Actual Unretouched Photo

My husband schedule the cleaning lady for 9 a.m. Saturday morning. I left a list of things to clean from most important (kitchen!) to least (windows). I was dreaming up stuff to add to the list because I didn’t really want much done, just the kitchen and guest bathroom made presentable. Then I took off for the day. I shopped for bargains and then saw a movie (“Atonement”). (The movie was good, but make me want to read the book because I have a feeling the book is better. The book is always better!)

My cell phone battery was dead, so I dug up four quarters and found a pay-phone so I could check in with my husband and let him know what time the movie would be over. (I had to see a later show than I had hoped.)

“So, did the cleaning lady come?” I asked him.

“Well, she did, but she thought we just need a routine cleaning, so she couldn’t do it.”

“She couldn’t do it?”

“No,” he said, “She looked at your list and looked at the areas and said there was no way she could do that in four hours. She offered to get a co-worker and come back. She said it would take two of them at least four hours working together.”

“And how much would that cost?”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“WHAT?! Are you kidding? That’s crazy!”

“I told her you probably wouldn’t go for that.”

A cleaning lady refused to clean my house! (So, it is true. You really do have to clean your house before the cleaning lady arrives.) I would have happily paid her $100 for four hours worth of work, but she rejected me and my money. Furthermore, she cost herself a customer because I will never again call her and offer her work.

I am mortified and mystified that my kitchen and bathroom were deemed too big of a job for one person to handle in four hours.

So, I cleaned them myself. (It did not take four hours.)
If ever there was a time for you to drop by, that time is now. Come one, come all! By tomorrow at 11 a.m., my house will be the cleanest it has been in years (but please, do not open the door to the Boy Cave because I simply did not have enough time to tackle that job. And the cleaning lady probably would have charged me a thousand bucks to deal with that.)

Here is what you do when your college friend from 1984 through 1987 is coming to visit Monday and you haven’t seen her in eighteen (?) years and you are keenly aware that she possesses exquisite interior decorating superpowers which she demonstrated during the summer of 1985 by using small lamps to make a former Hotel 6 room (with aqua shag carpet) seem homey.  (We lived as roommates in said hotel room during that summer when I first met my eventual husband who is upstairs at the moment wondering if I’ll ever come to bed before midnight.
1.   Borrow a dump-truck and rid yourself of the hand-me-down sectional with the rips and stuffing the children like to pull out and leave in fluffy balls on the floor.  Buy a new couch.  And a matching chair because you can.
2.  Paint over the red stripes in your living room which seemed festive and whimsical in 2002 but which have annoyed you for at least three years.  And paint the rest of the family room and the entry-way while you’re at it.  Consider painting the vivid golden yellow living room, but decide against it because who cares.  (Besides me, I mean.)

3.  Spend Saturday hunting for a replacement glass lamp fixture for the vintage lamp which your daughter broke several weeks ago.  A bare light bulb might be acceptable for every day use, but not for a visit by your long-lost friend–and her husband and his sister.

4.  Re-hook the draperies by the patio window because you put the hooks in the wrong place the first two times and were too lazy to fix it two (three?) months ago.

5.  Remember that you meant to install new curtain rods and curtains in the kids’ bedrooms upstairs.  Oops.  Wonder if it even matters.  Consider ways to keep your friends from going upstairs.  “No, our bathroom is broken.“

6.  While your desk is pulled out from the wall so you can paint, unplug every computer, printer, light and electronic device.  Sort out the cords.  Plug in the brand spanking new surge protector and replug everything.  Dust desk.  Rearrange.  Admire.

7.  Thank God that you had the forethought to lose 57 pounds in the last two years.  Because, seriously, that is the worst feeling in the world knowing that you have no choice but to see people who knew you when you were young and cute and had no idea that you were young and cute.  (“Cute”?  Well, you were young.  And had a ton of rock-star permed hair and skinny legs back when skinny legs and giant sweaters and long shirts were all the rage.)

8.  Hire someone to paint the upstairs master bathroom, even though you don’t intend to let anyone see your bedroom because after twenty years of marriage, you still have four Rubbermaid tubs serving as bedside tables.

9.  Hire a carpet cleaner.

10.  Hire a housecleaner and then spend most of Saturday shopping and seeing a movie.

A while back, I was late dropping off a little boy for afternoon kindergarten. Because we were tardy, I had to walk him into the school office to sign him in. I waited behind a lady who was signing in her little girl.

When it was my turn to sign the roster, I noticed that the woman before me had written, “Fight over shoes,” in the Reason column.

I found that very amusing, probably because I have a girl and I can imagine fighting with her over shoes. (Though I am more likely to let her venture into public in crazy outfits because, really, why fight it?). With my boys, a more likely reason for tardiness would be “Couldn’t find shoes.” Even now, my almost 15-year olds constantly lose their shoes. I do not understand this. The only time I lost shoes was when I left behind my pointy-toed boots at a retreat center.

By the way, this errant shoe is still here in my storage room. I never figured out where it came from.

When vacuuming the heating vent near the front door, I found a toddler-sized sandal. I have no idea who it belonged to–probably us, many years ago. Some kid must have pulled up the grate and dumped the sandal inside.  Also?  Perhaps I should vacuum out the vents more than once every nine years.  But let’s not rush into anything.
Speaking of shoes, no one is allowed to wear them in the house anymore because we just had our carpets cleaned and I am trying to prolong the cleanliness as long as possible. Wish me luck.

I reviewed a new book, Persian Girls by Rahid Rachlin, over here.  (Overall?  I really liked this book, somewhat to my surprise.)

My 5-year old spent the afternoon at her grandmother’s house which is chock full of bric-a-brac with a large side order of gewgaws, and a heaping helping of curios. Grandma also has a lot of stuff, particularly costume jewelry and chocolate sitting around in candy dishes. My daughter adores visiting.

While I stood in the kitchen waiting for my mother to package up some ham and cheesy potatoes she had overbaked, I caught a glimpse of my estranged sister’s handwriting on an envelope. The sticker-dotted envelope sat right next to the kitchen sink. It looked like a Christmas card.

For a moment, I felt the tiniest ghost of a pang, the flimsiest regret that my sister and I no longer speak. We haven’t spoken a word to each other in over five years. A couple of years ago, I sent her an email and asked if we might discuss in through email why we weren’t speaking. She emailed back, “I’ll call you when I get there,” (there being here–she lives in Japan and was due for a visit to the Pacific Northwest). I emailed back and said, “No, we need to talk before you get here.”

She never emailed me again. She never called me, either.

It’s strange when a person you’ve known literally your whole life (except for those first sixteen months, but I wasn’t exactly a conversational wonder in my babyhood, so that doesn’t count) rips you out like a perforated page in a book. Granted, my anger at her was justified, in my opinion–despite my explicit instructions not to make copies and keep some particularly graphic pictures of my giving birth, she ordered herself copies from negatives and took them back to Japan with her. When I discovered this theft, I emailed her a concise, direct demand to return my photographs. I never got my photos, an explanation or an apology. And that was the end of our sisterhood.
Not that we were very good sisters anyway. If friends are the family you choose for yourself, sometimes family are the friends you wouldn’t have chosen in a million years–you have nothing in common other than a gene pool. For all our differences, though, we were still sisters, sister who had nothing in common, who grated on one another’s nerves and didn’t particular like spending time in the same room from our very earliest days together.

Still. She’s living a life completely outside the frame of my life. She not only cut me out of her life, but cut my children out of her life, too. I imagine it’s easier for them and yet some day, will be more difficult. They don’t miss what they never had, but one day, they’ll wonder why we don’t speak and ask whatever happened to their aunt.

And my explanation will sound so ridiculous: Your aunt doesn’t speak to me because I asked her to return some photos of me giving birth that she took without permission. The deeper explanation is so tangled even I have no idea where it begins and where it ends. You know when you can’t unravel a knot? Sometimes, you just have to cut it out and start fresh.

I guess that’s what we did.

The Christmas tree my husband purchased in Detriot ten years ago has been dismembered.  Its branches lie in bunches, segregated according to size.  Tomorrow, I will drag out the large box, pack it away and send it off to the church, where I hear the youth pastor will appreciate having a seven and a half foot tall fake tree for the youth room.  And I say, “Good riddance.”  Good riddance to festivity, good riddance to the rumpled tree skirt the cats frolic underneath, good riddance to Christmas Past.  I’m sick of it.

My daughter came in as I was yanking off the top branches of the tree and said, “Mom, what are you doing to the tree?” with dismay just like Cindy Lou Who when she caught the the Grinch stuffing the Christmas tree up the chimney.  I said, “Christmas is over.  We have to put all this away.  If it were Christmas all the time, we’d never get to swim in the pool, you know.”

Indeed.  If it were always Christmas, when would we celebrate the Fourth of July?  If it were always Valentine’s Day, when would we go trick-or-treating?  If it were always the beginning, when would we ever reach the end?

In other news, I ate a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers tonight.  Don’t tell my other blog.  Don’t even ask.  I have no idea what came over me.

I never got the hang of juggling. I know there is a pattern to it, that you are supposed to toss the balls in a particular direction, but whenever I tried to juggle, the balls had their own wacky orbits and did not follow any pattern whatsoever.

I am trying to juggle a new full-time job, four full-time kids, three stinky cats, two blogs, a husband and a partridge in a pear tree. Everything’s going swimmingly, except for this blog-thing. (And the cooking dinner thing, which I can’t seem to get running smoothly.) I smack my forehead at about 1:00 a.m. and say, “Oh, shoot! I forgot to write in my blog!” and then I fall into a horrible dream in which someone is chopping off my toes. (Not really that particular dream, but that is the worst childhood dream I can remember.)

And you know that feeling you have when you’re in a room full of loud people and you’re talking in a normal tone of voice to a close friend and then suddenly, you realize you have just said out loud, “And the doctor said the discharge was . . . ” just as a conversational lull occurs and your private confession has turned into a head-turning shouted announcement? Oh, you don’t know that feeling?

Then you will not empathize when I explain that sometimes, now, that’s what it feels like writing a blog which has become somewhat less private that it was in the beginning. My topics for conversation are fairly limited . . . and my children are going through a boring, bickering streak . . . no one is giving me any good material, at least nothing I can use here. I clearly need to mingle with more strangers who have no idea what a blog is.

There’s a book about blogging called No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog Hostel psp which makes me want to clutch my heart in a dramatic gesture and gasp, ” . . . and probably nobody cares what I did today, either, or whether my daughter is driving me nuts with her constant chatter . . . ” It’s tricky to fashion something out of nothing day after day.

And so Happy New Year! 2008! Doesn’t it just seem like yesterday that the nutcases were trying to freak us out by telling us that the world “as we know it” would cease to exist on January 1, 2000? Because the computers would grind to a sudden and lethal halt and we’d all have to beg those fatalists to let us into their bomb shelters so we could eat their stockpiled lentils and oatmeal? I did not participate in that tomfoolery . . . who has time to fret about The End of the World As We Know It when there are more important things to consider such as whether or not there are clean underpants for everyone in the family? And such as whether U.S. Americans can locate The Iraq on a map?

Oh, the late-night hosts are killing me with their writer’s-strike beards! First David Letterman and now Conan O’Brien. Beards always make me think of my dead dad, which is a rather morose thought, but then again, I love to remember him and then shake my head over all the technology he has missed in these eighteen years since he’s been gone. He was one of the original fans of the computer. He built one from a kit in 1977. It had red and blue button and I have absolutely no idea what it did, other than take up all his spare time. He programmed it with cassette tapes, which seems ludicrous, but I promise, it’s true. He would have been in love with the Internet.

So, I know you don’t care what I had for lunch (nothing! I ran out of time between running errands and starting work), but do you care that I painted over the red stripes in my living room? My 9-year old is disgusted with our boring “Wheatfield” walls, but my husband has breathed a sigh of a relief at the monotonous sight. He’d love nothing more than to live in a plain-jane house that looks exactly like a dorm room before anyone moves in. Beige walls, a book shelf, a bed. What else does anyone need?

Well, in less then eight hours, I will be back on the computer, working again, throwing plates into circular patterns that end up spinning wildly out of control. I am a rotten juggler. But I can type without looking at the keyboard and surely that’s worth something.

*  *  *

Check out my new diet blog location:  The Diet Naked Blog.

I am still printing out the last twenty Christmas letters.  I just can’t quite get it together and my newish printer is recalcitrant, and now, low on black ink.  You’d think it would be simple to print out 90 Christmas letters (with three full-color pictures), but the printer has balked from the start at printing more than three pages at a time.
In the meantime, I started painting my family room.  I had painted red stripes on one long wall six years ago when I was pregnant and I am so over the red stripes.  I painted my family room bright gold a few years back to match a bright gold couch (the theory being that if the quite ugly couch matched the walls, it would disappear).  It did work, the couch is long gone and the walls remain gold.  Soon, those walls will be a sedate shade of “Wheatfield.”

I bought a “PaintMate,” which is an ingenious syringe-type device.  You suck the paint into the handle and then the paint dispenses into the roller as you’re painting.  No paint trays, no fuss, no muss.  If only it were capable of taping the baseboards and edging along the ceiling.

I made the mistake of giving my 14-year old a digital camera and now it’s as if we are living with the paparazzi.  I may go stark raving mad and shave my head if the constant hounding does not stop and stop soon.

By the way, I am sick to death of hearing Britney Spears referred to as a “young mother.”  She is twenty-six years old!  Twenty-six, people!  Since when is twenty-six a “young mother”?   The media makes it sound like a  baby of twenty-six years old should be excused from being a good mother on the basis of her youth alone.  How utterly ridiculous.  When I was twenty-six, I . . . walked to school . . . uphill . . . both ways . . . ten miles . . . in the snow.

Well.  Anyway.  Twenty-six is not “young,” if you ask me, nor an excuse for irresponsibility.
Kids have arrived to play, making me think painting a second coat on my formerly striped wall now would be a mistake.  Nevertheless, I am going to start that project right now because the sooner I finish, the sooner I’ll be done.  And a little latex paint never hurt anyone.

First of all, does anyone know where the tape is? No? No one?

Oh, wait. I found it.

Kids!

The Christmas pageant was tonight. My 5-year old daughter endured a two-hour practice on Sunday afternoon. She dressed up as a sheep, crawled out by the shepherds, did great! This morning she informed me she did not want to be in the play. Then, while we sat in the pew, waiting for 7 p.m. to arrive, she told me she really wanted to be an angel. I reminded her that there were no more angel costumes and besides, it was too late to be in the play.

At 6:59 p.m., she said, “I really really want to be in the play. I changed my mind.” I told her it was too late and realized the glory of her current age. She did not throw a fit or cry or argue. Good thing, because if she had, I would have missed the amusement of the Christmas pageant.

First of all, the beautiful young couple with their gorgeous kids did the Advent reading and lighting of the final Advent candle. Only the young woman couldn’t get the lighter-thingy to light. I saw the youth pastor moving over to assist her . . .  and heard the unbelievably loud CLICK, CLICK, CLICK of the unresponsive lighter . . . and then, her husband finished reading, reached for the lighter-thingy and with one click, WHOOSH, there was the flame. (Hi, Jenn! Oh, that was funny!)

In no particular order, here are other things that made me laugh:

1) “Mary” chewing pink gum while sitting in the “stable” . . . and her mother hissing at her to stop chewing said gum. Two rows of us were in near hysterics. When “Mary” realized our mirth, she got that haughty teenage look of disdain.

2) One unruly black “cow” sucking his thumb.

3) My daughter brought a life-like doll with her . . . and the doll has fresh batteries. The doll was “asleep” . . . until a woman on the other side picked up the doll, waking the doll . . . just as the program started. The doll was cooing, moaning, giggling and the people in the row behind us were snickering . . . my daughter snatched the doll, trying to get it to sleep . . . and I finally, in somewhat of a panic, found the “off” button. But, oh, the hilarity.Perhaps all of this is more amusing when you are tired.

At any rate, Merry Christmas to you all. (Time to go arrange gifts under the tree!)

Run, don’t walk, to see “P.S. I Love You.”  It that movie doesn’t make you cry, I cannot help you.