in search of grey

Totally ripped this off from dewitte.  It's so funny I want it on my own blog.  

I've got housekeeping issues.

There's a mountain of half-folded laundry on the living room floor, dirty dishes in the sink, cobwebs on the wine rack (that I spotted two weeks ago when shy was over and still haven't gotten around to cleaning), markers, magnets and other toys scattered into every corner, boxes of too-small or too-big clothes against walls waiting for homes, magazines I plan to read stacked on the counter, crafts and other kiddie artwork stowed away anywhere because I can't bear to throw it away... and so much more I can't list it all.

I say things like "Gee, I just deep-cleaned this washroom three weeks ago and it's already needing to be cleaned again!  What's up with that??"  And "No, don't put that ___ in the goodwill box - I know I've never used it before, and I know I don't even really know what it is, but I really might NEED it someday!" 

A big part of it is that I waste time doing other things (erm, like writing a blog entry about how the house is a disaster because I waste time), but there are other problems, too.  For example, Julie Morgenstern tells me that I'm unorganised because I'm a perfectionist.  Needless to say, I love that one.

All I know is that I just can't seem to keep up with the day-to-day cleaning and tidying that needs to be done to have a lovely, sparkling, clutter-free home.  Or even a remotely mediocre one.

Take this morning. 

M was at montessori, H was asleep on my back, and I thought I'd tackle the kitchen.   Everything that could be messy about a kitchen was messy about out kitchen. Dishes, counter, floor, etc.  I swept, since sweeping is really the only thing I'm able to do with any regularity, and then I started doing the dishes - loading things into the dishwasher (where they should go immediately, but never do), handwashing the rest. 

As I was doing that, I kept looking at the range.  Greg cooked dinner on Tuesday (and we weren't home all day yesterday), and he is a master at managing to get more food splattered on the stovetop than in the pot/pan.  It really started to bother me, so I quit the dishwashing (in hindsight, this was mistake #1 - Julie Morgenstern also told me to not fall prey to "zig zag organising," and I assume she'd say the same about cleaning.) and moved on to the stove.

I started by taking a cloth and quickly wiping down the top, but the spills were a day and a half old, so I needed to scrub and scour.  In scrubbing I became more aware of the tougher stains that wouldn't come off.  On went the over-the-range lights on HIGH, out came every cleaning instrument in my arsenal, and by the time I was done that range was sparkling clean, from the backs of the knobs (removed, soaked, scrubbed and the backs cleaned out with cotton swabs) to the tiniest crevices (scraped with toothpicks, scrubbed with a toothbrush).  What was I saying about being a perfectionist?

...and almost 45 minutes had passed, the rest of the kitchen was still a disaster, and I had only half an hour more to finish, prepare lunch, wake up H, and leave to pick up M. 

I felt discouraged, did some half-hearted cleaning of the counters (enough to carve out a small space to make lunch), and gave up.

The weird thing is how, for the rest of the day, the sight of that range made me kind of happy.  A normal person would be able to realise that if one clean spot brought happiness, then an entire house that's clean would be damn near life-changing.  But not me... it's really sick how well I was able to close my eyes to the mess everywhere else and feel stupidly pleased about the shiny stovetop.  How do I correct my ways if that's all I need to feel satisfied that I did my cleaning for the day (okay... week)?

I know that in three weeks, I'll be saying "gee, I just deep-cleaned that range three weeks ago, and already it needs to be cleaned again." 

If you have an e-mail address, or perhaps only if you have an e-mail address and well-meaning friends or relatives who like to forward things to you, you've seen this before.  Sorry.  You thought the blogosphere was free of annoying forwarded inspirational messages, but alas, it is not, at least not here.  On the bright side, I did delete the last part about how you should send it on to "five amazing women," so at least there's that.

I just like the message, and I tend to forget it, so I want it here where I can trip over it occasionally when I look back into my archives. 

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER - by Erma Bombeck

(Written after she found out she was dying from cancer).

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren’t there for the day.
I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the ‘good’ living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.
I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.
I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.
I would have sat on the lawn! With my grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I’d have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, ‘Later. Now go get washed up for dinner’ There would have been more ‘I love you’s’; more ‘I’m sorry’s.’
But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute…look at it and really see it.. live it and never give it back.

STOP SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF!!!
Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what
Instead; let’s cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.
Let’s think about what God HAS blessed us with, and what we are doing each day to promote ourselves mentally, physically, and emotionally. I hope you have a blessed day .

It was hanging on the hook on my mailbox.  A medium-sized plastic bag with an advertisement for Yoptimal printed on it.  English on one side, French on the other.  Some new kind of Yoplait yogurt to strengthen your immune system.  And wow, it's got probiotics, amazing!  And antioxidants too!  Isn't that just the most fantastic, innovative thing you've ever heard?

Inside the bag was a 650g plastic yogurt tub. 

Empty.

Okay, not empty - it held a small leaflet and a coupon.

When I looked more carefully at the plastic bag, some small print at the bottom read "Please note that the container in this bag does not contain any yogourt.  We suggest you reuse it to store your favourite foods." 

... I honestly don't even know what to say about this, it's just so odd.

Something about how I am already overrun with plastic containers?  Or about how I keep them only out of guilt, allowing them to take up one full drawer of my kitchen cupboards even though I generally try to store all food in glass containers? 

Oh maybe I should mention that clearly, the brains over at Yoplait, while observant enough to notice and hop on board the super-duper probiotics bandwagon, are somehow so blind that they completely missed the whole green movement that is everywhere? 

A plastic container.  Empty but for a bit of paper.  An empty plastic container in a plastic bag. 

The bag is 100% biodegradable, does that make it better?

What was the #1 song on the radio when you were born?

I wasn't going to post an answer, but I went to find out the answer to satisfy my own curiosity, and the results were kind of interesting.

The #1 song on the day I was born was "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash. 

For one thing, I absolutely love the song. 

But what's neat is that it's one of the two songs that G and I used to make efforts to sing to our baby-to-be when I was pregnant with M.

And to top it all off, it was the song that happened to be playing on the radio in our room when that very same baby was born. 

I was reluctant to join another group and start yet another supposed-to-be-regular thing that would cause guilt because I'm sure to never be regular about it, but more and more people in my neighbourhood seem to be doing this, and I'm nothing if not a follower, so here I am.

Seriously, I think that 99% of the reason I'm doing this is to torture myself. 

I don't know the official term for my condition (nit-pickiness, anal-retentiveness, just plain insanity), but every time I see the title "Things on Tuesday," and like I said, I'm seeing it all the time now, I swear that my respiration and heart rate pick up a bit, my chest gets a little tight, and I can't stop a terrible part of my brain from silently screaming:

"Why??  Why oh why not 'Things on THURSDAY,' for the love of all that is orderly and predictable in the world?!?!  Or simply for the love of alliteration?!" 

(In the past I've done Menu Plan Monday, Wordless Wednesday, Thursday Thirteen, Friday's Feast and Five on Friday... yes, there's a nauseatingly obvious pattern, and it seems without it, I fall apart.)

Of course the rest of my brain realises that this is all quite ridiculous, but no matter how much I try to talk myself out of it, I can't stop this automatic response from occurring every. single. time.

So yes.  Rather than close my eyes to it, ignore it, and move on to more productive things, I must punish my illogical thinking by joining the group and forcing myself to participate in the hopes of reshaping this oddness about my character.

For my first attempt, I'll keep it short:

Things I loathe:

• Irrational thoughts over which I have no control.

Things I love:

• Self-flagellation
• Apparently, I love alliteration, although I didn't know it until the 'things on tuesday' group started.

thursday thirteen

This is my second Thursday Thirteen... the first I did over a year ago.  Hmm... Who knew this was an annual, not a weekly, thing?

I'm a little late for new year's resolutions, but I thought that I'd list thirteen books that I already own that I want to read before the end of 2008.

Last year I joined a TBR Reading Challenge, but I fell off the wagon when H was born in March.  It's not that I didn't keep reading, but I just didn't have time to post reviews here, update my list, chat with the TBR Challenge group, and so on. 

This year I still don't feel up to joining in again (hopefully next year), but I thought I'd still do an unofficial challenge to myself here, with this list.  A lot of the books on this list were on my challenge list for last year.  I hope to not have to write them again on my challenge list for 2009.

1. The Pianoman's Daughter by Timothy Findley
2. With Your Crooked Heart by Helen Dunmore
3. Itsuka by Joy Kogawa
4. The Silver Metal Lover by Tannith Lee
5. After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
6. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
7. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
8. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
9. Microserfs by Douglas Coupland (happy, shy?)
10. Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
11. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
12. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
13. Jewel by Bret Lott
    

Good luck to me!

How far from your last home do you live? Why did you move and are you glad you did? 
Submitted by Matthew 25.

I'm not sure how to answer this question, since I'm not sure when I last had a place I could call "home," and in fact, I'm not even sure I'm "home" now.  I'm pretty picky about what gets that label.

Before moving into our current house, we jumped around a lot, living in 6 or 7 different places within a span of 3 years.  Some of those places were in Pennsylvania, the rest in Toronto.

Although 3 years is a long time, every single place we lived during that time was temporary or transitory, in our minds. We never knew where we'd be in a month or two.  Most were small rental apartments furnished with thrift store junk we'd be happy to leave, and cheap, transportable ikea stuff that could fit in our car.  One was even my parents' spare room, where we'd sleep when we were back in Canada for a weekend.

If I jump back past all of that, our last home is only a 10-minute drive away from our current home.  Not very far, considering the vast sprawl of the city (and its surrounding suburbs) in which we live. 

I'm glad that we're no longer there.  It was our first house, the best we could afford at the time, and we did okay there - created a lot of memories together, hosted some fun parties, grew from virtual children to adults - and I think fondly of it for that reason, but it was too small, too leaky, and just needed much more help than we could afford to give it at the time.  I speak from experience when I say: Beware the "handyman's dream," no matter how handy you may be.

I'm somewhat content in our current house, but not entirely.  I still find myself hesitating for just a moment when typing the word "home" when describing it.  We've been here for over 3 years, we've done some pretty big interior renvations, with all of the work being done by us, our friends, and our family.  We've brought 2 newborn babies into this house, done the subsequent raising of said babies, and in doing so, grown up even more, but still... I can't help but think that there's a home out there for us somewhere else.

One of my goals on my 43things page, which I never visit anymore, is "have a home (not just a house)," and I'm not able to check that one off as "done," yet. 

My first entry, written over a year and a half ago, reads:

We're still in the midst of debate and discussion as to whether we'll move or renovate... the same discussion we've been having for two years now. 

In the meantime, kid#2 sleeps in our room, we continue to use the crappy $49 ikea table (toted home from one of the PA apartments) because we don't want to buy a dining room table that may not fit a new dining room, I've gone 3 years without ordering return address mailing labels (I want the incredibly tacky ones where you do up your whole family in a line of cartoon heads) because we might not use them up before we move, we have no curtains, and all sorts of other TRAVESTIES.

This turned from a quick jotted answer to the qotd to a long pointless ramble about my thoughts on "home."  I'm fighting my usual urge to now start with all the apologies (for being so negative and rambly) and disclaimers (I'm really quite content with most things in my life... something in my nature just wants a permanent place to hang my hat, and the question just stirred that up), but hey, if you ignore the stuff in parentheses, I actually managed to restrain myself!  Go, me!