Five for Friday

And just like that, it’s mid-April! Many apologies for being MIA lately, internet! I miss you! (And I fully intend to catch up on what you’re up to.) This is one of those pell-mell times of the year, where I feel like I’m being propelled down a steep hill and can barely get my feet under me. All (mostly?) good things, but this is the first Fun Writing I’ve done in… three weeks maybe? When I go to open a document in Word, NONE of my recent files are my blog document, is what that means. (Yes, I type all my posts in Word and then transfer [some of] them to WordPress.)

Seems like a good day for a quick catch-up. And then I need to find a solid week or so to go back and read ALL OF YOUR POSTS, omg, I feel so out of the loop. 

1. I am spending today as we all hope our Fridays go: waiting for the HVAC service technician to show up. Why, yes, that was sarcasm, and yes, our furnace IS dead. I’m glad it’s not, like, January, but it is currently 45 degrees F outside and the internal temperature of my house has dropped to 65. Perfect weather for walking on the treadmill while I cross two items on my to-do list off simultaneously! 

Our furnace is 23 years old, if it is a day, so it’s no spring chicken. But we did just have the HVAC people in here this February to give it a checkup, so I’m feeling a little grumpy that it’s acting up now. Back in February, I asked the HVAC guy to give me a prognosis on the lifespan on my furnace, and he said, “Well, I can’t guarantee anything – it could stop working tomorrow! But it seems like it’s in good shape and you could get another ten years out of it.” Not sure why I didn’t hear the foreboding music swell in the background of this little pronouncement.  

2. While I drank my breakfast (which was a smoothie and a mug of green tea, not, like, whiskey), I whacked away at my to-do list a bit more. It’s at that out-of-control point again, where things keep piling up until I am buried under their weight. The section I tackled today was Making Routine Doctors’ Appointments. Well, some of them were routine. Like I got Carla scheduled for her annual well visit and her annual eye exam (which we somehow skipped last year????). I also left a message on my doctor’s prescription line to follow up on a refill that I requested earlier this week. That last one took two calls because I got through three menu trees and clicked on “leave a message for Dr. X” and then had to listen to a recording that said this was the place to leave questions for the nurse, NOT the place to leave refill requests, so I had to go through all the phone menus again. And! Most exciting of all: I scheduled an ear piercing appointment for Carla! This will be her Big Birthday Present this year. She has been ramping up the requests to have her ears pierced over the past six to twelve months, and she has really made strides in Being Responsible (she has a necklace she wears daily that has so far always come home with her; she has a dental appliance she has to care for). Plus, she got a pair of nice-quality clip on earrings from her grandmother last fall, and she wears them regulary. So I think she is ready for pierced ears. I, however, am NOT ready for pierced ears. I have never had pierced ears, or any sort of piercing, and the whole thing a) squicks me out and b) makes me extremely nervous. I am squeamish and blood/body stuff makes me woozy. I am comforted by Carla’s swift and independent handling of her dental appliance; I have never had to touch it or adjust a single rubber band, and her orthodontist says she is doing great, so I am going to trust that between her and my husband, she’ll figure out how to care for HOLES in her BODY. 

Still on the list are many additional phone calls, which I will probably avoid some more. I need to call the landscaper, make an appointment to get my car serviced, call someone to come look at our oven, call the trash collection service about whether they will collect some unusual items (paint cans and gutter guards), hire a lifeguard for Carla’s birthday party, and get some estimates to get the exterior of our house painted. Also on my list: a work project, two rather major projects for my volunteering role, a message for a family member’s Big Birthday Memory Book, finding photos of Carla for a school project, making decisions about and then scheduling a couple of other healthcare-type things, and, most daunting of all: figuring out how to order breakfast for an out-of-town group event at which I will not be present, in a town I have never visited and know nothing about.

3. A phone call I already made this week? Scheduling an appointment with our new pest control service. Even though we live, like, twenty miles away from our old neighborhood, the locations are different enough that they seem to have totally different pest problems. At our old house, we had silverfish; at this house, we have ants, stinkbugs, mice, and bats. “Probably you had rats, too,” the pest control guy said helpfully. But since in twelve years I never once saw a rat, or any sign of such, I refuse to acknowledge this as a possibility.   

While he is from the same pest control company that handled our mouse problem when we first moved into this house, he is not the same person. He tells me he was injured last fall and on leave. But he used to do pest control for the previous owners, which was useful because he knew exactly where to go and what the problem areas were. He also kind of implied that the previous owners canceled a ton of their appointments, so he wasn’t surprised we had such a huge mouse infestation when we moved in. While I feel deeply uncomfortable with service people sharing qualms about their other customers, I do feel a little bit justified in my growing belief that the previous owners did not really take care of this place. Lots and lots of things have looked lovely on the surface and then turn out to be falling apart behind the scenes, and the repeated cancellation of regular home maintenance stuff helps explain that. Don’t get me wrong – they seem like lovely people, and I get the impression they are just very busy and travel a lot. And who knows! Maybe they had other stuff they were dealing with, and/or once they decided to move, they simply stopped keeping things up. I will tell you, while I am NOT EXCITED about bats or mice, I do prefer the tiny little ants and the occasional stinkbug to silverfish. 

4. Did you know you can make queso dip out of cottage cheese? Possibly you already knew this, but I only just tried it. It was marvelous. I don’t know how “healthy” it was, especially because I ate it with tortilla chips. But it was easy and much higher in protein than covering my chips in shredded cheese while being just as delicious.

5. Speaking of things I have recently tried and loved, I have FINALLY found a travel pillow that allows me to sleep on the airplane! Sleeping is really the only way I can fly, because I find the entire experience so anxiety-producing. But I am not a person who can lean back against the questionably clean headrest or use a travel pillow. My head insists on flopping forward, no matter what, and each time it falls, I snap awake. It is neither comfortable nor restful and it’s kind of embarrassing, to be honest. I have tried so many travel pillows. So many. None of them work. But then! My husband ordered a TRTL travel pillow to use on our flights to and from spring break (four-ish hours each way) and on our first flight, he let me use it… and it WORKS. My head can rest gently in a forward position but there is enough support to prevent flopping AND it doesn’t make my neck ache! I did feel like a moron, winding it around my neck like I was bracing for arctic winds, but it was well worth it! I used it on the flight home, too, and it is now mine, all mine. 

Okay, in the time since I drafted this post, I got a phone call (friend with whom I exchanged phone numbers for my phenomenal roof/siding person; being an adult is weird), made a phone call (oven repair person is scheduled!), wrapped two birthday presents, unloaded the dishwasher, tidied the kitchen, welcomed the furnace repair person into my home, threw some ice cubes into the dryer to refresh the clothes I dried last night and forgot about, discovered that my front door will BLOW OPEN unless it is locked, tossed a load of laundry in the washing machine, and agreed to pay to have a new transformer installed in my furnace. I think I hear the heater doing its thing! 

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Pestilence & Power Hour

Happy Leap Day, Internet! I am spending this extra day trying to decide whether the benefits of cold medicine (reduced headache, mild cough suppression, drying of the sinuses) outweigh the ill effects (drowsiness, zombie brain).

We had a good run of it, Internet. And by “it” I mean good health. Carla’s class has apparently been stricken by a boatload of illnesses and, after volunteering at a school event last week, I have brought one home. 

It started Sunday with a sore throat, then moved along through the normal URI progression, so I thought I was getting better. But today I woke up with no voice and a fever of 101.5. I feel like someone is trying to escape the inside of my skull by hacking at it with a pickaxe and he’s standing right on my lungs while he hammers away.

Carla was fine at first, but woke up with a fever yesterday, so she is home with me for the second day. So far it doesn’t seem to have hit her quite as hard. She’s feverish but cheerful. And sniffly. I hope her illness goes in the proper direction, though. 

I am bummed because I had weekend plans, but even if I do feel better by then, I am sure to be hacking up a lung which doesn’t sound pleasant for me or those around me. 

This post is not about me whining about being sick though. It is a celebration of productivity!

I know you are dying to know whether the internet magic of mentioning something on my blog made it happen, and it did! Via the power of public humiliation (although you made me feel understood rather than humiliated), I have made some progress on my to-do list.

While my preference would have been for Suz to come over and tackle my to-do list for me (you DID offer, Suz), I decided to take Jenny’s advice and do a Power Hour.

In my house, a Power Hour is a way to gamify a to-do list. I have heretofore only used it on my daughter, and pretty much only as a cleaning challenge. Although, to be fair, she will not do a Power Hour unless I am also doing a Power Hour – she is a competitive being – so I end up doing one alongside her. We haven’t done one in a while. But I have never really made myself do a Power Hour. 

Monday, I came home from school drop-off and took a nap until 11:00, then allowed my guilt for napping to propel me into a Power Hour. I will tell you, first, that the Power Hour is a misnomer because it took THREE HOURS.

1. First, I made a list on my new custom notepads that my husband and daughter got me for my birthday. 

2. Instead of calling the landscaper, I instead looked up an email she’d sent me in August with a recommendation for a tree trimming/removal company. I had called them, around that time; there’d been a storm that wreaked havoc on a lot of local trees, so the tree service said they would call me back and then never did. 

I called the tree company and someone is coming out to look at the tree in question and offer an estimate. Should I call someone else to come give a second estimate? Probably. 

3. Gigi said I needed to handle the rot in my siding sooner rather than later, so that was next on my list. She’d suggested calling a general contractor, so I spent some time looking at previous texts with friends whom I’d asked for contractor suggestions. None of them seemed right, and one of them mysteriously has NO Internet presence at all. Like… his name doesn’t exist on the internet. And it’s an odd name with an unusual spelling – something like Grygg – and I know the spelling I used was accurate because the friend who’d recommended him said, “Oh, I spelled his name wrong in the contact I shared; it’s Grygg instead of Gryyg.” Nonetheless, neither spelling came up with ANY hits online. 

So I turned instead to people who deal with gutters. This is what Marg had to do, at an approximate cost of $1500 for a similar issue. (THANK YOU, Marg, for the benchmark pricing!) We had our gutters cleaned regularly at our old house, and it was fairly reasonable price-wise, but the REAL price was in future phone and text spam from the company. So I didn’t want to call them. Moving has been a nice excuse to part ways with some companies I felt bad about parting ways with. I looked up some highly rated gutter service companies in our area and then called. 

The person who answered at the first place was so kind. I said that I had no idea whether she could help me, and she said, “Well, let’s just see!” and I explained my problem, and it WAS something she seemed familiar with. She even gave me an estimate for replacing that rotted wood right off the top of her head ($475 in case you are wondering). But then she told me that sometimes getting all of your gutters cleaned can help address the problem, and that adjusting the gutter would be part of the cost of that ($495 in case you are wondering). I don’t think replacing the rotted wood would necessarily have been part of the gutter cleaning cost, but then again, I’d be getting ALL the gutters cleaned, which needs to be done anyway. She was so warm and knowledgeable that I wanted to book her right then and there, but… well, I have been swayed by warm and knowledgeable people before (I’m looking at you, Guy Who Said I Needed to Replace My Garage Doors When Really They Only Needed a Small Much-Less-Costly Adjustment), so I told her I would talk it over with my husband and call her back. 

Gutter person number two was also very nice. He immediately asked if I could text him pictures of the issue and I did. But then he wanted to continue the conversation via text, which was a little less satisfying than being on the phone? I think, mainly, because a) we were discussing terms I wasn’t familiar with and b) the guy is not quite so wordy as I am (shocker) nor as wordy as I would prefer he be in responses. He said he thinks the issue is that “it” (the gutter?) just needs to be “pitched toward the downspout,” all of which are words I think I understand, but am not 100% sure I know exactly what that means? He can also replace the rotted wood and he is coming out to look more closely and give me an estimate. 

4. On to the pool service task! I had one recommendation from a friend, one company my husband had suggested, and another company the previous owners’ pool guy had suggested (note: we used the previous owners’ pool guy last year and he does not provide the cleaning/maintenance we are looking for, plus he is impossible to deal with – like, he will just show up unannounced in the backyard). I called and left messages at each company. I believe I have left messages with each of these companies before; only the friend-recommended guy ever called me back, and then said his brother would be in touch, and then the brother never got in touch. WHY IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE? 

5. There is a drip in our furnace. Plus, I got a text that said this was my LAST CHANCE to schedule the free furnace maintenance that comes with my membership to the HVAC company. I was confused, because I am SURE that we had someone come out last fall to look at the furnace; I remember very clearly because he told me that I was still eligible to get the extended warranty on the furnace, and then I called the warranty company and they needed my title within 90 days of the home sale, and the title hadn’t arrived, and I went back and forth with the title company and eventually we got the title but it was after the 90 days. So. No extended warranty on the furnace.

But I looked in my calendar, and it said the same company did an air conditioner inspection last September, so perhaps that’s what I was thinking of? So I called the HVAC company (my god this is a VERY BORING POST but somehow I cannot curb my desire to write out all the tiresome details) and the cheery gal I spoke to said yes, it had been an A/C checkup. So we scheduled a furnace inspection. Whew. 

6. Next! I first updated our family calendar with all the important dates from my daughter’s 2024-25 school calendar. Good lord, there are a lot of days off. Like, so many days off. Then I called the dentist and scheduled her next checkup. This, if you are keeping track, is the only actual task I have completed. 

7. Then I turned to the electrician, which has a very convoluted backstory. The TL;DR version is that I successfully scheduled an appointment for the electrician to come out and address multiple issues. The slightly longer version is that the company that we use has a very complex system that probably makes a lot of sense to them but is difficult to deal with. One person comes out to see what’s wrong, another person prepares an estimate for you and works with you to figure out exactly what work you want to do, then a whole other person schedules the appointment with you. On the day of the Power Hour, it took me multiple phone calls and multiple emails across multiple hours to finalize the work order and schedule a day for someone to come out. 

8. I wrote a check to the orthodontist and put it in my car. I still need to take the check to the orthodontist’s office, but that can be done at a later time.

9. I followed up on a work email (and have still not heard back siiiighhhhhh).

10. Bonus task! I talked to Carla’s teacher on the phone and then made a follow-up phone call based on our conversation.

These were the tasks I got through before it was time to pick up Carla from school. (Although I did exchange three separate phone calls, two texts, and an email with the electrician and the estimate person while in the car, so that was fun.) (The email and texts I handled while in the car line, not while driving.)

All in all, it was a productive Power Hour. But do you see, Internet? DO YOU SEE WHY I HATE THESE TASKS? 

I would like to note once again for the record that I spent THREE HOURS Power Houring my way through all these phone calls and emails and to-do lists and I accomplished one thing. Yes, yes, I got a lot of other things underway. But NOTHING ELSE is complete.         

And there are still so many, many items at which to pick away.  

One of those tasks is to call the hair salon and schedule an appointment for my husband. Since I have no voice, Carla is going to get to learn how to schedule an appointment today. Which is clearly a crucial skill every human must master. 

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My Own Worst Enemy

What is it about the brain that allows us to do things that actively run counter our best interests? I know I am not alone in this. But lately it feels like everywhere I turn, I run into an obstacle. And that obstacle is me. 

• I keep waking up with headaches and jaw pain. This is, I am pretty sure, because I clench my teeth while I sleep. Luckily, I have a tool to prevent this from happening! An expensive tool, custom made for me at the dentist. For awhile it was packed away in a box, but it’s been on my nightstand for several weeks now. So why am I not using it??????
• My feet hurt if I don’t wear shoes. This is just a fact. And yet sometimes I will simply… not put on my shoes! Or sometimes, I don’t want to wear shoes when other people are in the house, because I don’t want to explain to them that it’s okay for ME to wear shoes, but not for them. When probably they would be fine with it. Nope. Instead, I walk around in my socks and then my feet ache. 
• Exercise is essential for my mental health. I enjoy tiring my muscles out with strength training! I love being outside in the fresh air! I love the ache and exhaustion after I’ve worked hard. And yet I have not been exercising. Some of this is because my schedule is all over the place. But there are definitely some days where I could fit it in if I tried, and I talk myself out of it. 
• Alone time is essential for my mental health. As an introvert, I NEED time alone to recharge my batteries. And yet I have been going to parties and volunteering at events with lots of people and meeting friends for coffee and doing things at Carla’s school and hosting my husband’s family for Thanksgiving. It’s all good stuff, it’s all stuff I want to do. But it doesn’t have to happen all at once. I can postpone things! I can even say no! WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF? 
• If I don’t get immediate feedback, I expect the worst. Why is this? There is no reason for this! It’s not as though I usually get negative feedback, which might justify an expectation of negative feedback. No! I typically get positive feedback! And yet if I don’t hear anything, I worry and fret and angst and wonder what I can do to pre-emptively “fix” whatever it is I’ve done. WHY? I am wasting so much time and energy on pointless anxiety! 

I know I’m fortunate in that none of these things are truly debilitating or dangerous. There are so many worse ways I could be acting against my best interests. But I really wish I knew how to get out of my own way. 

Do you ever stand in your own way?

P.S. I always think the song “My Own Worst Enemy” is by Blink 182, but it’s by Lit. 

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Being Social

I am feeling stricken with social anxiety, Internet. STRICKEN.

Here’s the thing: At the beginning of the school year, a group of parents from Carla’s school decided to get together semi-regularly. Varying numbers of these parents have met several times already and I have been unable to attend a single event. I have been sad, but also relieved because OMG dealing with people. But I have also been getting more and more anxious because I realize that the more this group meets, the more cohesive it becomes, and the harder it will be to join. I already feel like I am on the fringe of any group, and my inability to attend any of the events so far has already pushed me further to the edges of this group. Does that make sense?

Now, finally, the group is getting together on a night when my husband can watch Carla! So I took a deep breath and responded that I could go. And now: stricken. 

I am Not Good in groups. I mean, I am barely okay in one-on-one situations, but in groups I just flail. I have never mastered a non-awkward way to squeeze into an already-going conversation. I feel like my small talk game is poor. I am not adept at discussing current events. I am not an interesting storyteller. Not that I even have anything interesting to say. I become overly aware of how I talk and my tongue fumbles all over itself. If more than one person looks at me expectantly, my face will burst into flames. You know how it is. (Maybe you do not, in which case can we exchange personalities for a night please?) 

HOW do I do this? My 100% serious plan is to make a (mental) list of topics I can turn to in a pinch, but… what are those topics? I feel like I am pretty good at asking people about themselves, and since I don’t know a lot of these moms very well I can ask them who their kids are and what activities they’re doing and how their holidays were and whether they have anything exciting planned for our upcoming four-day weekend seriously we JUST had two weeks off and what their kids think of their teachers and what books they’ve read and whether they saw any good movies over the break… but I don’t necessarily know how to move from “bombarding a person with questions” to “real conversation.” I have a hard enough time carrying on a conversation with my hairdresser, and she’s just one person, and I am fairly comfortable with her. I have a hard time responding to the emails without feeling like I am dumb and everyone thinks I’m dumb. Going out to dinner with multiple people is like… more than that. Ugh ugh ugh. 

And if it’s a sit-down restaurant, where do I sit? And what do I wear? And and and…? 

There are a couple of parents I do know fairly well who are in the group, and I could probably try to hang near them. But I don’t want to be a GLOMMER-ONNER, you know? Plus, it would be nice to get to know new people. 

I don’t even know what I am asking you. I am just nervous. And determined to go anyway, because it is good to be social and it is good to meet new people and presumably most of us will know each other and each other’s kids for the next eight years at least and it is good to push outside one’s comfort zone now and again… but I’m also really nervous.   

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Some Gentle Aspirations for 2023

As has become my start-of-year habit, I am going to list out some gentle aspirations that Today Me believes are important to pursue in the new year. I recognize that Today Me and End of December 2023 Me may have different priorities, so I am not forcing anything on either of us. This may sound wishy-washy, and it is. I do like to strive to make improvements in my life, where possible. But sometimes, my best guesses at what will make my life seem better or easier or more fulfilling don’t result in improving anything, in which case they were fun experiments. Sometimes, they become real upgrades in my life, a source of happiness or pride or relief. I wonder which of the following will turn out to be which?

I broke these aspirations into categories, and there are quite a lot of them. That doesn’t daunt me; I’m guessing a few of them will naturally drop off as I complete them or forget about them completely. 

Personal / Self Improvement

• Aspiration: Read 70 books. I read 86 books in 2022 and 74 in 2021, so I think this is doable. I don’t see my reading habits changing a whole lot, although there are of course the unplanned and agonizing reading slumps that happen every now and again. If I only read 50, I will be fine with that. 
• Aspiration: Get a massage. My mother-in-law got me a massage gift certificate for my birthday in 2020 that I have not yet used for, I hope, obvious reasons. But I love a massage and it would be a fun treat to have one this year.
• Aspiration: Give my line-a-day journal another go. I started tackling this aspiration early in the morning of January 1, and immediately made a mistake. I wrote a few little lines about the last day of 2022, but I did so – in pen – on the first day of 2023. Also, I wrote “Saturday” (IN PEN) above the date, and then had to cross it out and write Sunday above it. So I have already made a huge, indelible (totally unimportant in the grand scheme, I realize this) mistake and I am going to have to fight so hard against my impulse to never open the journal again. Maybe I should just buy a new one. My husband thinks I am ridiculous, and suggested I just skip a day and then start again as though I hadn’t made the mistake. So I am trying that. But I can feel the mistake, infecting the entire journal. (He also suggested copying the text into the correct day, then using whiteout on the mistake, and starting fresh, which – just so you understand completely my particular brand of irrational – does not erase the mistake. It just buries it there under white goop.) So we’ll see whether I buy a new one or continue with line-a-day journaling at all or somehow resist all my innate tendencies and forge on with the inalterably ruined journal.
• Aspiration: Read more poetry. I burnt out early on poetry last year, but I still find it holds enormous value in my life. Maybe I just shouldn’t put so much pressure on reading it daily.
• Aspiration: Master two Chopin songs on the piano. I have been working on relearning the Raindrop Prelude, which I could play flawlessly in high school, and my dad has been learning Waltz in A Minor and I love listening to him play it, so I want to learn that one too.
• Aspiration: Buy some cute date-night-appropriate shirts. This means not falling into the trap of finding nothing appealing so instead buying yet another long-sleeved T-shirt/sweatshirt/sweater that is fine for hanging out at home but not great for Feeling Cute and Dressy and then feeling like I did buy the shirts I am looking for when really I didn’t.
• Reach Aspiration: Try to keep a spreadsheet of these goals, for tracking purposes and also purposes of not forgetting them until December 31. 

Health 

• Aspiration: Do a sweets revamp. This is a family goal. The three of us have developed some very bad habits and I really don’t like how they are affecting Carla. She chooses sweets first, always, and I think this is because we always have cookies and candy lying around. A sweets revamp does not mean No Sweets Ever. We can even set a weekly family goal to go get ice cream or buy a candy bar or whatever. On Valentine’s Day and Easter, I will probably lift the restriction for a day or two of unbridled sweets eating. It just means getting them out of our immediate orbit so that they are available when we could be eating other things. Yesterday I collected all of the sweet things I could find and threw them away or put them in a “to donate” bin. (I did leave three – why do we have three???? – unopened bags of chocolate chips in the pantry, but I could choose to donate them at any time.) So that’s Step 1. Now I just need to complete Step 2, which is to keep sweets out of the house for the rest of the year.
• Aspiration: Do what is necessary to make my feet feel as good as they can. The combination that has had the best results in terms of limiting pain has been stretching my feet morning and night, religiously, combined with walking. Not-walking seems to result in more pain than walking. I haven’t figured out the ideal amount of walking yet, but getting at least 10,000 steps seems to help. 
• Aspiration: Spend ten minutes outside every day. This seems outlandish considering I haven’t set foot outside in days, but it’s something I really want to prioritize.
• Aspiration: Buy some winter boots I can walk in.
• Aspiration: Eat more vegetables. I am doing this for myself, and by extension influencing my family to eat more vegetables (the benefit of being the family meal planner, grocery shopper, and chef).
• Aspiration: Figure out a skincare routine that doesn’t make me want to claw my face off. My face is driving me out of my mind. It is simultaneously excruciatingly itchy, to the point that I need to take Benadryl regularly to curb it, and constantly broken out. Every day there is a new pimple or five on my face. At the risk of oversharing (I would never), I am currently on Day 5 of enduring a cystic zit that is so enormous and so painful I feel embarrassed when even my husband looks at me. I DO NOT LIKE THIS. I have an appointment with my dermatologist for early February (sob) and I don’t think I can get anything earlier, and honestly don’t have high hopes that he will help. But I need to figure out some way through this. I am kind of attached to my face.
• Reach Aspiration: If I am reading/writing blog posts, I am walking on the treadmill. I have gotten pretty adept at this, over the break. I’m not sure if I can keep it up (right now, I am typing this while waiting for my tea to brew, and then I don’t want to drink tea while walking on the treadmill because that seems like a disaster waiting to happen), but if I can pair the two activities in my mind, just think how much more of both I will do! 

Connection

• Aspiration: Get a pedicure with Carla. She’s at the age where I think this would feel like a fun treat. Although I’m guessing she’ll enjoy the foot-sanding portion of the pedicure as much as I do. (Carla, however wants to do a mani-pedi, mainly, I think, because she likes the term “mani-pedi.” She is working on not biting her nails this year, so I am hopeful that she will succeed and we will get a mani-pedi together. Or a pedicure and then a mani-pedi some other time!) 
• Aspiration: Put my phone away when Carla and I are together. Why it is so hard to choose chatting with my lovely, fascinating daughter over knowing exactly what’s happening on Twitter/Instagram/Wordle right that second is beyond my powers of comprehension. But the days when she wants me to pay attention to her are surely numbered, and also I want her to remember me as an engaged mother not as someone addicted irrepressibly to her phone, so this is something I really, really want to work on. 
• Aspiration: Find a way to see my grad school friend in-person. We have A Plan, we just need to implement it. 
• Aspiration: Go on ten dates with my husband. During the early days of the pandemic, we got out of the habit. But now we have two great babysitter options and both feel more comfortable about being in restaurants, so there’s nothing stopping us from going out more often.
• Aspiration: Get together with two friends a month. This one makes me nervous, because I have a tendency to feel lonely and isolated and then overschedule myself and then get overwhelmed and become a hermit for several weeks and then feel lonely and isolated etc. etc. etc. But maybe if I plan, in advance, to get together with two friends a month, it will feel more intentional? Also, a couple of friends like to go for walks together so that’s a good way to meet two goals at once. Efficiency in action. 

• Reach Aspiration: Invite neighbors over for coffee/wine/snacks. We have the sweetest, kindest, most generous-with-their-time-and-dogs neighbors. I would love to get know them better, and I think I can (maybe) invite them over, one household at a time, for a few minutes of connection. Maybe. I hope. (I can already feel my socially anxious soul straining away from this idea. And also how do I convey that I would like them to come over without their dogs?)

Work/Finance

• Aspiration: Finish my in-progress manuscripts (and don’t start another one!!!!). I can do this if I put my mind to it. I am good at writing lots of words. I can do this. 
• Aspiration: Revise my completed manuscript. I am so very tired of my completed manuscript. But it needs some revision and A LOT of trimming, so I need to tackle it again. 
• Aspiration: Query 100 agents. This sounds like a ton, but it is fewer than two agents a week. This is doable. 
• Aspiration: Make good use of the writing accountability team a friend and I set up last fall. We met twice, and only once did we write, but the intention is to meet every week and spend a short time walking together in nature and then devote two hours to writing or writing-related projects. If I complete this goal, it will mean I am making good progress toward my other writing goals. 
• Reach Aspiration: Take a class in short story writing. This is a Big Scary Goal, but one I would really like to attempt. Maybe when my writing partner returns from his six months abroad, so we could do it together?

Home/Property

• Aspiration: Repot my plants. A new very cute plant store opened up just down the street and they will repot your plants FOR YOU for FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS apiece. I have resisted repotting my plants, even though they are all on death’s door, because I am so sure I will kill them. Now I can pay to have someone else do it! Someone who knows what they’re doing! This should be an easy goal to accomplish.
• Aspiration: Fix the freaking closet door. We have the materials necessary for fixing the door, because we bought them more than a year ago with the idea that we would use them to fix the door, we just need to FIX THE DOOR.
• Aspiration: Try, again, to find someone to repaint the trim. Why is it so infernally difficult to find a person to do a thing when that person’s job is to do the very thing you want to pay them to do?
• Reach Aspiration: Gallery wall. My eternal dream, always just out of reach.

Well, there you have it. Some gentle aspirations for the year. Looking at these aspirations, all together, I am wondering if my word of the year should be “consistent.” It’s a word I resist, because consistency is not my strong point; perhaps that is an even stronger reason for allowing it to exert whatever influence meditating on one theme for the year will exert.

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Thursday Randomosity: Lazy Holiday Week, Loose Thoughts of the Future Edition

Oh, hello there. I didn’t mean to just disappear for nine days. But sometimes you have lots of things to post about and sometimes you don’t.

Let’s see. I am feeling chatty, but don’t feel like I have a whole lot to chat about. The massive scary storm that affected so much of the country didn’t do a whole lot around here. We were very fortunate. It was cold and quite windy – though not windy enough to knock out our power – and we got plenty of snow to admire from our warm and cozy house. How did the storm affect you and your family? I hope you and your loved ones are all warm and safe.

Hannukah was lovely. Carla got Monopoly which we all played together. After an epic multi-day game, I crushed my husband and daughter into bankruptcy and we were finally able to clear off the kitchen table. 

Our Christmas was lovely and quiet and perfect. We all, I think, got everything we wanted and more. Santa brought the cotton candy machine and we made several batches of cotton candy. It is a beast to clean, but other than that it is quite fun. I also think that perhaps we have now exhausted our collective desire to make cotton candy. 

My husband is off this week, so we have been puttering around the house. He and Carla have been building robots and Pokemon block figures and playing video games, and I have been writing and reading and writing about reading. It’s been very relaxing and delightful.

We have been completing some tasks, like making plane reservations for upcoming trips. I am excited about the trips but very unexcited about the plane rides. My plan is to continue to wear masks on the plane from now until forever more, but I am still feeling pre-anxious about any or all of us getting sick, and then carrying the germs to and from our destinations. Well, there are still a few months left to fret about it.

Even though you haven’t seen any blog posts, I have been writing them and thinking about them. I dredged up Carla’s birth story, which I wrote on the eve of her third birthday. I’d like to post it at some point, even though it is growing a little stale, nine and a half years post-actual birth. But it was so stressful for me, even though it obviously all turned out okay, and I can’t seem to approach it with the clinical distance that time and Everything Turning Out Okay should afford. Oh well. Maybe I just need to post it as it is. 

I have also been considering very gently and glancingly things like goals and New Year’s plans. I haven’t yet given a single look at my aspirations from last year, not even when I collected that link, and have only in the most general terms considered aspirations for the year ahead. This is, in part, because I really only take a very loose approach to setting any sort of goal-adjacent objectives. Also because my biggest aspiration for 2022 (find an agent) remains unmet, and is so lofty a goal I feel like there’s no way I can achieve it. (Not with that attitude, missy.) Also because I keep feeling this strident, tears-hovering-under-the-surface desire to make goals around friendship, when honestly there is only so much I can control in that sphere. And in final part, it is because I feel like so much of my feelings about change for the year to come evolve around my body and my relationship to it and with food. Sounds like a real downer, honestly. So I keep playing delay and avoid. 

One thing I have been doing, with perhaps slightly more intention, is thinking about a word of the year. I love reading about people’s word of the year and how (and why) they choose a word to guide them. It’s something I’ve done for myself the past two years and I find it fits really well with my more laissez faire approach to “goal setting.” Having a word as a guidepost is something I really like, and it doesn’t feel super aggressive or overly intense. In 2021, I chose the word “forward” and in 2022 my word was “light” and I liked how both sort of cast a warm glow over the year without being scoldy or insistent. So I’ve been mulling over what I might choose for 2023. Allow me to get a little woo-woo for a moment please: The words really come to me unbidden, so I feel almost that they choose me rather than the other way around. Some of the candidates, so far, are “nurture,” “joy,” “gratitude,” and “cultivate.” We’ll see which one of these – or of options yet to make themselves known – rises to the top. Do you choose a word of the year?

Since we have all been home together for a very long time, the house has degenerated into chaos. My family refuses to consider putting the tree away until January 1, so I have resigned myself to living with the detritus of Christmas for a few more days. But I am now at the point where the urge to tidy and clean is no longer suppressible, although I have yet to erupt into the nagging that is still bubbling under the surface. I have made piles of gifts and books and treats that need to be tidied away. I have piles of laundry that need to be whisked into the washing machine. And that’s where I’ve stopped and have escaped to the treadmill where I am writing this post. 

As far as exercise goes, in the New Year, I want it to include time on the treadmill but also time outdoors. And I have loose ideas about maybe trying a Pilates regimen. If you do any online Pilates courses, especially if they are beginner friendly, please let me know. 

I realize that I completely skipped my Dinners This Week post. We have so much food in the house that I haven’t had to set foot in a grocery store since last week. (Fortunately, because my last two trips made my husband squeak with concern about how much I spent. THINGS ARE PRICEY, MY DEAR.) (He wasn’t mad, he just literally has no idea that most things are twice what they used to cost. Did I pay $20 for six chicken breasts? Yes, because that’s what it cost.) (That will get us four meals, though. Sounds better when you say $5 of chicken per meal. STILL OUTRAGEOUS.) 

New bullet, same topic: We had chicken paprikas for dinner one night, and leftover steak one night, and leftover egg and potato casserole one night. This casserole – our make-ahead Christmas morning breakfast – was delicious. This from a person who really avoids eggs if possible. Even better, it was SO EASY and didn’t involve peeling a single potato, AND it heated up the next day to be just as delicious. My husband and I going on a double date with friends one night, so dinner is sorted for that. I am not sure what we will eat for New Year’s Eve. We have some leftover crab cakes in the freezer, so maybe those? My husband wants to make these Swedish kanelbullar one day, but that’s not exactly dinner food. Well. I am sure we will figure it out. What are you eating for New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day? My mom used to make a ham for New Year’s Day, but I’m not a big ham fan so haven’t continued the tradition. 

That’s all I have for today, Internet. 

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Don’t Care

I have reached the point in my life where I am finally – FINALLY – concerned enough about sun damage to wear a hat when I go outside. It took awhile. I blame the delay in part on my dislike of the way I look in a hat. I just look… dumb. My ears flop out of the sides of the cap in a weird and mildly uncomfortable way. Plus my head seems like it’s a little too small for most ball caps? I don’t know. I have friends who look very cute and sporty in ball caps, but I am not one of those people. 

My husband agrees with my assessment, and mocks me mercilessly anytime I don a cap. Don’t even get me started on anything floppy.

But I have reached a pleasing milestone, which is that I don’t care. I wear shorts with my thick, cellulite-spangled thighs hanging out for all to see, and I have a ball cap on my head, and a fanny pack around my waist. Basically Peak Mom, but not, like, Cute Mom, who could get away with wearing that exact same outfit while somehow looking chic and stylish. Cute Mom I am not. No, Peak Mom as in the stereotype that sitcoms and SNL poke fun at.

But I don’t care. This outfit is practical. It provides maximum sun protection. I can carry my phone and keys and a mask in the fanny pack. 

I have heard mythologies about this magical point in adulthood when you stop caring about things that were once desperately important to you. This is the one area where I have achieved the Don’t Care attitude. 

Well, okay. I also no longer care whether people think I am weird/political/hysterical for wearing a mask in public. So two areas of Don’t Careitude.

I am eager to unlock new things I don’t care about. In no particular order, I am hopeful that someday, I will no longer care so deeply about:

• My body shape/size/weight. I am making baby steps toward this one. 
• Whether doctors think I am asking too many questions, leading me to leave one or several topics I wanted to discuss off my list. 
• Small injustices – like getting home only to find that the restaurant didn’t include the sauce I paid $0.75 for… or having someone misunderstand the lanes at the bank, and cut in front of me at the ATM… or having someone cut me off in traffic.
• Errors I made and awkward things I said literally decades ago.
• What my parents think of my life decisions. 
• Whether I am “using” my education.
• What people think of my “career” choice.
• How my house/clothing/car/cleanliness compare to those of others. 
• Whether I talked too much/enough and/or said the right things and/or sounded stupid at [fill in the blank].
• Leaving the house with mascara on.
• How I look whilst exercising.

Based on the women I know who are older… there’s hope for some a very few of these, and not for others. 

In what areas have you achieved Don’t Care perfection? And in which areas are you hopeful to achieve this state of being at some future point?

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Weigh In Wednesday (Not About Weight)

I don’t know how to categorize the subject of this post. Maybe it is Things People Say Without Thinking? Or Things You Should and Shouldn’t Say? We Live in a Society? Interactions with People You Know But Not Well Enough to Know the Right Thing to Say?

Also, keep in mind that it’s possible the two halves of this topic are not as connected in real life as they are in my brain. 

Recently, I’ve been communicating with a couple of women about a volunteer project. Up until yesterday, we’d only spoken via email or phone or text, never in person. But we got together for coffee to hammer out the details of something that was cumbersome over the phone. 

One of the women arrived a little bit late, and when she came in, the other woman and I introduced ourselves. The late woman said, cheerily, and with no rancor, “Oh! It’s so funny! I thought YOU would be taller [this to our companion] and YOU would be shorter [this to me]!”

It was an innocuous enough comment, although it struck me as relatable (I tend to think everyone is my age/height until I meet them in person – seriously, everyone reading this right now is 41 and 5’6” unless you have expressly stated otherwise) but also a slightly odd thing to say out loud. 

(It also made me wonder, in what way am I giving off a short vibe, and what would a “short vibe” consist of, anyway?)

It reminded me of a very similar experience I had nearly twenty years ago. I was working remotely and had never met any of the people I interacted with daily. And there was no Zoom back then, and I don’t even know if iPhones had been invented (I am ancient), so I had no idea what anyone looked like and they had no idea what I looked like either. 

When I flew out to the home office, I got to meet everyone in person. And one of the women I worked with said to me, “Wow, you look so different from how I pictured you. I thought you would be fat and ugly.”

I mean. WHAT. Who says that, a), and secondforth why, WHY would you say that to anyone? 

Fat, fine – maybe I talked a lot about food (unsurprising) or maybe I had a jolly persona, I don’t know, whatever. People come in all different sizes, and I know fat people and skinny people and medium people and their sizes don’t have any particular value for me. But juxtaposing it with “ugly” makes it clear that, to this person, “fat” was a negative rather than a neutral attribute. 

And, okay, giving off a “short vibe” or a “blond vibe” or a “nerdy vibe” or a “freckly vibe” is puzzling… but giving off a “fat, ugly” vibe just seems clearly negative, right? What the hell does that MEAN, and why do I need to KNOW THAT?

Anyway, I was 25 or whatever and I laughed about it and moved on – the colleague was someone with whom I worked very well for many years, and she either didn’t know how rude her comment was or meant it to cause pain but didn’t get any reaction. But I have remembered it, and puzzled over it once in awhile. 

I think, a lot of times, we feel like we SHOULD say something, but aren’t quite sure WHAT to say, and so we end up putting our foot in it. 

Personally, I think the old tried and true, “It’s so nice to finally meet you!” is plenty, but I can fully understand how someone might want to be more specific/original. Plus, if I met you in person and you were 21 and 6’3”, I just might be surprised enough that I would blurt out something bizarre. 

This brings me to the topic that * I * feel is related, but may not actually be related. Maybe third cousins twice removed.

It is also about Things You Should Say When Saying Something Is Required. More specifically, what do you say to someone when societal rules require you to comment on a situation but don’t know how the recipient feels about the situation?

Here are some examples: 

Example 1: A coworker’s parent has died, and you know about the death, and know the coworker well enough that it would be rude/noticeable NOT to say something, but you don’t know the coworker well enough to know what their relationship was like with the parent. So many people have such fraught relationships with their parents, and death can bring up complicated feelings already, whether the relationship was happy or strained.

“I’m so sorry for your loss” is the standard statement when someone has died, and maybe it’s fine in this instance, even if this particular parent’s death may not feel like a loss to this particular child. “May your parent’s memory be a blessing” is more geared toward the mourner, and therefore might not be appropriate if the relationship between child and parent wasn’t a happy one. “May your parent rest in peace” might be a good neutral statement that doesn’t convey the expectation that all parent/child relationships are full of love and respect. Maybe “I’m so sorry.” is all you need in this instance. It’s short, it’s simple. It covers a wide range of possibilities. 

Example 2: A parent you see regularly but aren’t close to is pregnant. You happen to know this parent is pregnant. You also happen to know, from a mutual acquaintance, that the pregnancy was unplanned and that there are issues in the marriage (infidelity, serious illness, abuse) or in the pregnant person’s life (job insecurity, desire to be done having children, illness) or with the pregnancy itself (known complication or disease) that mean the pregnancy might not be happy or desirable. But if you don’t know the parent well enough to KNOW these things yourself, how do you acknowledge the news?

“Congratulations!” is simple, but implies happiness. “You look wonderful” might be okay. I… can’t think of any neutral statements about pregnancy that don’t imply either “babies are wonderful and you should be happy about this one!” or “OMG I heard that you don’t want this kid, what a crap situation.” 

Example 3: Someone you know, but not well, is getting a divorce. You have no idea if this is a happy relief for the couple or a devastating sadness. 

If this was truly someone I didn’t know, I might just not say anything at all. And yet… it’s a major life change, and it might feel weird to say nothing. But I would want to say the right thing! 

I’m guessing that people in ALL of these situations and more get ALL SORTS of comments, and that they just learn to grit their teeth and get through the ones that are totally off base. But I can imagine that each new comment could cause additional pain for a person going through an already painful experience. It would be nice to be able to just be neutral, at least at first. And then, once the person says, “Oh! I’m actually quite glad my stepmother died – she was locking me in the attic every day and making me scrub the castle floor and refused to pay for an exterminator!” you can say, “Well, good riddance!” or “May she meet the appropriate judgment in the hereafter” or whatever. 

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Gratitude Tree

I mentioned the other day that I am forcing my family to share something we are grateful for at the end of each day. It’s supposed to be something specific to that day – big or small. One day I was grateful that my husband and daughter left me alone for several hours to just read in bed. It was so luxurious, to be ALONE for a decent stretch of time. One day I was grateful for tacos. As one is.

I write down our answers on pieces of construction paper I have cut to look (loosely) like leaves or flowers, and then I attach them to a big construction-paper tree trunk that I have masking-taped to our kitchen wall.

This was not my idea; I am doing this because a therapist suggested it. It is supposed to be something good that grows out of this period of self-isolation. There are plenty of things to be grateful for, and at the end of this – whenever that is – we’ll have something beautiful to look at and feel proud of. Not necessarily the tree itself, but the dozens of memories we’ve made, the dozens of little moments of gratitude to look back on.

I know of other families who are doing similar things: Writing down a Good Thing from that day and putting it into a jar, then reading all of the week’s Good Things at dinner on Friday. Going around the table at mealtimes to give thanks for something that happened that day. Purposefully doing random acts of kindness for someone throughout the day or week.

Much like the Good Things, I don’t know if this is working. It feels false, right now. (And Carla and her dad either grudgingly go along with it or actively complain about it.) But I am choosing to believe this is a good example of Fake It Til You Make It, and that it will feel lovely and right at some point in the future. I don’t know. I suppose if it becomes Just Another Thing to add to the list of work and housework and remote learning and stress reduction and meal planning and grocery planning and general anxiety, then maybe I’ll quit. But right now, I’m faking it.

And I’m kind of liking the result.

 

 

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Instead of Dinners This Week, Some Rambling (Plus Seriously, Where Is the Ricer?)

It is a Call Week, so I am relieving myself of the drudgery of meal planning for this week. Ahhhhhhhhh, sweet self-imposed freedom from self-imposed obligation.

I just got back from chaperoning a field trip. Yes, the field trip I was whining about last week. I like to drag my worrying out as long as possible.

Taking responsibility for any children more than my own first grader is, as you may suspect, completely outside my comfort zone. The teacher may have understood this – she has met me before, after all – and only assigned me one other charge besides Carla. The little girl was so cute and held my hand whenever the teacher instructed the children to “find their grown ups.” I was HER grown up, so she was going to make sure I didn’t get lost. (Carla, in typical Carla fashion, did not care whether I was in her eyeline, just as long as I was ON the field trip.)

Our destination was what felt like an hour’s drive away. The duration of the trip – or, should I say, the perceived duration – may owe something to the endless games of “Would You Rather” and “I Spy” and “Twenty Questions” we played. We played enough rounds of each for me to have a clear Least Favorite (I Spy) and to never want to play any of the three again. These games were, however, preferable to the game the girls had been playing when we first got on the bus. “Hamster” I believe it was called. The gist, from what I understand, is that Carla was a hamster (hence the thrilling name of the game) and that the other little girl was her owner. I found it highly amusing that the other little girl would hold out a carrot – a completely imaginary, completely invisible carrot, mind you – and that Carla would say, “No, no, I want little pieces of carrot” and then the other little girl would not only not mind this arbitrary distinction (INVISIBLE and IMAGINARY carrot) but would readily comply.

This is the kind of thing that makes me hate imaginary play with my child. Give me reading. Give me art projects. Give me (gourd save me) a board game. (Not Candyland. Never Candyland.) But when it comes to following the meandering and impromptu and too-often contradictory rules of a game of pretend, I would rather stick a fork in my eye.

Speaking of forks, I am sort of wishing that my everyday flatware would wear out. My husband and I chose our flatware purposefully. We loved the contemporary sleekness of it. But most of all, we loved the heft of the utensils. They felt sturdy. Real. That’s the very thing that we hate so much about them now. The stems are TOO heavy; they are constantly falling off the edges of dishes or into bowls. They have rounded edges, too, so they slide off even perfectly flat and still plates and it is super annoying. It is time for them to go. But I cannot bring myself to replace Perfectly Good Flatware, you know? It’s not cheap, to buy a whole new set of forks, knives, and spoons. And there’s nothing broken or damaged about this set. It’s just stupid and irritates me on a near daily basis, that’s all. I guess I will just wait until the utensils wear out and I can happily replace them.

Of course, they are NOT wearing out. Not at all. This despite the fact that we seem to have officially crossed some sort of Household Item Breakdown Threshold, because over the past two years or so, I’ve noticed that more and more of our housewares are surrendering to age or overuse or existential dread. Our everyday dishes (purchased 2009) suddenly have big chips. The handles of our pots-and-pans-set (purchased 2003) have started to detach from the bowls of the pots. Our cookie sheets (2009) are dark brown and have a permanent aura of grime, not to mention they don’t seem to lie flat anymore. We’ve lost enough of our backup everyday water glasses (2009) that I had to order more. Our duvet cover (2009) developed a hole that I was unable  unwilling  unqualified to repair. Our bath towels (2009) suddenly seem exhausted and threadbare and completely resistant to the softening effects of Downy. Our kitchen towels (2009) are universally stained and resist being folded into anything resembling a straight line. Our everyday steak knives (2003) have been washed so many times the wooden handles are sprouting splinters that make dicing onions an exercise in bravery and pain. I am sure there are more examples.

I suppose this is the nature of things: they are temporary. You get as much use out of them as you can. And then you move on. Yet I am nonetheless bewildered by their disrepair. I have used these same pots in four different homes across the better part of two decades! Why would they fail me now? It is perhaps a level of betrayal that one should not feel toward inanimate objects.

We have so far replaced the duvet cover and the kitchen towels and the pots and the cookie sheets. I hope these signs of wear and tear confine themselves to our household items and don’t spread to our actual marriage. Perhaps that’s why their disrepair feels so significant: I am correlating them too closely with my marriage; understandable, since we bought some things when we moved in together (2003) and the rest when we got married (2009).

Moving on quickly lest we get too philosophical/metaphorical here: You will note that I said we have replaced several items. And yet the old, failing items remain. The dark and gritty cookie sheets? Still in the same drawer, on top of the brand new cookie sheets – which are so lovely and fresh looking I have been avoiding using them, lest they lose the newness. SIGH. I glance lovingly at the shiny new pots (well, they aren’t shiny; they’re non-stick) and pass over them in favor of playing another tantalizing round of Will It Or Won’t It Fall Off: Pot Handle Edition. The dingy kitchen towels are still folded, if haphazardly, in the towel cupboard and are still part of my towel rotation. At least I USE the newer towels, though.

I think my husband and I both suffer from (varying degrees of) a very dangerous combination of practicality and sentimentality. Alone, they are often stronger than logic. Paired together, logic has no chance whatsoever. Why do we need three coffee machines?Logic asks. What if we have a lot of people over at one time? Practicality answers.  We have never once used these crystal glasses of your mother’s, Logic points out. Plus, we already have your grandmother’s crystal upstairs in the dining room and we never use those anyway. Inarguable, right? But we might have a big fancy party someday and need EXTRA, Practicality counters. And they belonged to YOUR MOTHER, Sentimentality says. Game, set, and match.

Sometimes I wonder if I should get really into Marie Kondo like its 2014. But – from my very limited understanding of the Kondo method – I petulantly disagree with the whole “keep only things that bring you joy” principle. And I am sure – SURE – that the actual Kondo method has exceptions for things of practical necessity. I mean, no one keeps a bottle of Advil or a plunger on hand for reasons of JOY.  It’s probably more a method of thinning down multiples of things – like cardigans or jeans or stuffed cats (every single one of which brings Carla joy, I don’t even have to ask).

What does Kondo have to say about occasional-use things, though? Like a ricer or a bottle of hydrogen peroxide? Neither is going to save your life (or unclog your toilet), and I am going to venture a guess and say neither is going to bring you any sort of joy. But sometimes you just need a ricer.

I couldn’t find my ricer this past Thanksgiving, to my husband’s chagrin and my moderated glee (he and I have differing opinions about the optimal smoothness of mashed potatoes). And I wondered if I somehow got rid of it without remembering? Would I have done that? Did I say, “No joy” and toss it into a box of things headed to Goodwill? That doesn’t sound like me, (see above re: knives that give me literal splinters) but… I have no idea where the ricer could be. (Where IS my ricer?) Wherever it is, I think it’s rubbing elbows with my knife sharpener, which I cannot find either.

I could see myself applying – with prejudice – the Kondo method to my kitchen. I mean, the pots whose handles are ready to release themselves from the pot at any moment should definitely go. We ALREADY have replacement pots. Sure – addressing Practicality – it’s nice to have extras, but they are rickety and liable to break just as you are transporting a pot of hot soup from stove to counter. And yes – addressing Sentimentality – they were the first pots my husband and I bought when we first lived together a million years ago, but they are JUST POTS. In no way do these pots bring me joy. More like apprehension.

I could also go through my Drawer of Kitchen Crap and pick out the things that no longer bring me joy. The herb stripper I was so excited about when I got it? I use it so infrequently. And really, I don’t NEED it that often. And it’s just the wrong shape for the drawer, so if it isn’t positioned exactly right, it catches on the top of the counter and holds the drawer closed and I have to jiggle and jam my hand into the drawer and wiggle things around until I can get it open again. IT CAN GO.

Drawer of Kitchen Crap

What about the Bundt pan that I have never once used and which I fully plan on continuing to never use?  Just because it is in Brand New Condition is no reason to keep it.

What even is a Bundt cake? Is it really a thing, that people make and eat? Is it, like, cake cake? Or is it, as I imagine, more of a bread? Is it good? Have I been missing out on all sorts of Bundt-related deliciousness all these years that the Bundt pan has been taking up space in my pantry?

I could go for some cake right now, honestly.

After all, even if I have forgone meal planning, it does not mean that I can forgo actually FEEDING my family. They continue to require sustenance. Cake counts, right?

All right, I am off to scrape together some sort of probably-non-cake food for my child. And then maybe see if she can I Spy my ricer.

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