Posted from 08/04
Well, let's catch up. It's been a
while. Something I haven't talked about that is a major component in
my life is the death of my grandmother. She died June 30th
and it's difficult to explain what it means to me. To explain what
she meant to me is easy. A childish clarity in circumstances. I loved
and continue to love my grandmother. What our relationship means to
the rest of that side of the family is what seems to be so
complicated. It isn't necessary to go into the ins and outs, we don't
need to air any laundry, dirty or not. What I can say is that I did
not expect to be able to receive anything of my grandmother's. I had
hoped for an apron she used to wear when she would take care of me
and felt that even that may be a long shot. Shockingly, I have
inherited her piano. Her PIANO. (And the apron!)
What does any of this have to do with a
domestic adventure?
My aunt wanted the piano out of the
house. Like yesterday.
My living room is trashed. I had about a day's notice to make room. Making room means a pretty deep clean. Now I don't mean having to shampoo the carpet, we aren't filthy people like that. That does mean however that I can't just “move the armchair”. I have to dig out the area I'm moving the chair, dig out the front of the chair, move the chair, then clean out the nest that has developed around it. When you both have been working to exhaustion, there is no keeping areas like that clean. A tag pulled off a shirt, a spoon that fell, cat fur, etc falls down around the area, you leave it because it isn't something that rots, they aren't things that make your house smell. We are fairly self conscious about not letting things rot in our house. So it's garbage, knickknacks, and bobbles we never found homes for. The odd cat toy hiding places develop in areas like this. I knocked it out. My sudden panic at having to have a place ready THAT DAY lit a fire under my ass like none other. I killed it in an hour. While moving a chair, an end table and a chord organ (not inherited, bought for the cost of $15 at a junk shop) should have been the work of about 10 minutes for people that have been able to keep up with their house, an hour for me in the mess we've created is damn impressive! I may have emptied my vacuum a few times.
On a side note, while my vacuum is 50x better than the previous vacuum I owned, it is a bagless variety designed for pet homes and is a terrible design. Suction? Great! Brushes? Wonderful. Capacity and easy of emptying the collection unit? Absolute garbage. Because of the fur that collects, I have to reach into the thing and dig it out with my fingers. If you've ever cut open a vacuum bag, imagine sticking your hand around in that and allow a lot of it to sprinkle on your arms, legs, and puff into your face.
Get it together vacuum companies.
My living room is trashed. I had about a day's notice to make room. Making room means a pretty deep clean. Now I don't mean having to shampoo the carpet, we aren't filthy people like that. That does mean however that I can't just “move the armchair”. I have to dig out the area I'm moving the chair, dig out the front of the chair, move the chair, then clean out the nest that has developed around it. When you both have been working to exhaustion, there is no keeping areas like that clean. A tag pulled off a shirt, a spoon that fell, cat fur, etc falls down around the area, you leave it because it isn't something that rots, they aren't things that make your house smell. We are fairly self conscious about not letting things rot in our house. So it's garbage, knickknacks, and bobbles we never found homes for. The odd cat toy hiding places develop in areas like this. I knocked it out. My sudden panic at having to have a place ready THAT DAY lit a fire under my ass like none other. I killed it in an hour. While moving a chair, an end table and a chord organ (not inherited, bought for the cost of $15 at a junk shop) should have been the work of about 10 minutes for people that have been able to keep up with their house, an hour for me in the mess we've created is damn impressive! I may have emptied my vacuum a few times.
On a side note, while my vacuum is 50x better than the previous vacuum I owned, it is a bagless variety designed for pet homes and is a terrible design. Suction? Great! Brushes? Wonderful. Capacity and easy of emptying the collection unit? Absolute garbage. Because of the fur that collects, I have to reach into the thing and dig it out with my fingers. If you've ever cut open a vacuum bag, imagine sticking your hand around in that and allow a lot of it to sprinkle on your arms, legs, and puff into your face.
Get it together vacuum companies.
So my house has dramatically improved.
The living room isn't even near completion but at least half has been
cleaned and vacuumed. We are already enjoying the emotional boost of
having a cleaner space and Tony has taken an interest in learning
piano. Being able to sit down and practice for 20 minutes and then
spending further quality time with Tony when he'd like a lesson is an
incredible feeling and I hope my grandmother knows how much joy her
piano has brought us. Our girls feel a bit differently but of course
they are cats, so who knows what they really think. I know that
Lorraine was mildly curious until she stepped on a low note and
scared herself. That was supervised. We don't leave the keyboard
open when the piano is not in use. Bubbles on the other hand has
decided that she is a piano cat. She sleeps on the bench, she sits on
top when I play, and occasionally attempts to play while I play. I
cannot express how much joy that brings me. Bubbles is in my lap now
as I type.
Before I move on to a new meal I made I'd like to address something in regards to being a stay at home anything. In my particular case I already have a case of anxiety and depression which I am medicated for. Remaining at home can be a very depressing challenge. You frequently only see your significant other for days at a time and the same work every day looks at you in the face. There is no delegating to a coworker, although of course it is perfectly okay to ask your S/O for help, the work WILL pile up and it will pile up quickly. If you don't do your work, your health and the health of your family can suffer. From my personal experience in the last 2 short weeks has been the difficulty of keeping up on what I already finished while continuing to improve new areas. You can scrub the bathtub and shower (which I did) but it'll need regular upkeep to prevent that kind of mind and body numbing scrub job. The thing is, when you may be battling depression, the daily challenge is not giving in to just doing nothing. You can sleep in, so you do, but then nothing improves and then it's 3 days later and there aren't any clean forks in the whole house. The mess you let build is depressing to you so sleep in some more. Breaking the cycle and willingly saying “I WILL do better!” is huge. Some days you accomplish that large or challenging task and you feel great, and then there are days where you look at the same damn dishes you JUST washed and want to take a bath and read a book. Balance I suppose.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is while I myself have not thought that staying home has ever been an easy job, too many think it's Peggy Bundy sitting on the couch eating bon bons and spending Al's money. I have a sliver of insight now and I wanted to share that.
But can we all also note that while Peggy Bundy was lazy AF, that house was a whole hell of a lot cleaner than my home. Oh the magic of television.
As I type, I'm running my dishwasher and my dryer. Multitasking, people. Multitasking. In this case it's easy as I'm using machines, but I frequently pick one thing up only to get sidelined about 5 other times. Turning in literal circles has been known to happen. My hope is that when (if?) I get my house to a level of cleanliness that makes us happy, I wouldn't be so distracted, that maybe upkeep will be easier. Maybe making meals will become regular and less special. I want my meals to not be a special occasion or a surprise.
What has been nice on the meal front is that fact that my garden usually does fairly well. I had to put a lot of effort into making the left behind 4 garden boxes on my rented property usable as the people that installed them had no idea about soil content. They lucked out on a couple plants, but for the amount they planted, their harvest was terrible. I have since augmented the boxes and properly tilled them and my plants are thriving. Thriving despite the fact that I don't really weed. I am however, going to need to rescue my potatoes from getting choked out. I have harvested more green beans and sugar snap peas than we can eat and am going to have to either freeze them or can them. I have a pile of Roma tomatoes that I plan to process into Passata (a nice tomato sauce base that freezes well), sunflowers that I'll be drying for the birds for winter, heirloom carrots that I've been able harvest half of already filling a moderate sized tupperware container, an eggplant that has a 6 inch beauty and 3 other started on it, 4 different kinds of pepper plants, one singular plant of which that will be producing 3 big beautiful peppers by itself, a cucumber plant with a HUGE cucumber that I have no idea what I'll do with, purple potatoes that are looking promising, and 2 zucchini plants flowering beautifully. I have a garden box by itself that I let go this year and the cherry tomatoes that my neighbor planted there last season reseeded themselves. HARD. That box is solid cherry tomatoes and they'll start turning from green quite soon!
I am a picky eater, so making food for Tony is both horridly disgusting for me and incredibly rewarding. So when I surprised him with a meal of tacos (completed with chopped tomatoes from our garden) he was thrilled! Making tacos isn't particularly difficult, but it was the first time I'd ever bothered. They went well.
I also ended up making him enchiladas later in the week. I used a Recipe from the Campbell's website. I looked for something without ingredients I wasn't comfortable using. Turns out it was the right recipe because Tony ate 3/4ths of the pan in one day, and the only thing stopping him from eating all of it was that my mother requested a taste. My mother has always wanted to make enchiladas but no one in my family except her will eat them. My mother loved it and my father was intrigued enough to steal some of hers. The bottom line is that I now have to hand over a recipe to my mother, which is truly shocking, and more shocking that my father has decided he really likes enchiladas. They were topped again with tomatoes from our garden. Adventure success.
Before I move on to a new meal I made I'd like to address something in regards to being a stay at home anything. In my particular case I already have a case of anxiety and depression which I am medicated for. Remaining at home can be a very depressing challenge. You frequently only see your significant other for days at a time and the same work every day looks at you in the face. There is no delegating to a coworker, although of course it is perfectly okay to ask your S/O for help, the work WILL pile up and it will pile up quickly. If you don't do your work, your health and the health of your family can suffer. From my personal experience in the last 2 short weeks has been the difficulty of keeping up on what I already finished while continuing to improve new areas. You can scrub the bathtub and shower (which I did) but it'll need regular upkeep to prevent that kind of mind and body numbing scrub job. The thing is, when you may be battling depression, the daily challenge is not giving in to just doing nothing. You can sleep in, so you do, but then nothing improves and then it's 3 days later and there aren't any clean forks in the whole house. The mess you let build is depressing to you so sleep in some more. Breaking the cycle and willingly saying “I WILL do better!” is huge. Some days you accomplish that large or challenging task and you feel great, and then there are days where you look at the same damn dishes you JUST washed and want to take a bath and read a book. Balance I suppose.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is while I myself have not thought that staying home has ever been an easy job, too many think it's Peggy Bundy sitting on the couch eating bon bons and spending Al's money. I have a sliver of insight now and I wanted to share that.
But can we all also note that while Peggy Bundy was lazy AF, that house was a whole hell of a lot cleaner than my home. Oh the magic of television.
As I type, I'm running my dishwasher and my dryer. Multitasking, people. Multitasking. In this case it's easy as I'm using machines, but I frequently pick one thing up only to get sidelined about 5 other times. Turning in literal circles has been known to happen. My hope is that when (if?) I get my house to a level of cleanliness that makes us happy, I wouldn't be so distracted, that maybe upkeep will be easier. Maybe making meals will become regular and less special. I want my meals to not be a special occasion or a surprise.
What has been nice on the meal front is that fact that my garden usually does fairly well. I had to put a lot of effort into making the left behind 4 garden boxes on my rented property usable as the people that installed them had no idea about soil content. They lucked out on a couple plants, but for the amount they planted, their harvest was terrible. I have since augmented the boxes and properly tilled them and my plants are thriving. Thriving despite the fact that I don't really weed. I am however, going to need to rescue my potatoes from getting choked out. I have harvested more green beans and sugar snap peas than we can eat and am going to have to either freeze them or can them. I have a pile of Roma tomatoes that I plan to process into Passata (a nice tomato sauce base that freezes well), sunflowers that I'll be drying for the birds for winter, heirloom carrots that I've been able harvest half of already filling a moderate sized tupperware container, an eggplant that has a 6 inch beauty and 3 other started on it, 4 different kinds of pepper plants, one singular plant of which that will be producing 3 big beautiful peppers by itself, a cucumber plant with a HUGE cucumber that I have no idea what I'll do with, purple potatoes that are looking promising, and 2 zucchini plants flowering beautifully. I have a garden box by itself that I let go this year and the cherry tomatoes that my neighbor planted there last season reseeded themselves. HARD. That box is solid cherry tomatoes and they'll start turning from green quite soon!
I am a picky eater, so making food for Tony is both horridly disgusting for me and incredibly rewarding. So when I surprised him with a meal of tacos (completed with chopped tomatoes from our garden) he was thrilled! Making tacos isn't particularly difficult, but it was the first time I'd ever bothered. They went well.
I also ended up making him enchiladas later in the week. I used a Recipe from the Campbell's website. I looked for something without ingredients I wasn't comfortable using. Turns out it was the right recipe because Tony ate 3/4ths of the pan in one day, and the only thing stopping him from eating all of it was that my mother requested a taste. My mother has always wanted to make enchiladas but no one in my family except her will eat them. My mother loved it and my father was intrigued enough to steal some of hers. The bottom line is that I now have to hand over a recipe to my mother, which is truly shocking, and more shocking that my father has decided he really likes enchiladas. They were topped again with tomatoes from our garden. Adventure success.
Nothing
like draining nearly 2 weeks of info into a post. Ahhhhhh. Mind you
can be still.
Wow! That does look delicious!
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