with the days of the week, did you wear Thursday on Saturday? All right, then.
I've never been known for my green thumb and, since this is our first full summer here on Gnome Hill, the only progress we've made with a vegetable garden was to use the back hoe to stir up some rocks.
nted a huge amount of basil and, even though I gave away as many plants as I could, still should have been thinned more. Two basil pots stand guard at the back door because the herb is supposedly disliked by flies. But we apparently have vegetarian
flies who, in fact have no problem lying in wait in the pots to fly in the house and give the cats something to chase.
won't happen because I don't eat a whole lot of them and everyone else is rather ambivalent about them.
kly things, probably because the soil was used up from last year and because I never fully thinned them out. Still, these few plants have served me well.
an herb I never really used and planted just because I could. But now I'm hooked on them and I love how they just kind of replenish themselves.
g. Then, suddenly up pops this little seedling.
When it comes to guerilla domesticity, nothing brings enthusiasm to a screeching halt like the subject of cleaning.
Oh we homemakers love the baking, the cooking, the crafting and the decorating. But cleaning? Mundane, routine, boring, exhausting.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to lecture about finding the positive aspects of scrubbing a floor. Maybe that works in the moment, but certainly doesn’t overcome the feeling that cleaning is something that is better left for tomorrow – and you know what they say about domani.
It took me a long time to come to terms with cleaning…or not cleaning…mostly because there is no justice in the subject, particularly for women. You have to clean messes you didn’t make. Sometimes you have to clean when you can barely see the dirt, knowing that dirt begets dirt, even though you don’t get the satisfaction of seeing a noticeable improvement. And don’t get me started on the sisyphean task of doing laundry.
Strangely, it is women who are hardest on each other when it comes to housecleaning. I suppose it’s because most guys are perfectly happy to live in chaos so long as the television remote can be found. And while guys can find the most creative ways to turn anything into a competition, a bacteria-free living space is not among them. Conversely women can be downright smug about being cleaner or, God help us all, The Cleanest.
Even stranger is the fact that I find the most critical among us are women who have a cleaning person, I suppose meaning that, while they don’t have the gumption to bend at the waist themselves, at least their standards are above the rest of us slobs.
It may come as a comfort for my fellow slobs to know that we are actually more akin to the obsessively tidy than they would like to believe. Both of us want to achieve sanitary perfection but, while the obsessives are constantly striving for it to the point compulsion, we know it will never be achieved and just give up.
While we all have had times that household chaos drowns us in waves of everyday detritus, it would be nice if we recognized when someone truly has a problem manifesting itself in a messy house, but rooted in something far deeper like depression or illness. While I love to watch the show How Clean is Your House, if only to assure myself that at least I’m not that bad, it doesn’t take a psychiatric therapist to know most of these people would do better to see one.
That being said, and since Kim and Aggie aren’t going to fly over here with their team and turn my house into a showplace, I have come to terms with the fact that I’ll just have to do it myself.
Yes, yes, there is a certain amount of designation around here. My boys are responsible for their bathroom and do their own laundry. My husband is good about spot vacuuming (an absolute necessity with four dogs), throwing in a load of laundry now and then, helping with the dishes and, rarely but it has happened a few times in twenty years, making the bed.
I accept, though, that as the designated homemaker, the bulk of the chores are mine and, frankly, I’m the only one who sees when the toilet paper roll needs to be replaced or the cat threw up in the corner. Men are genetically incapable of these two tasks, at least the ones around here.
I have what I call a “light routine.” Too rigid and I know I will revolt. Certain areas are done certain days and, if the schedule won’t allow it, it’s not. Somewhere in the rotation it will all get done, along with a quick vacuum here and there, and that’s what I can live with.
Anyone can come over anytime without absolute panic setting in, so long as they’re okay with the fact that: 1.) four people live in this house and we do more than sit in a chair; 2.) four dogs live in this house and sometime between the 2 p.m vacuuming and now they have probably shed on the carpet; and 3.) two teenagers live in this house and their idea of “cleaning up” means they’ve left crumbs on the counter and a filthy pan full of water in the sink because “I left it to soak.”
Oh – and I promise not to judge your house when I come to visit because I’d much rather think you are living your life in your house and not for your house.
Be happy; be well.
Last night I started this:
I’ve knitted blankets, sweaters, socks and pillows but, believe it or not, I’ve never knitted a scarf. Since I have a proclivity toward losing unattached apparel, I’ve always been reluctant to sink the time and effort into something handmade that will end up in the lost and found. I picture someone picking up my creation using just their thumb and forefinger, like you do when you’re picking up someone else’s tissue, and saying, “No wonder they left it behind.” (I know, I know. I won’t be there to hear it. But, still, I worry.)
I found this mohair at the Mountain Heritage Arts and Crafts Festival in
Since I find most television is, for the most part, annoying, my preference while knitting is recorded books. Today is perfect for a mystery, something with very British overtones, given the weather. Something suggesting fog, damp and moodiness. Something Doyle-esque.
Alas, I’ve read and reread all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. So, we have the next best thing: Caleb Carr’s The Italian Secretary.
Carr was chosen by Doyle’s estate to continue Holmes’s adventures, though Laurie R. King’s series in pretty interesting also, even if it is doubtful that Doyle would have ever allowed Holmes to marry.
And so, having completed the weekly Cleaning of the Bathrooms, you will know where to find me.
Oh, they worked, all right. Mighty hard. They just didn’t leave to work for someone else in exchange for 
wages. There was some minor trading back and forth, but work was what you did to put food on the table, protective clothing on your families’ collective backs and maintain a roof over their heads.
There is a population of people who would love to return to those Little House on the Prairie days (everyone was so eerily clean in that show). I am not one of them.
That being said, Laura Ingalls Wilder, perhaps as older people will often do, left out some key social and cultural issues that might make the 21st century citizen think twice about longing for such a bucolic lifestyle – the bathrooms, or lack thereof, come to mind first. Then there are the nasty issues of high infant mortality, rampant tuberculosis, racism, women being treated as chattel and the fact that nobody bathed much.
I do, however, understand the lure of what is presented as a simpler time and, frankly, the wardrobe would have covered my legs, no small consideration for me when choosing where on the dial to set the time machine.
At the core of this fantasy, though, is a valid longing to be more closely connected with that which sustains us – our home.
Oh, you say. Of course I’m connected with my home. I live there.
Really, though, how much of your home are you truly connected to? First there are the utilities: your electricity come from elsewhere, your water from elsewhere, unless you have a well, in which case someone else came and dug that well and installed a pump which is dependent on that electricity.
Okay, utilities are a necessary evil if we want to live in comfort. There are a hardy few who manage to pull themselves off the grid, but I am not one for extremes, at least in the area of basic needs.
But, look around you. Your furniture is probably made by someone else. Maybe you picked out a “suite” of items that were matched up in the store by someone else. You may have even painted your roo
m the same as the mock room in the store. Or maybe you hired someone to decide the décor for you.
Apply this concept to your wardrobe, your yard or your food. With each step dependent on some outside contractor you distance yourself further and further from the reality of life. There is a reason why celebrities are so dysfunctional and a reason why, when they go into rehab, the most basic therapy is having to “do” for themselves.
Don’t worry. I’m not suggesting we all live in a hut where chickens roam free as we spin sheep’s wool for underwear. Unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case, God bless. I do feel, however, that the more connected you are to the creation of your surroundings, the less likely you will have an existential crisis.
While I truly believe you cannot state definitively what a blog will be before it’s had a chance to ferment a bit, it is my intention to document some of the domestic activities that go on around my house and the reason behind why I do them, as opposed to farming them out to someone else.
From the basic day to day chores to projects that may or may not succeed, this is the story of keeping myself grounded, in spite of a culture determined to keep us dependent and in line.
b. I won’t go into the strange connection there seems to be between care of the home and Christianity, but let it suffice to say I don’t believe you have to be born again to be able to run a household and do it with style. The fact is that, if you are reading this, you probably have a home of sorts and this blog is for those who prefer to live in the best possible way in that home. Simple as that. This is a blog for the “nester” that all of us have inside to a certain extent, but that seems to be a very large part of me personally.
I also do not believe I am required to go above and beyond basic maintenance
or that it is my “role” as a woman to do so. And I certainly don’t believe that my way is the only way. But I also think that too many people are reluctant to give their hearts over to the idea of nesting because Martha Stewart has made it so intimidating (more on that later) or it’s equated with the perceived victimization of women or for whatever reason. So they miss this valuable resource of comfort and creativity.
As the daughter of an Uber-homemaker and a man who saw the value in the ability to create a home, I was trained from toddler-hood how to “keep house,” the goal at that time to raise husband-bait, preferably rich-husband-bait.
I was halfway through childhood at the dawn of the Women’s Movement when somehow creating a home got mixed up with living your life for the sole pleasure of your man. I could always see the difference between the two, but I’m amazed at how many women assume that pleasing your tyrannical husband and spoiled rotten 
kids is what homemaking is all about.
What I bring to this blog is fifty years of life, a 20-year marriage and the wisdom required to raise two boys successfully. I bel
ieve you will find me pretty grounded and not given to flowery, sappy sentiment. There will be no teddy bears for those over the age of 18.
So I hope we become well acquainted with each other. For anyone coming here from Linguini on the Ceiling, this is the softer side of Sisiggy and she’s hoping you accept that, but suspects you knew about it all along.
