Home Alone

On Summer

Welcome back to Home Alone!  Words cannot express my delight at finding myself once again on my own at home.  Because I was not Home Alone during the summer months, it felt false to try and write while the children were squabbling, or wrestling, or sighing dramatically in the background.  

I hope you had a wonderful summer.  We did not.  I realize that everybody wants everyone else to always be having the best time of their lives; that somehow it is our duty to have had fun and then to report this joy with exuberant smiles whenever someone asks, but I have no illusions -- we had a crap summer.  The top two adjectives that come to mind are relentless and monotonous, with heavy emphasis on relentless.  We had a few fun days, especially as the summer wore on and I wore down, but overall, it was hopeless.  No one is to blame, not having encountered a genuine summer break before (we home schooled year-round), we didn't know how to manage.  And in this instance ignorance was not bliss.  

It only took two months, but by mid-August it dawned on me that the children missed their friends from school.  Conveniently, part of the super-fun package of social anxiety I possess is the unequivocal dread of setting up play dates for the children.  In fact, one of the best parts of home schooling for me was that we didn't really know any other kids, so I never even had to consider coordinating play dates.  But now these dates of play are oft-requested and much-anticipated.  So with a month of summer still to go, and the desperation ever increasing, I pulled a play date together.  

And even after all the angst and worry I poured into said play date had come to fruition, it still didn't go off that great!  I served incredibly bland food to a child that has all the makings of a future James Beard (this same child informed me that "pimentos and a dash of paprika are a refreshing addition to ham salad," and also bestowed helpful, step-by-step instructions for ordering seasoned meat at a local Mediterranean restaurant).  In addition, the children that belong to me completely forgot the notion that when one has a friend over, one occasionally allows opportunities for the friend to speak.  No wonder the child had to impart cooking wisdom to me, I was the only one who shut up long enough for him to gather his thoughts and utter a few sentences.  

Oh well.  If it had been a stellar event, the children would have had higher expectations for the remainder of the summer.  As it was, they both considered the day the spouse forced us all to endure a muti-mile family hike (lovingly dubbed the "death march") as the most fun they had all season.  

Ideas

 I like this picture.  I think if I could draw my thoughts, they would look a lot like this.  Only more crammed together.  And I'd never use chalk.  Chalk makes your hands feel parched.

I never know what I'm going to write about on this blog.  I have ideas, but as the days go by, it is becoming increasingly clear that everyone around me has even more.  Like the spouse.  Sometimes, when he voices a particularly witty remark he'll say, "You should blog about that!  You totally should, it would be so funny!"  But I find I don't have much to say about fairy-godmother-glitter being the most offensive kind of dust, or coffee presses being the far superior method for brewing morning coffee.  I despise all dust, fairy or otherwise, and as I am not a coffee-drinker, cannot distinguish the merits of one brewing method over another.  Plus, I'm not convinced that the whole coffee brewing issue really qualifies as "funny."  There isn't anything inherently entertaining about a coffee press (as opposed to say, the coffee machine my mother-in-law owns that churns out individual cups of coffee, decaf, or tea and that for me, requires a user's manual and/or one of the children's help to successfully use, no matter how many times I have used it on previous occasions.  It also is not hilarious, but has the potential to be so because of how complicated it is, and because of how twittery I get when I use it).

And then there is the younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes.  He would like to see several posts devoted entirely to his (admittedly beloved and adorable) offspring.  I barely want to include details of my own children, let alone his who are still at that wonderful unsullied age where they love you unabashedly and tote their security blankets everywhere.  Alternatively, the Y.B.W.U.M.M. would appreciate it if I chronicled his wife's adventures with fire, which again, I'm not doing.  Everybody at some time or another, no matter how careful they are about their stove, has lit the kitchen in their new house on fire.  Those burn marks all over the floor where you stamped out the deluge of flames are a testament to your love of cooking, family, and fun.

I myself really wanted to process the issue of ear gauging (you know, where the "earring" is that horrible hollow sphere that makes the person's ear lobe look like a giant, tautly-stretched bicycle tire?).  But as I scanned the web for pictures to include with my thoughts, I actually started feeling a little sick, so I had to abandon the idea.  Turns out that really anything that involves the highly unnatural and the human body completely grosses me out.  A few years ago when I fainted during an eye exam, I calmly explained to Olga-the-optometrist-assistant upon awakening that my eyes cannot be touched - that's why they have lids to cover them.  Eyelids are natural, touching my eye with a little device to measure glaucoma is not.  Earlobes are natural, stretching them out in concentric, see-through rings of pain is not.  Incidentally, the younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes refers to those with ear gauges as having "FILS" - Future Income LimiterS.  I have to agree.  I really can't see some high power executive trotting around the big city with her earlobes (or what's left of them) bobbing jauntily around her shoulders.  

Delinquent

 

Suzzallo Library Graduate Reading Room, University of Washington

I have actually been to this library.  Many years ago, in dire need of an outing, the spouse and I journeyed from our rural state college to the U of W to see what a city college could boast, and this is one of the buildings that struck me most.  It's not the Library of Congress, but it is still grand and inspiring.  Especially when compared to the cozy room "downtown" that I currently know as my local library.  

I love libraries.  I love how they universally value quiet, reading, and the gathering of information.  My chronically thrifty side loves that they are free of charge.  I love that they compile and publish book lists (I am a tremendous fan of book lists).  I love that they have story hours for little ones complete with puppets, colored scarves, and art projects.  I love that they let me check out fifty books per library card, and that they do not put a limit on how many books I can put on hold at a time.

What I do not love is my near-constant status as "Delinquent" in my local library system.  "Delinquent" implies so many negative things -- guilt, negligence...failure.  

Because I reside in an area in which actual monetary fines are not incurred for library items returned after their due date, I am convinced that the Powers-that-Be have devised this delinquent status as a way to make me feel as rotten as possible about not finishing my thirteen books on feng shui decorating in the allotted three weeks given me.  Sometimes I can get an extension on my loan time.  But oftentimes, someone else is already waiting for the stack of 1950 English Village fiction that I have checked out, or the Fablehaven series that the children have re-read three times already, and no extension is available.  It is at that moment that I receive my scarlet letter, my "D" for delinquent.  

As stated, there are no pecuniary consequences to my delinquent status.  The only time you actually have to pay for something is when it's a hardcover from the New Book shelf and your dog rips it to shreds in your absence.  This occurrence forces you to have to gather all the pathetic remaining bits of the book together in a clear plastic bag and explain to the mirthful clerk that yes, it's the same dog that victimized the last book, and no, you do not want to see the shelf on dog psychology.  

And being a delinquent does very much affect your borrowing privileges.  The status locks your online account so you cannot put any items on hold.  This is a major obstacle for me.  Being home as much as I am, I often hop online and put whole rafts of books on hold at a time, particularly if I'm in the midst of a new interest or if I'm finding books for the children to read.  

Finally, as if seeing the phrase USER IS DELINQUENT at every turn isn't bad enough for my guilty conscience, it is the children who apparently suffer the most from my failings in this area.  They have become so accustomed to my perpetual delinquency that they've taken to asking, "Mom, the next time you're not Delinquent, could you put the following seventeen titles on hold for me so I can read them oh, maybe before Christmas?"  

I always reply with great love, "Of course, darling sarcastic child of my heart.  Anything for you." 

On Tires

Good afternoon and welcome to another week of Home Alone.  

Reflecting over the recent three day weekend and my activities pertaining thereto, I have come to a conclusion.  One of the last things a social basket case should be doing is purchasing car tires.  I say "one of" because there are loads of other things a social basket case should not do - e.g. attend a musical dinner theatre where you are seated at big group tables and are positioned so conspicuously near the stage that it seems as if the entire cast, while they try not to trip over your chair, are scream-singing "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" to you alone.  But, back to tires, not only are car tires the absolute limit as far as boring goes, they are needlessly complicated. 

I find it's always good practice to begin a crisis by involving others, so the first thing I did when I heard the car making an odd, whiny sound was to drive immediately to the parent's house (remember, they live just down the street).  I commandeered their afternoon by parking my injured vehicle in their driveway then wailing about something being drastically wrong with my car.  My dad, whose acute vision capabilities I thought I had inherited, ascertained in about two seconds that one of my tires was flat.  

This was far better news than I had imagined on my long, fourteen-second drive to their home.  I had conjured up dire images of the engine mangling itself into irreparable shreds and/or (I'm versatile in my imagined doom) the entire transmission hanging by a thin metal thread, simply waiting to fall out of the underside of the vehicle.  But it was just a tire.  I merely needed air, and everything would be great* again. 

However, this tire needed a great deal more than air.  Both my dad and the auto service team at the tire store determined that this tire (along with its three counterparts) desperately needed some tread.  And tread matters.  The primary salesman I dealt with told me that not having enough tread is considered unsafe and hazardous and even risky.  This meant a lot coming from someone who was so tatted up I couldn't take my eyes off his neck (it either said "Patty" or "Pasty"- probably Patty), and who had some sort of toxic automotive grease smeared all over his face.

So I reluctantly bought new tires.  But not until I had added some levity to my salesman's day by asking as he showcased the latest and greatest in tire technology, "Would it be possible to show me my options in a good, better, and best format?"  He found this amusing, but kindly did sort my choices for me so I could make a decision.  I hope he got a nice commission.

 

 *Things in my world are considered "great" if they are all doing exactly what I have determined they ought to be doing at the precise time I want them to do it; in this case, the car needed to be driving me around where I wanted to go right then. 

 

Monotone  

     THE monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold

   

     A face I know is beautiful--
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.

  Grandma Nellie Jean, 1924 - 2010.

You are in my heart and dearly missed.      

 

 -- Poetry by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), published as part of his Chicago Poems in 1916

Please have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day Weekend.  

 

 

Ramona The Pest

 Ramona the Pest with her beloved doll, Chevrolet 

                                        (as written by Beverly Cleary and illustrated by Louis Darling in 1968)

I am very fond of Ramona Quimby.  Especially since she and I have the same haircut now.  I have admired her spunk since I was a first grader, but have grown even more attached to her as an adult.  Hers are the stories that have required "laughing breaks" in the midst of reading aloud to the children.  Hers are the adventures that enacted on cd by Neil Patrick Harris* have caused us to need to pull over to dry our streaming eyes from hysterical giggling fits.  

Every time I get to really smash something (which come to think of it, isn't nearly often enough) I think with satisfaction of Ramona and her best friend Howie industriously smashing bricks to dusty smithereens in the driveway while they played "brick factory."  And anytime one of us has to pull something or attempts to get one of the pups to pull something we yell, "Mush! Mush! Mush!" like saucy little Ramona did when the neighborhood paper boy, Henry Huggins, graciously pulled her wayward self home on his sled one snowy afternoon.  Ramona also struggled with words and how fickle they can be -- "sit here for the present" meant she was going to get a gift if she sat there; "the donzerly light" was a friendly lamp in The Star Spangled Banner.

I love a character that can worry as much as Ramona, and take herself and her fears so incredibly seriously, and yet still manage to put her foot in her mouth and involve herself in predicaments at every turn.  Ramona resonates.  If she had grown to adulthood, I think she also would be asked to join a volunteer clown troupe by their lead clown ("Have you ever thought about clowning?!  Um, well, no, I hadn't...).  She also would be loathe to visit islands since everyone knows there's nowhere to escape if something dreadful happens when you're on one.  She also would be enchanted with the Amish people - not for the whole lack of electricity and farming thing, but for the easy fashion decisions their way of life entails.

 I could read tomes of great literature the world over and probably not find more than a handful of characters with whom I so easily identify as I do with small Ramona.  

 

*Incidentally, Neil Patrick Harris was the only person who I ever hung a picture of on my walls during my teenage years.  He was the star of "Doogie Howser" at the time, but still.  That's who I picked to "like."  Yep.  Hundreds of male teenaged stars to devote my heart to, and I choose the one who ends up preferring other guys.  Well, I also had that poster of George Michael that I backlit with my nightlight....good grief.

Carried Away with Choices

  This is a ridiculous photo (flowers in your cleaning caddy?  Please.  Everyone knows the only things that belong in your caddy -- you do have one, right? --  are cleansers, rags, a duster, and a petite dustpan).  

However, I chose this picture for the rope.  Yep, that rope nestled smugly amongst all its little cleaning compadres is unquestionably appropriate.  Because there is nothing that makes me feel more like stringing myself up from the rafters than heavy cleaning.  And given my naturally-whimsical OCD nature, I often engage in heavy cleaning.  

When I am Home Alone, I have choices.  There are tasks that must get done or my eye will start twitching, like laundry and wiping down the counters, and then there are those cleaning jobs that could be done but aren't absolutely necessary.  

And there are all the non-cleaning options -- I can work on figuring out my life's work, I can watch the University of Iowa writing lectures on DVD that I had to have six months ago because I was going to systematically watch every one and do every single homework assignment, I can read any of the heaps of books we own that I haven't even cracked the covers of yet, I can meditate as I make my way down The Mindful Path through Shyness, I can continue my research on friendship, etc., etc.

But time and time again, I clean.  It isn't fun, but it's a whole lot more concrete than figuring out what color my parachute is* (bland, by the way.  It's not even a color - just bland).  In addition, cleaning so nicely fulfills that relentless part of my psyche that demands I keep moving, keep accomplishing order in my life.  And that's why I love that there's a rope in the above picture.  The rope reminds me that cleaning in excess (which is my particular vice, it could be anything done to excess) will result in exhaustion, and with exhaustion comes a skewed frame of mind, a mind that is a touch too desperate for relief. 

You sometimes see a woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping.  ~Rudyard Kipling

 

*Reference to the book about career choice, What Color Is Your Parachute? by R. Bolles.  A read that has given me multiple eye twitches and one technicolor nightmare about horses.

Just what exactly are you doing?

A quick update for those of you following yesterday's post re. my potential initiation into the life of a mermaid:  no deal.  In fact, my hair may be behaving even more obnoxiously than usual thanks to the new styling foam.  And now I will have to traipse back to Ulta to return the product and of course, take a quick moment to spray myself with 100 different perfumes.  At least I will get to employ my Extremely Polite skills again.

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This is the first blog I will have written under a time crunch.  I know it sounds preposterous that a person who stays home alone all day could have things to accomplish in a time frame of any sorts, but I do.  Everyday actually.  

I realized two minutes after the children started school last year that most people think I am wandering vaguely around the house strumming a lap harp and staring wistfully into space all day.  I am routinely asked by family, friends, strangers, and children how I fill my family-free hours.  Or, as the younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes likes to put it when I tell him I have to hang up because I have things to get done, "How can you possibly be busy?! All you have is time!"

The second most-asked question I receive as a stay-at-home person is, "So, are you getting a job?"  This one still throws me for a loop sometimes.  I rack my brain -- have I been unknowingly jabbering away about how badly I'd like to escape the comfort of my home to go to work?  Did the spouse and I somehow procure a second car in which I could travel to a job?  Are we mismanaging our income to the point that it is necessary for me to contribute to the family funds right now?  Think, Sarah...really try and remember... Aha!  That's right, I remember now!  

No. (And no. And no. And no.)

"Really?  Well, maybe after you've had some time to yourself you'll want to get a job next year?"  Maybe, maybe not.  Right now I don't think it would be wise or compassionate for me to abandon the work I do here everyday. 

Unlike the authors of The Career Within You, a 2010 book dealing with career selection, I do think keeping a home and the people within it clean, comfortable, and exposed to beauty requires not only physical skill, but intellectual aptitude as well.  The authors expostulate that stay-at-home work requires only a modicum of complex thinking and objectivity, and little to no aesthetic sense whatsoever (and they were only referring to stay-at-home parents, not the scores of people who choose home keeping without children around).  This outlook is unfortunate, since it minimizes the oft-occurring synthesis of creativity and thought that flows naturally in the home.  Plus, more importantly, this view casts a "littleness" on my work that I think is invalid.  

Luckily for me, TCWY is simply a book, and one that I can choose not to take too seriously (it also has creepy illustrations of unicorns, so it's definitely headed back to the library ASAP).

 

 

Can I Help You?

Welcome to another week of Home Alone.  I hope you have enjoyed an invigorating yet restful weekend.  I personally do not love weekends.  I don't actively dislike them either, but they veer outside of my established routine enough to make me eye them warily and approach them with care.  

Ah sweet relief, it is Monday again, though.  Back to the routine, the solitude, the absence of distractions.  I sincerely love my distractions; but I also love it when they are happily engaged elsewhere, like at work or at school.  Now I can really zero in and apply my lazer-focus to things.  I can turn over the questions of the ages and seek a voice in the Great Conversation.  I can concentrate and intellectually wrestle with deep issues.  

Like my hair.

After pouring over the latest issue of Real Simple magazine (in which very little is actually real simple, but I am an easy mark for it every month with its clean, cheerful covers and engaging articles -- who doesn't want to know how to "make grilling more thrilling" or "beautiful organizing solutions for every room?"), I determined that life would cease if I did not invest in their recommended brand of summer time styling foam.  The article stated that after working this foam through my damp hair, I would get "shiny, bouncy, mermaidy waves."  Um, yes please.  Do I even need to say that mermaidy waves would not only change my hair, but also my life, and my relationship to both?!  

Procuring a product of this importance required a 40-mile roundtrip visit to our local mecca of beauty products - Ulta.  I love browsing in this store, especially the fragrance row.  I usually leave smelling like a riot of dusky smoldering love and eternal flowery passion all twirled together with 14 spritzes of White Linen just for good measure.  What I do not love about this store is their approach to helping.

When I am shopping, I much prefer to be left alone to ponder and make decisions.  I do not want to talk to a complete stranger about what I am looking for today, or any questions I have today (people like me do any necessary research from the safety of home), or if they can help me find anything today.  I am extremely polite about this (I am always extremely polite to complete strangers) giving my standard, "No thanks, I'm just browsing."  But at Ulta, oh Ulta, it is never enough.  

Wave upon wave of employees roam through the store, lurking near the nail polish, waiting to pop out and ambush you near the hair dryers.  Not only do five different people trot by and ask you if you need anything, often the same person asks you repeated times, just in different areas of the store.  Like you're having some sort of freakish nightmare in which you don't really exist, someone keeps up the act that they haven't yet seen you that day (or 2 minutes previously, over by the loofahs).  At best, this is unsettling, but more often tends to be downright frustrating.

However, in spite of having to be uncomfortably vigilant and repeatedly polite while in the store, I did manage to score the last bottle of the magical styling foam that is going to alter my life forever.  If I don't blog tomorrow, you'll know it's because I now have both mermaidy waves and the resulting life of blissful, shiny underwater love that everything about the word "mermaidy" promises.  

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

 Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961

"I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said. "With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night."

"I want to go home and into bed."

"We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said.

He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe." 

"Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long." 

"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."  -- From "A Clean Well-Lighted Place"*

First off, young Ernest is easy on the eyes, isn't he?  I think that explains much about his love affair with nurse Agnes Von Kurwosky when he was only 19 years old, and his subsequent years of toying with women's hearts through 4 marriages and several extramarital affairs.  Even as he aged, he became one of those vital, distinguished-looking men (think George Clooney with a beard) that enrapture women of all ages.  

But this work, his short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," is where my thoughts are today.  Initially, I read ACW-LP in a literature anthology during my freshman year of college.  I loved it immediately; it resonated so completely with my life at the time.  Residing in a crowded co-ed dorm with over a hundred other freshman, I was drowning in noise, grime, and lack-of-privacy.  Not only were the physical conditions misery for me, but the relentless social current, which I observed from a safe distance, totally bewildered me.  I couldn't seem to make friends, couldn't catch the rhythm of engaging others, and allowing others to engage me -- the timeless ebb and flow of making connections.  For the first time in my life, although surrounded by more people than ever before, I was alarmingly lonely.

But when I read ACW-LP, I felt such relief.  I had found a kindred spirit (even if he was fictional and created by an author long since deceased).  Like the older waitor, I too felt the hope, the potential for connection, inherent in an environment that is clean, quiet, well-lit, graced by beauty, and open during even the loneliest hours in our daily cycle - the night.  

That first year of college could not end soon enough.  If I hadn't stumbled across a casual acquaintance from home who gradually became a wonderful friend (and who eventually, years later became the spouse), that year most likely would have been aborted entirely.  As you can well imagine, I never chose a dormitory to reside in again.  In fact, my sophomore year I lived in a pint-sized apartment all to myself, which still didn't do a lot for my making of friends, but did wonders for my emotional well-being.

I think about Mr. Hemingway sometimes.  Did he write ACW-LP because he yearned to experience a similar place, or because he personally knew the ameliorative effects of such an environment and desired to promote them to society through this story... or both?  Or was he merely playing with words and accidentally trapped great meaning within them?  I don't know, but I do know that if I had lived when he did, and I spied him in a restaurant having lunch with wife #3, I totally would've asked for his autograph.

*If interested, you can read ACW-LP in its entirety here:  http://members.multimania.co.uk/shortstories/hemingwaycleanplace.html