Bless this mess

Since I seem to like airing a certain amount of dirty laundry online, I thought I'd share with you what my house looks like after three days of single-parenting (the Mister is on a very bromantic hiking trip until 5PM today).

I used to get so irritated at my mother's poor housecleaning when I was a kid. I would mop the kitchen floor and wipe down the oven doors just to satisfy my own standards of clean (oddly, laundry didn't concern me and instead of washing my clothes, I took to dousing them in Jean Nate and going to school smelling like a molding citrus).

But now I have a little more sympathy. In order to keep this place clean, cleaning is literally ALL I would be able to do. And frankly, washing the sippy cups, and cleaning up the wooden train parts, and folding the laundry, and vacuuming up the sand, and sweeping the crumbs, and putting the books away gets old real fast.

So, here you go, a before and after. Boy, will I be happy to see the Mister (and not just for his superior dish washing skills).

The house as it is normally (or a little better than usual)

living room

Our bedroom

The bathroom

The house after three days of going it alone.

The living room

living room (with diapers)

Our bedroom (Maggie peed on the sheets 48 hours ago and I haven't changed them yet)

The bathroom (why pick up the bath toys

when you're just going to get them all out again tomorrow?

The hall (sadly, you cannot see the grime on the rug)

The kitchen (this is looking pretty good, actually.

I recycled the paper and put the oatmeal bowls in the sink)

I don’t mean to whine, but IKEA only serves Pepsi

I’ve been kind of down in the dumps lately (I know, just what people want to read about after a long day in the trenches, but bear with me).  It’s hard to explain why, but it has to do with some curdling mix of trying to write a novel, and reading Mountains Beyond Mountains and feeling as though doing anything that is not in the service of others is shallow and meaningless.  There are so many people out there who are fucked unto the Lord, as Anne Lamott would say, and here I am trying to write amusing sentences about a twelve-year-old girl.  And, like, who needs me when the world has Michael Chabon and Lorrie Moore and Richard Yates?  

Mixed in to this existential crisis is the fact that my kids have learned the word “hate,” and the little scraps of patience I was sometimes able to muster have mutinied and fled. Then there’s my inability to be skinny, and my irritation with myself for still believing, after all the evidence to the contrary, that skinniness equals happiness. 

Furthermore, it looks as though my trip to Italy may not materialize. I’ve decided I do not like writing workshops. Our chickens are constantly shitting in their water, considerably adding to my stress levels.  I have disconcerting joint pain.  My house feels small and cluttered and there is juice on the floor that has been there a week. I wore out my expensive shoes and now they look bad.  Oh, and I’m losing my job but I don’t know when.

Guess if eating alone in the IKEA cafeteria this afternoon helped my mood. 

 

A thing I like

First of all, I forgot to update you on the completely successful neighborhood potluck I had in my backyard after the weird run-in with my icky neighbor.  It was great, really.  All these people I didn’t know came and signed up and ate chips and drank beer and, I don’t know, it was a little glimmer of hope in my otherwise shitty week.  So, there’s that—the fact that a lot of people (or at least 10 people) want to make our neighborhood a better place.

Then there’s this, which starts tonight and is a big reason why summer is my favorite season.

See? It’s not all bad. 

My 3'x5' bed of smugness

Become a totally groovy, self-sufficient person of substance and good values?  Check.

Once I get a bee in my bonnet (thanks, Novella Carpenter), I get things done.  Plus, I made a list I have to keep up with (number 30, done). So, this weekend the family and I built a raised bed and planted our own little urban veggie garden and became one step closer to the Obamas. 

Just to up our cool, urban, eco-warrior status (minivan be damned!) we started by dumpster diving for scrap wood.  Once we had our recycled redwood in hand, we followed these plans from Sunset and, voila, a mere 6 hours later we had our adorable little veggie garden complete with spinach, chard, lettuce, broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, pickling cucumbers and tomatoes.  I'll keep you updated on their progress.

Our shameful patchy lawn soon to be veggie bed

A box, he can build

Oliver helps plant some zucchini (not that he'll eat it)

Here she is, in all her tiny glory

And please, consider this an invitation. If the economic sh*t really hits the fan, you can come over to our house for a nice bowl of veggie soup and a baby lettuce salad. 

The Lazy Woman's DIY

One of the hazards of my job is the intense house envy that can develop from day after day of looking at beautiful houses with gorgeously landscaped yards.  Since doing anything major like adding on, or redoing the kitchen is out at the moment, I've become a little obsessive about the DIY projects.  I steal all my ideas from people more clever than I am, then I execute them in this frantic, haphazard way, hoping for the best.  I am, if nothing else, an it-will-do-ist.

My latest project is sort of a house-wide decluttering and prettying-up which includes creating a separate and hidden play space for the twins in our tiny living room and the makeover of our little hallway.  Check it out.

Before

Here's what I did:

1. Removed coat hooks from the outside of the doors and replaced them on the INSIDE to hide coats and bags.

2. Sanded (badly) and painted (also badly) the doors.

3. Applied Japanese paper cut to fit insets.

And, voila!  I still need to do something about our phone area/key rack, and paper the door leading to the garage, but things are looking better, no?

Check out the September issue of Sunset for step-by-step instructions for this and other wallpaper projects.