries of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Bronte sisters and, of course, the Bard.

I love everything to do with English history.  No era is too bloody, to excessive, too full of plague, or conquest or intolerance to make it uninteresting to me.  Kings and commoners, queens and scullerymaids, they all make for great storytelling.  I've indoctrinated one of my two daughters into my love affair with castles, costumes and  courtship. The whole family thoroughly enjoyed the miniseries "Pillars of the Earth," a wonderful story of the individual and collective  fifty-year effort to build a cathedral in 12th-century England. (Based on the almost 1,000 page book by Ken Follett, I highly recommend the DVD for those not inclined to stout reading assignments.)

Any time I want to treat myself to a full day (6 hours) of watching P&P, I just go around collecting clothes that need ironing, so as to have a convenient excuse to stand in front of the TV all day.  Sometimes I run out of clothes before I run out of episodes, but I can usually find a button to sew or pants to hem so that I can at least get to the awkward scene at Pemberly, after Mr. Darcy's gratuitous yet satisfying splash in the pond.

I started to hear the buzz about a new miniseries that sounded a bit like "Upstairs, Downstairs" sometime last summer.  With other matters on my mind, I never considered checking it out.  Meanwhile, friends who know my fondness for Brit-lit and the BBC incarnations of those stories were untiring in their pestering that I should be watching this new drama.  Well, nothing assures my disinterest like people telling me I should be interested, particularly where TV is concerned.  I'm proud to say I never watched "Survivor" in any of its locales, or even one episode of "American Idol." I'm clueless about many shows that are part of the cultural fabric, hence my frequent cluelessness about culture.  I missed "The Sopranos," "24," "Lost," "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Friends," and, alas, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." (I was forced to watch "Dancing with the Stars," because Camille was a fan, but I never inhaled.)

Clearly, without ties to continuing weekly TV sagas, I could be a much more productive member of society than all the zombies watching the idiot box, right?  And here on the pages of this blog you have learned just how productive I can be - if by productive I mean "producer of excuses." Anyway, after the second season debut of "Downton Abbey," I could no longer ignore the "must-see TV" talk about the show.  A quick peek at the homepage on PBS.org whetted my appetite, but again, other priorities got my attention and I never got around to watching.

Until yesterday.  Or should I say last night into the wee hours of the morning.

I'm hooked.  I'm so hooked I want to scrap the chores, skip the kids awards ceremony and band concert tonight and just watch it again, from start to finish. It is a feast for my eyes, a caress of my ears, food to nurture my romantic soul. I want to move into Downton and set things right for all my new best friends...especially Mr. Bates. I want to be there when the telegram about the Titanic arrives, and when the rally for women's suffrage gets violent, and when Lord Grantham attempts to explain why the death of a Turkish attache under his roof could have international consequences.

I've only got the DVD until Friday, then it goes back to the library for the next person on the very long hold list. I hope my wait for a copy of season two isn't unbearably long. I also want the girls to see it, and maybe Eric will even give it another try.  He dismissed it as a soap opera after one hour last night.  But he, the productive breadwinner, had to go to bed and just needed an excuse. I'll bet he's been daydreaming about the love/hate relationship between Lady Mary and Mr. Crawley, unable to engineer for wondering.

Ahem. Begging your pardon, I think I just remembered some ironing that needs attending to.

Domestic Diva and some Drivel about Drudgery

I'd like to begin today's rant with a lesson in logic and syntax. Read and analyze these two sentences:

I cleaned my house.

My house is clean.

It seems to me that, if you "do" the first sentence, then the second sentence would be a true statement.  In logic, this rule is called "transposition." Doubtless you all remember this from classical logic, but just in case, here's the cheat sheet:

  transposition is the rule of inference that permits one to infer from the truth of "A implies B" the truth of "Not-B implies not-A", and conversely.

Or, to clarify,

(P → Q) ↔ (~Q → ~P)

Got it?


So why, if I just cleaned my house, is my house already a mess?  Logic dictates that, if I clean my house, my house should be clean. And maybe it is, for a minute, but therein lies the problem.  Time passes and the statement becomes false.  It seems illogical to engage in unpleasant behavior (housework) that yields such temporary and illusory results.


I've noticed this fallacy often occurs with organizing projects as well. After several junk explosions and a scary visit from the closet police, I discovered that closets were not supposed to be stuffed to the hinges with stuff, but should be nicely organized into boxes, totes, bags, racks, shelves and baskets of stuff. To achieve this lofty goal, I spent months on an organizational odyssey around my house.  "Sort, categorize, contain" became my mantra. Be an HGTV before and after success story, I told myself.


I worked so hard.  I wanted spaces to look like this:

But this is my craft desk:

Not a pretty sight, is it?

But back to logic and ipso facto and stuff.

I did pretty well with the kitchen pantry, the linen closet, the medicine cabinet and actually merged three junk drawers into one.  But my issue remains with the fleeting nature of such jobs. Just take a moment to consider the tragic nature of this statement:

                      I organized my pantry ≠ My pantry is organized

It only takes one teenager 3 minutes of foraging for an after-school snack to undo hours of organizing.  Thanks to one or more of my "helpers," while trying to pack lunches one recent morning, I discovered I had zero granola bars (helpers usually eat >3/day) but there were four kinds of cookies, all open, none in airtight containers, ready to blithely be eaten by the handful, right where the box of granola bars should be. 

Speaking of the fleeting nature of success, don't even get me started on the joy of mopping or steaming a hardwood floor.  Unless you are one of the highly intelligent people who don't own dogs or children, you already know where I'm going with this.  I love to see a freshly vacuumed and mopped wood floor more than almost any other completed task, but dog hair, crumbs, footprints, sloshed drinks, etc., appear in nanoseconds to kill the moment. It's a documented fact that when scientists need to measure the shortest length of time that a feeling can possibly exist, they watch the face a woman who has just mopped her floor.

It frustrates me that I can finish a job, but it's never "done." It makes laziness and procrastination such attractive and sensible lifestyle choices. I seem to do the same unpleasant jobs over and over, but they always reappear on next week's to-do list. That just seems wrong. Isn't Einstein credited with defining insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"? Look at him, the smug genius - I'll bet he never cleaned a toilet in his life.








Yet here I go, off to the grocery store, where I'll read nutrition labels, compare costs per ounce of hundreds of items, juggle coupons and a calculator, try to resist buying junk, crap and non-essential, experience a sphincter spasm when the dollar total flashes on the screen, then come home and try to find a place for all the crap I had to buy. Seems like I just did that last week!







Then I'll tackle some equally repetitive and unsatisfying tasks, like laundry, ironing and scrubbing the kitchen sink.  I hope you enjoyed my whining as much as I enjoyed the time I got to waste looking up Latin phrases and pictures of Einstein.  I guess this blog is my ultimate example of an unfinished task, because no matter what I say, or how redundant my ideas are, I never seem to run out of them.

Ten Commandments of a Failed Domestic Diva

Looking around at my house on this peaceful Sunday morning, I'm stunned that I would ever refer to myself as a Domestic Diva, even in jest. From the mushy comforts of my favorite chair, seated twenty feet from my kitchen, I can see piles of some sort of debris on the counter that may actually be bacterial colonies at this point.  My October calendar workpile is leaning precipitously toward sliding off the breakfast table and onto a sticky floor that is insulated with a heavy layer of dog fur. Since I can't work up the moral or hygenic indignation to do anything about this state of affairs, I feel the need to convert my laziness into a haphazard philosophy that can benefit others.  Draw near, Gentle Reader, and learn from my practical strategies and attitude of contentedness:

1.  When there are several unfinished projects taking up needed space around the house, go see a good movie.  (I saw "The Debt" yesterday, leaving behind a house full of cluttered horizontal surfaces.)  A quick procrastinatory dose of escapism makes the mundane seem more manageable.

2.  Never ask your spouse if they need help doing a job you desperately don't want to do.  Examples of this mistake generally involve the yard, basement and/or the garage.  If they ask you, plead "Weaker Sex" status or lack of certified training.  If all else fails, make a vague reference to your "cycle."  That should send them running to a male neighbor for help,

3. When carpet stains reappear, or you notice that a room needs touch-up painting, or your windows are too dirty to see out of, rearrange your furniture.  It takes several days for the novelty to wear off and for you to remember what you were trying to hide.  And once it's hidden, it may as well have disappeared.

4.  Do not waste time or energy trying to train dogs to stay off furniture, or stop barking at other dogs or jumping on people they like.  Find a professional and get a quote for the service.  Then laugh hysterically as you watch your spouse turn blue at the cost of the estimate.  If years of effort have failed, accept that both you and your dogs are stupid and/or lazy, and just give up.

5.  Feel free to leave things out on counters and tables to provide reminders (wink) or "visual cues" (wink wink), but don't pretend those cues hasten the speed those items get attended to and put away.

6.  Cook what you like to eat, and don't spend time trying to get people to eat healthy stuff they hate.  Like you, they'll just sneak the bad stuff the first chance they get.

7.  Corollary to #6:  Cleaning the kitchen after a meal no one liked is 10 times more unpleasant than cleaning a kitchen full of clean plates and empty pots and pans, and much more likely to involve profanity.

8.  Calling friends to talk about how much you dread all the jobs on your to-do list only magnifies the unpleasantness and delays the inevitable.  Try calling a friend to celebrate a completed task.  They'll resent you for it, but it makes more sense.  And write the annoying call on your to-do list so you can check it off too - a win/win!

9.  Basements, upstairs bedrooms and attics are out of sight of visitors for a reason.  Don't ruin it for the rest of us by keeping them clean for anyone but the most important, discerning guests, like your mother-in-law.

10.  If you want to decorate like Martha Stewart, cook like Rachel Ray or exercise like Jillan (what's her last name?), be my guest.  I admire your dedication to excellence.  At one time, I felt that way too, but visible evidence proves it was a fleeting aspiration.  I can finally admit that I like my hodge-podge furniture, slap-dash meals and leisurely strolls on my treadmill.

If you closely follow these Ten Commandments, as I have, you are clearly headed for Housework Hell, or some variation thereof.  However, you are welcome to help me think of a new, more suitable nickname for myself, since "Domestic Diva" has outlived its ironic usefulness.  Right now, I'm leaning toward "Malingering Matron" or "Contented Cow."

Pointless Dogs Raves and my First Contest!

It's a mess in here.  It reminds me of the days of raising small children.  Specifically, it reminds me of cleaning up after large groups of small children.  I thought I was done with post-playgroup horror.  You know that feeling  you get when you hosted playgroup, and everyone just left, and it's time to clean the room in which the little darlings were contained for two hours of play, snacks and socialization?

Well, today my downstairs looks as if a small army of 3 year-olds have been quartered here for a few hours.  Empty food bowls have been rolled from room to room.  There are pillows on the floor, surrounded by stuffed animals, rubber noisemakers and amorphous items that defy description.  Blankets have been unfolded and reshaped for better napping.  Magazine piles have been shifted from end tables to the floor, to facilitate perching at the window for stranger patrol.  What few attractive or valuable items we own are placed high in a bookshelf, to avoid breakage or chewing. 

But no toddlers live here.  Remind me again why I have dogs?

They staged a dog version of extreme wrestling this morning, and needed the contents of my mending pile to demonstrate their manliness, I guess.  I kept hoping one of them would take a knitting needle to the haunch and decide to go lick themselves for a while.  Alas, no puncture wounds.  Just an upended basket of mending strewn through three rooms.

I won't share pictures of the mess, although I'm sure you are wishing I would.  I'll just show you the vicious, blood-thirsty beasts, as evidenced by these post-fight photos I snapped:

It wouldn't be so bad if either of these mutts were the least bit useful.  Joey, the shih-tzu, does a decent imitation of a foot warmer, but he doesn't work on demand, just when the mood strikes him.  Grant, the spaniel mix, would really rather be a carnival hawker or some such.  He wants to make first contact with anyone who visits, and barks to passersby, human and dog alike, even if they are quite distant, trying to entice them to come sniff, wrestle and play chase with him.

Like our last 4 dogs, these two were rescue dogs, pedigree guessed at, taken as-is, no returns, no exchanges.  We could only guess at their skill-set, or lack thereof, and hope they'd be healthy and easy-going.   Well, if by easy-going, I meant they accepted my furniture as good enough for them, I suppose they met that minimum benchmark.  Healthy - yes, thank God, they've both been very healthy.

But some days I just wish they could do something practical.  My spray bottle of vinegar and Indiana Jones bullwhip are useless when trying to teach them how to put away their toys.  Or if they would dig where I need to plant bulbs, that would turn an unpleasant habit into a helpful one.  And since they are willing to eat almost anything, why can't I get them to lick up that little pile of debris that is left when I try to sweep the last bit of rubbish into the dustpan?  How hard would that be?

But I generally earn a blank stare when I try to communicate anything beyond "treat" or "squirrel!"  They usually rest or sleep through my workday, oblivious to all the labor-saving jobs they could be doing, if only they wanted to learn.  Like most dogs, a sure-fire way to get their attention is food preparation.  When I'm stirring a pot on the stovetop, or chopping at the cutting board, their expressions convey the most sincere desire to be of service, should anything fall and roll out of my reach (like a meatball).  But they show no desire to retrieve the out-of-reach wet socks that always seem to dot the floor when I'm transferring laundry.  Really, dogs, what's the difference?


No, these dogs don't help much with the chore list.  Although they do require their very own page in the to-do list:  feed, freshen water, walk, furnish toys, chews, dental treats, vitamins, heartworm and flea preventative, brush, clean up messes...I'm getting bored just typing this.  I gave up offering their, um, shall we say, leavings, to composting environmentalists, who would only need to come and collect it from my yard.  I'd even furnish the pooper-scooper, bucket and a beer to sweeten the deal.  Strangely, no takers.  But it's an open-ended offer, folks.


Since I cannot convert their waste to a cash crop, my next idea was their fur.  These two dogs shed an impossible amount of fur.  I sometimes wonder if they are running a doggie equivalent of an underground railroad in my house.  There must be other dogs hiding here, contributing to the fluff piles that blow from room to room.  I fancy that Joey, who seems like a heartless, territorial furball, is actually the leader of an altruistic pipeline operation that helps abused dogs reach some better destination.  Perhaps when Grant is at the front window, distracting me by barking at the sound of air molecules bumping into each other, Joey is escorting some poor, ungroomed yorkie-poo from a basement hideaway, out the back gate and into the care of the next escort dog.  Is that so far-fetched?

Because the quantity of hair that shows up in my dyson canister, almost daily, seems pretty far-fetched too.  A ten pound dog shouldn't be shedding 5 pounds of fur a week, right?  They'd eventually look like a naked mole rat, at that rate.  But that's exactly what I'm dealing with here.  And being a waste-not, want-not kind of girl, I would like to get some use out of this bumper crop of fur.  Surely, there must be an enterprising weaver, knitter or furrier who needs my extra supply.  There are doubtless needy children living on a tundra somewhere who'd be happy to own a parka filled (with love) by dog fur. Every time I throw away a bale of fur, I feel like such a wasteful non-recycler.


But repeated google searches turned up no one who wanted to buy my collection.  I was discussing this situation with my friend, who I will only refer to here as Merin Urphy, and she was in agreement that we pet owners should not have to work so hard to clean up after these animals, without some reward for the products yielded.  I assured her that, although she has also two dogs, and may be able to understand my predicament, I probably have much more fur to deal with than she does.  She contradicted me, which isn't very nice, so I politely suggested we compare our disgusting dustpans one day.  This unpleasant idea drove us to drink, and the challenge was temporarily forgotten.


But since I couldn't think of anything else to write about today, I'm going to take that challenge and turn it on it's ear.


(cue Frankie Avalon):  Hey, kids, let's have a dog fur contest!


Dog fur rolls around my house like tumbleweeds in Dodge City, so we're calling this the Dog Fur Tumbleweed Contest (Thanks to Merin for the inspirational title).  Since I've never held a contest before, and don't know how it's done, there are no rules beyond a request that you play fair.  Your dogs, their fur, your house, and no fair making the kids do all the work.


Take a picture of the largest furball you can assemble that will hold it's shape without excessive manipulation or the addition of super-glue, dryer lint, etc.  Here is a small sample from one corner in my house, just to give you something to aim for:

I know it's a pretty pitiful effort, but there could only be two reasons why my offering is so small: one, my house is spotless, or two, since it's my contest, I'm ineligible to enter, so I'm not willing to work that hard.  I'll leave you in suspense about which reason it is.  (And yes, that's my kitchen counter.  Don't judge me unless you never changed a diaper on yours...)

Finally, this bark-out is for all the Mollys and Baileys, plus Max, McDuff, Sawyer, Maggie, Ruby, Homer, Gus, Buddy, Peaches, Hank, Casey, Lizzy, and all the other dogs we know and love: Tell your owners to get busy and enter this contest!  I'm trying to go viral here!

Email your pictures to :  mma.friendfam@sbcglobal.net 

The winner will receive a genuine plastic case for displaying their treasure, a Certificate for Prodigious Time Wasted, and a big lick from Grant.

Unsung heroes

In everyday life there are many opportunities to give thanks for special people, fortuitous events and such.  We have traditional holidays, like Thanksgiving and Mothers Day, and Hallmark continues to crank out new "special days" every year.  These are (in my jaded opinion) just excuses to prompt us to buy cards and candy for people who need to feel special.  Why anyone would feel special receiving a mass-produced, pre-printed, unoriginal thought on cheap cardstock, signed, folded and delivered with candy made in some factory by machines that squirt out millions of identical chocolate cublets per day, I honestly don't know.  But I love receiving cards and candy, despite the fact that I know my reaction is a result of consumer conditioning and lifelong brainwashing.  Hmmm - I'll have to flesh out that thought in another entry.

So yes, we can give thanks to the people in our lives with very little cost and effort to ourselves.  But how, I ask, can we thank our inanimate objects that make daily life bearable?  Hallmark has greeting cards for dogs, for heaven's sake, so how about a thank you card for something really useful, like my dishwasher?  I mean, my dogs and my dishwasher display roughly the same level of literacy, and my dishwasher works much harder than my dogs and doesn't try to lick my face.  Doesn't it deserve a card?


As long as we are going to be "sheep to the slaughter" when it comes to buying greeting cards, I think Hallmark should look into marketing greeting cards for appliances and other labor-saving machines and devices.  In fact, I'll start by attempting a little poetry for my car:

 You always start in any temp,

 You never balk at weather.

 Target, Walmart, school and work,

 We go everywhere together.

 You don't care if I've got b.o.,

 Or if I'm feeling mean.

 I'll always try to treat you nice,

 And keep you lubed and clean.

Okay, so it's not Helen Steiner Rice, but I didn't have much time and I want to focus on other inanimate objects that I love. 

My favorite "unsung heroes" of the inanimate variety are well-known to my family and friends.  In fact, I've often said (because repeating yourself is much easier than coming up with original thoughts - just ask Hallmark), if the house was on fire, Eric and the kids are in charge of pets, photos and other mementos, because I'll have my Keurig under one arm and my other hand rolling out my dyson.


I probably shouldn't admit this, but when I wake up most mornings, my first thought isn't for the welfare of my husband or children.  It's not about what I have to do that day.  And unless I had a really good dream, I don't even think about my own night's sleep.  No, my first thought is generally about coffee.


And this gorgeous piece of equipment is my personal barista:

This is the Keurig B70 Platinum in dark red.  She'll brew a delicious, fresh cup of java in under a minute to your temperature and strength specifications.  As a person who recycles water bottles, washes ziplock bags and mends clothing, I consider this form of coffee brewing to be wasteful and decadent.  However, that's exactly why it makes such good coffee. When I score a deal on the k-cups, it costs about $0.35 per cup - expensive when compared to $0.20 for a whole pot of moderately priced ground coffee in a home drip system, but dirt cheap compared to Starbucks, or even 7-11.


This machine is my personal indulgence in luxury.  When my first one broke, I made it exactly one week on drip coffee, then I bought this beauty.  I will even go so far to say I didn't have one cup of coffee on the cruise ship that came close to the perfection this machine delivers approximately six times per day for me.  I know I could easily survive on cheap coffee from a cheap coffeemaker; I could even survive without coffee, period.  But it wouldn't be living.  My Keurig makes drinking coffee an event, or as my dear friend C. S. Lewis always referred to our debates over cigars and port, "a pleasant little occasion."


I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my Aunt Sissy and Uncle Dick set me on the road to this particular addiction.  Eric thanks you for that, I'm sure.  And for my many fans who are always asking if they can send me gifts instead of money, Tully's Kona Extra Bold (prominently displayed in the caddy next to the Keurig) is my favorite roast.


On a less serious note, I suppose it courts disbelief that someone who writes about her aversion to housework could wax romantic over a vacuum cleaner.  And if you've never used a dyson to vacuum the fur of two dogs from an extremely thick area rug, it makes sense that you'd doubt my seriousness.  But the fact is, I actually enjoy vacuuming with my dyson, and I vacuum much more frequently than I did when I used my old upright (though that's not saying much).




This baby handles like a dream - she hugs corners, reverses with ease, has a very tight turn radius, and gets an EPA-estimated 45 mpg.  Seriously, it's very low-maintenance and easy to clean, and tool-switching is a breeze.  I'm starting to feel self-conscious - if it's as great as all that, you ask, why is my house such a well-documented pigsty?  I've already covered that ground pretty thoroughly, so I'll just hypothesize that motivation and consistency play a role in helping the dyson perform to it's fullest capacity.  Like the infomercials say, individual results may vary.


But it is an excellent product, and I say that knowing that my endorsement of any cleaning appliance doesn't carry much weight with anyone.  I should add that both the dyson and the Keurig are rather expensive investments, and I was only able to justify splurging when I worked at Kohl's and had the triple advantage of early sale alerts, a coveted 30% off coupon, and an employee discount.  The rest of you need to figure out your own rationalizations.  I've done my best to arm you with the "emotional need," which studies show to be the primary trigger of major purchases.

I've always enjoyed trying to turn people on to my two favorite products.  When I worked at Kohl's I was constantly annoying people by singing the praises of Keurig and dyson appliances (usually to the tune of "Camptown Races").  And I hope you will share this blog with your friends, so that I can help boost sales of these wonderful products, and possibly get an endorsement deal or be asked to write a celebrity testimonial.  That would certainly make this housewife drudgery more bearable, and blogging a bit more profitable.

So be sure to hit "Share"!  Do it now!  Then run to Kohl's and get your own Keurig Coffeemaker of Happiness and dyson Vacuum Cleaner of Bliss.  (Celebrity endorsement not compensated - yet.)

Calm Observations that Give Me Pause

The original title of this post (as I was mentally composing it at 2.4 mph on the treadmill yesterday) was "Stupid stuff that makes me sad."   But then I got about the business of writing it, and I realized it falls short of that description on several levels.  At least two of these thoughts don't qualify as full-out stupid.  And only a couple of them make me sad on a conscious level.  And the word "stuff" will be my prosaic downfall, if I can't shake using that useful term, at least in print.  So these thoughts, which kept me up for most of the night, can't even be termed "polite ravings," for though they are, like me, unfailingly polite, they don't even rise to the level of ravings.  Was that my worst run-on sentence so far?  Probably not.

Join me as I share some of my brain clutter:

1.  I miss the Hubble telescope.  I know they will be releasing newly-developed pictures for years to come, but that's not the same as knowing that little guy is out there, snapping those achingly beautiful shots of the universe.  I guess it will be somersaulting toward infinity forever, and that thought gives me pause.

2.  I will never be a child prodigy.  At anything.  And I will never be a child again.  Weird.

3.  I've been on 6 cruises, I've enjoyed each one of them and feel very blessed.  Nevertheless, after each cruise, I always state that it will be my last, since it's not my preferred way to spend a week.  To think that thought makes me feel spoiled.

4.  Colin Firth doesn't know I exist. 

5.  I've been such a poor source of religious education for my children, my younger daughter referred to Black Friday as the event two days before Easter.

6.  I still dream of my friend who committed suicide 16 years ago at least once per week.

7.  The people who don't know the difference between there, their and they're also do not care.  Bringing that fact to their attention changes nothing.

8.  My hipbones will never grow any closer together.

9.  The firming effects of my eyelid glue are lessened with each full-face smile or laugh, and won't last through the average evening on the town.  Money down the drain.

10.  No matter what they say, some friends and family will probably never come to visit.

11.  I have delayed in picking up a sick child from the school nurse's office because I stopped on the way for a DQ Blizzard.

12.  There is not one piece of furniture in my house on which I have not fallen asleep.

13.  I am allergic to cats, if I wasn't I would pretend to be, and there is nothing my children can do about that.

14.  I cannot direct my memory loss to specific memories.  It's impossible to completely wipe a few choice moments of embarrassment and humiliation from memory. 

15.  No matter how sleep-disturbing my thoughts, or cerebral my musings, there will always be enough housework and laundry to dumb-down my intellectual ambitions.

And needless to say, fifteen of anything is quite enough.

~M

In which I illustrate why I'm not blogging

Some blogs are brief and make high impact with few words and meaningful pictures.  Usually, my blogs are the opposite.  I'm a lousy photographer and I am wordy as hell, so a brief blog is a rare treat from me.

However, I thought I'd briefly share some photos to illustrate just how badly I've let my projects get out of hand.  That gives me an excuse to blog, which I need to do for my mental well-being, without taking too much time away from my aforementioned tasks.

 The first project is time sensitive.  A few friends and I are sewing stockings for a local charity that has a Christmas Shoppe (to be held later this week) for people in financial straits every year.  The mission will stuff the stockings; all we are doing is sewing.  But since I'm only a mediocre seamstress whose seams wouldn't pass inspection at the School for the Blind, this is a tall order for me:

This is the stack of 25 or so completed stockings.  I did not try to make them photogenic...this is just the finished pile.  Now have a look at the pile to be finished, ahem, today, if possible:

The photo makes it difficult to appreciate the size of this pile, but there may be somewhere on the order of 125 stockings, to be pinned and sewn.  It's sad to be a person who doesn't know their own limits (all together now:  "Poor Michele.")  And just to make sure that the psychological torture gets handed down to the next generation, have a look at Christmas Craft Central, formerly the dining room, where the girls and I are making some lovely gifts that will likely garner admiration for the remainder of 2010, until they end up in a drawer:

 

When you see all of this, you may think, "Well, she's finished with her shopping and wrapping and decorating, so why not do homemade crafts and sew for the less fortunate?"  But you would be dead wrong to think this.  Here is our tree:

Pretty, of course, but quite bare at the moment.  Gotta get on that.


Here are the Christmas presents I've bought:

hiding in the corner of my bedroom, unwrapped.  There are a few more scattered about, but I have a long way to go to be done with presents.


Then we have the Thanksgiving decorations that haven't managed to get put away.  They are waiting for the arrival of the empty Rubbermaid tubs, which I cannot find in all this mess!  I would have taken pictures of the boxes of Christmas decorations, but they are in the attic and that's just too much like work, so just use your imagination.

Would it surprise you to know that I've offered to host not one, but two, parties in this delightful mess of a house in the coming weeks?  Clearly, I need intense therapy.  Or a personal assistant.

I've rested my eyes long enough.  I've got to get back to the sewing machine and the messiest Christmas stockings ever.  Whichever misguided person originally espoused the idea that "homemade is better" should proceed directly to my house for some "ho-ho-hos" of rather uncharitable mirth - my craftiness is so bad, it's funny.  Then I will shoot that person, and blog about it from jail.


And to top it off, I still wasn't brief, was I?

Today's Rants: My (Long) Short List

Since this is destined to be one of my busiest days in a life full of impossibly busy days, I thought I'd take a break first and clear my head with more coffee while I type out a brain dump.  I have a lot on my mind today.

I'm disturbed that I'm not more motivated to decorate for Christmas.  My neighborhood is already a twinkly feast for the eyes.  My front door looks so stark and fallish, with my pitiful turning-leaves wreath that I just put up last week.  I'm sticking to my guns, though, and waiting until sometime next week to fold to the peer pressure and drag out the red and green.


I'm concerned that my heretofore roomy jeans have become very snug.  It's clearly a problem with my outdated laundry appliances.  My washer opens from the top, for Pete's sake!  Plus I've been told there is a connection between old dryers and sudden shrinkage.  I'd better not complain too loudly, or I may get appliances instead of diamonds and spa treatments for Christmas. 


I'm bothered by the fact that, despite my sincerest intentions, there are still random unfinished projects scattered all over the house.  Since Eric's been gone the last two nights, I thought it only sensible to drag a few piles and boxes of stuff into the family room (and dining room) (and living room), so that I'd have the necessary visual cues to help me remember to work on them.  So far I've started five projects and completed one, which leaves three untouched.  Even I must admit the "visual cues" system is not working anymore.  The lure of online Christmas shopping, the occasional Scramble challenge and therapeutic blogging means I'm spending most of my time with my back to the piles and boxes.  Clearly it is time to hire a personal assistant.


I'm relieved that the House Republicans are finally earning their reputation of logjammers who say "NO!"  Hey, Congress: get the current tax rates extended, deal with the question of unemployment benefits and insist on tabling all but the most critical spending bills until the new congress convenes.  Our currency is nearing collapse, inflation in consumer goods is getting downright scary and I can't find one single piece of news that points to stabilization.  So forget about a new, improved START treaty, "don't ask, don't tell," and the 2012 elections for the moment.  Congress, do your @^#$%*& job!


Okay, I'm feeling much better now.  And I'm about to take my very own excellent advice and do my jobs here at home.  Because I'm once again putting a moratorium on further blogging until I complete these tasks - the critical ones, at least.  And I'm working on a timely and meaningful holiday blog about how to tell the difference between small electronic devices without showing my ignorance.  It will be helpful to anyone out there who, like me, has tried to answer a phonecall on the remote.


See y'all when the piles are gone.

Blogging for my Digestive Health

Up until a few days ago, I was blogging endlessly about chores I couldn't seem to get done because of the demands of being a newbie blogger with 2 followers and almost 10 daily page views (on average).  I was taking blogging as seriously as church while letting cobwebs grow in my kitchen sink.  Re-reading a few of my entries, I realized I was going to run out of interesting things to say about my messy house, and grounded myself from blogging until I finished the oft-mentioned chores.

I developed a case of blog constipation as I tried to focus on completing a few long-overdue projects the last couple of days. Since I'd banished myself from blogging until the cursed jobs were done, I had to content myself with furious note taking in draft form - no publishing until I was done!  Well, I'm happy to say the glassware has been packed, antiques auctioned off, outerwear is in the coat closet, all the bird feeders have been emptied, cleaned and refilled, the yard tidied, the ironing is done for another six months and I'm free to get a case blog diarrhea as I unleash a fresh barrage of polite ravings.

I'm trying to improve this blogging effort, but I obviously need some guidance.  I had a terrific meeting this morning with a friend who is a veteran blogger, web designer, online palm reader, and inventor of HTML (also, she had ONE date with Al Gore, and then he dreamed up the Internet.  Coincidence?)  So she's all that, digitally speaking.  This lady is also the person who told me about Blogger (easy enough for even me) and encouraged me to just sit down and and write and worry about how to turn it into a blog after I started writing.  My friend is so tech-savvy and answered my endless questions about the mysteries of the blogosphere and how to pick up a reader here and there.  I expect to make numerous mistakes trying out some of her suggestions, and will undoubtedly embarrass myself trying to employ some of the tech "info & lingo" she tried to explain. Bear with me.

 
Colin isn't going anywhere, so don't even mention that idea.  I'm considering letting my other boyfriends (Clive Owen, Gerard Butler and Sean Connery) have their picture under mine occasionally.  Stylistically, this is the only sacred space on the page. Feel free to offer suggestions; even criticism is welcome if it's sugarcoated and couched in lots of ego-stroking.

My husband is delayed on the return leg of his trip, and won't get home until late tonight.  The silver lining is the nice voucher the airline gave him for his trouble - and I get to use it!  While I wait up for him I'm going to work on cleaning up some blog drafts about a variety of subjects that have inspired me in recent weeks.  I may end up publishing lots of disjointed blather until he gets safely home.  'Cause I'm definitely finished with housework for the foreseeable future!

Domestic Diva or Defeated Dingbat?

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, I should have arrived there weeks ago.  I've been planning, strategizing and preparing to get some major household projects completed for quite a while.  I have come up with excuses for today's lack of progress that go back weeks in history, but the truth is, I've made almost no headway on any projects in or around my house.

Years ago I was in a club for stay-at-home mothers.  It was the support system I needed, raising small children with no family nearby.  One of the women from that club became a very dear friend, and we talked on the phone daily, while we cleaned the kitchen after breakfast, and worked on the first load of laundry of the day.  We always got to hear PBSKids programming in stereo, since both sets of children watched the same morning shows.  We tried to be both motivator and sympathizer for each other, which wasn't always possible.

I'll never forget the day she coined a phrase that made my blood run cold.  "Michele," she said, "I am defeated by my house."  And I knew in an instant what that meant.  For this lady was a very meticulous housekeeper, a germphobe, a person who enjoyed cleaning out closets and organizing junk drawers.  I called her a toothbrush cleaner - no job too small.  The main areas of her house always looked very nice to me - clean and tidy.  But somehow, the parts I never saw got the best of her, and one day it all became too much one day and she decided to let the house win.


The concept disturbed me so because, up until that time, I'd always assumed that at some point I'd get into the "maintenance mode," and from that time on I'd just stay on top of things.  From my perspective, my friend appeared to be in maintenance mode, just whipping out her toothbrush to freshen up the grout because she was bored and her kids monopolized the TV.  I didn't realize that her to-do list was as long as mine, and she never got to any of her "real" projects because laundry, dishes, cooking, vacuuming, shopping, bill-paying, mending, chauffeuring and being an irresistible sexpot after 9pm does consume every waking hour of every day for many years (although the sexpot part is the first job to get sacrificed).

That day, I realized that the maintenance mode doesn't exist.  It is a mythical place, like Atlantis; no one ever gets there, and those who say they've been there are assumed to be insane.  And if it was possible for my friend to be defeated by her house, maybe one day it would happen to me.  Maybe one day I'd look around and say, "Okay, house, you win.  I give up, because I can't beat you."  But with the innocence and optimism that has never characterized any of my thoughts or actions, I mused:  "That will never happen to me.  I'll never let a stupid messy house beat me.  I'll always try to keep things presentable."


Well, today the house won a decisive match.  The longer I looked at stuff, the more it mocked me.  I tried the clipboard approach, walking from room to room, making notes and prioritizing jobs, which generally revs my motivation.  All that came from that effort was 1) I felt crunching in my carpet, which is never good; and 2) I think I own the world-champion dog hair tumbleweed...I can't wait to put that monster on the postal scale. 


So the boxes and newspaper still crowd the living room.  Hundreds of pieces of glassware, china, lamps, bric-a-brac and crap that need to be re-wrapped and re-boxed still cover 95% of the floor space (read: walking area) of the room.  I guess it won't mind waiting one more day for me to get the job done.  I guess I'll eventually run out of excuses - or will I?  I guess the fact that I'm hosting bunco on Thursday means that I have to quit blogging about being defeated and start actually fighting in this war!


No more blogs until the glassware is safely in the attic!  Goodbye, world!

 

Domestic Diva back from the Dead

It's no secret I'm not much of a housekeeper.  In fact, as one person living here once observed, the more I'm at home, the less I get done.  For example, (s/he said), when I worked at Kohl's or in the schools, I had a tighter schedule and forced myself to get things done in the limited free time I had.  The unnamed espouser of that bit of wisdom did penance on the couch for his/her comments - please don't state the obvious to someone who has just cleaned "your" toilet.

So no, I'm not someone who automatically thinks: "What can I clean today?" when met with a few minutes or hours to spare.  And I've always felt a little guilty about how my standards have slipped in recent years.  But waking up after a mere two days with a stomach bug, I realize that I am far and away the top-dog, blue-ribbon, gold-medal, first-place house cleaner in my family.

I'm not suggesting that my working husband and schoolkids should keep up with the laundry or clean the bathrooms in 2 short days.  That's a bit much to ask.  But,as any housewife can tell you, 2 days of neglected laundry takes 6 days to catch up - simple household math.  And I got a up-close-and-personal look at the toilets, so I know at least one would have passed inspection before "the illness."

But the kitchen, the heart of the home, a relatively small area where the family spends lots of time in the morning and evening - wouldn't that be easy to take care of?  After two mornings of frozen waffles and two nights of leftovers and canned goods, the kitchen should be pretty tidy, right?  No such luck.  It looks like Emeril was in here throwing around ingredients and going "bam" with shredded cheese and bacon bits (added to all foods served in the Arnett house.)  There seems to be a tacit understanding that, if you just use something to swipe visible stuff off the counter, you have just "cleaned the kitchen."  It matters not if that something was a dry sponge or a slightly used dinner napkin; if it got the stuff to the floor where the dogs can deal with it, the kitchen is officially clean.

And the floor, my nemesis, the floor.  Sample findings in a 6' x 6' area in my breakfast room: black dog hair, white dog hair, long brown hair, short grey hair, cooked rice, kibbles, bits, grass clippings, beads, a Smartie, leaves (whole and shredded), dryer lint glob, penny, fern frond, 0.7mm pencil lead, various crumbs, a felt chair slider and carpet fuzz.  Appetizing, no?  Who wants to come eat at my house?

I won't even mention half-empty cups on side tables, granola paper at the computer, shoes under the recliner, unfed fish.  Oops, I just did.  

Not that it was much better 3 days ago, but since I sweep or Swiffer most days, at least the filth was the invisible kind.  So I am doing today what I do most days when there's work to be done - I'm complaining about it via computer.  After all, I've been sick.  I shouldn't overdo it my first day standing.

If my family reads this blog, they may feel compelled to point out a few slight exaggerations on my part.  In fact, probably the only thing that would ever make them comment on one of my blogs would be to refute this tirade and list my own crummy, long-term messes.  In fairness, they took care of themselves and left me to moan and hallucinate in peace.  Eric did all the taxi duty so the girls didn't have to miss meetings or lessons.  And no one who knows us would see much difference around here - unless they stand just so and look at the greasy streaks on the granite - but who would do that?  There's one presentable room downstairs for drop-in company, so I guess that's something to cling to.

For now, I have to attend to my unwashed self.  Because once I've showered, I won't want to sully my cleanliness with housework - perhaps just errands and lunch.  I feel the need to reward myself for being the best housecleaner in this family, even when I'm sick. 

Domestic Diva Revisited

When we last saw our heroine, she had just taken a break from a major upstairs cleaning project to indulge in a little celebratory blogging.  Self-congratulation was followed by self-deprecation, which was followed by requests for self-motivation.  Let's check in with her now to see how her projects turned out and what new challenges she is tackling today:

Devoted Reader:  Hello there.  How is it going today?


Michele: Great, but I'm very busy.  What do you need?


DR:  Well, we were just wondering about all those hours of cleaning and organizing upstairs.  Did everything turn out the way you hoped it would?


M:  Huh?


DR:  Your daughters' bedrooms...you spent hours one day recently working on getting them clean, organized, throwing out junk, making space for new junk, swapping summer clothes for fall, stuff like that. 


M:  I did?  


DR:  Yes, and you wrote about it during a brief break in your labors.  Your blog called "Halfway There" talked about all your hard work and the great plans you had for finishing the job.


M:  I wrote about that?  That was pretty stupid.


DR:  Why?


M:  Because I never did finish the job.  Daughter #1's room is just like I left it - empty bookshelves, piles that need to be sorted, boxes and bins of stuff I sorted but she needs to find a place for.  Of course, she's added a week's worth of dirty clothes and another pile of sketches that we can never part with, but otherwise it looks just like it did when I took a break that day.  

DR:  What happened?

M:  I'm not really sure.  I think I got distracted.

DR:  For a week?  Did you at least finish in Daughter #2's room? 

M:  Daughter #2 finished what I started by putting everything that was sitting out into any drawer with space.  Pencils went in the sock drawer, spare retainer cases in the jewelry box, books under the dresser, lip gloss in the pencil drawer, clean laundry on top of the 3" pile of unframed  pictures and certificates on the desk.  But she can walk around in there now.


DR:  But you had such good intentions!  You were so motivated!   You seemed committed to getting those rooms done, once and for all.  You even did some embarrassingly public soul-searching and admitted that avoidance was your strategy, because you said you cannot look at an unfinished job and leave it undone.


M:  Hmmm...well, I lied.  Ninety-five percent space in my home is devoted to unfinished jobs; the other 5% is taken up by people and dogs.  Come on, if I told the truth about my housekeeping philosophy, not only would it not be funny, no one would want to read about it.  It makes a better blog if I pretend to care about my "job," but am prevented from achieving my noble goals by "unforeseen emergencies."* I prefer to be thought of as a tragic heroine of housework, tirelessly working for the good of others while hoping for that rare moment of self-indulgence with a fat-free, no-sugar-added mocha latte.


DR:  If that's all it would take to help you finish your project and feel good about yourself, I'll bring you that mocha latte.


M:  Don't bother.  Coffee without sweetener and milkfat reeks of communism.  If you gave it to me I'd be compelled to call you "Comrade Reader."  I was referring to those calm-looking women who drink General Foods International Coffee and watch Colin Firth movies while soaking in a jetted tub full of Calgon bubbles. 

DR:  But after you finish a project, that's when you indulge in a "Colin coffee/bath." 

M:  You don't get it!  Obviously I don't need more pampering - I need negative consequences for my inaction. But as the High Priestess of the Household, there's no one to deliver that punishment.  Besides, there is nothing you can say that I can't turn into an excuse not to get things done.  It's called "rationalizing," root word "rational," therefore it is a good thing.  It's my special gift.


DR:  So how much longer are you going to sit at the computer, putting off the projects you were so passionately devoted to last week?


M:  At least until you go away and quit bothering me, so I can concentrate on writing a new blog.


DR:  Goodbye.




*shameless plug for my blog entitled "Ironic sarcasm and other repetitive redundancies."

Halfway there

Yesterday I worked my fanny off in the upstairs bedrooms.  I can say in all honesty that it has been months - plural months -  (technically anywhere from two - infinity) since I have done anything in their rooms beyond screaming at the top of my lungs that they are unacceptably disgusting.  But because I'm only as mean as my short-term memory allows me to be, I forget to ground them until it is clean, and I forget to check under the bed and in the back of the closet for the source of the mysteriously tidy surfaces, etc.  So I donned my hazmat suit, grabbed some storage containers and a 55-gallon drum for trash, and headed up early yesterday morning.

Someone like me shouldn't live in a two-story house.  I subscribe to the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" philosophy of housework, so bedtime is often the only time I'm faced with the horror of my neglect.  As long as no one (except my family, who doesn't count) knows that there are actually small microbes singing and dancing in my tub, and they aren't scrubbing bubbles, I can maintain the polite fiction that only my downstairs is in need of attention.  And I "topclean" the downstairs on a fairly regular basis, only resorting to heavy housework (windows, baseboards) if I'm expecting my mother or Colin Firth for a visit.  I love a clean house, I just don't like being the one who cleans it.

Anyway, I made tremendous progress ridding the girls of some of their crap, junque, garbage and trash.  They went to bed with compliments for my efforts and promises to try to keep it looking better.  Then today arrives, and I have to go finish what I started...oops...now we run into another thing I'm not good at:  project completion.  A brisk morning walk, another cup of coffee, and unexpected long phone call, a loose dog who had to be returned to a neighbor, suddenly it's noon and my motivation has disappeared.  I know it is upstairs, my motivation, that is.  If I just walk up there and see the piles, boxes, bins, shelves, all waiting for me to complete the "good intention" part of the equation, my motivation will kick in.  If I see something that needs doing, invariably I do it.  Which is obviously why I am sitting downstairs blogging, where I can safely pretend that the semi-clean upstairs is just a dream.

Well, since I know a couple of people are nodding their heads, wagering I'll take a nap or check my ebay watch list before I ever go upstairs, I think I'll just shag my fat fanny up there right now.  It's a chance to accomplish two worthy goals:  clean rooms that I can hold over my daughters' heads in martyr fashion; and  complete a project that I can scratch off my list.  Plus, if I finish that, I can mow the lawn as an anniversary gift for my  husband.  Obviously, I don't need to be appreciated, I just want everyone to know how hard I work.  At least half the time.