The old Must Be Nice

You know, you work real hard on something basically pointless like your kid's braids or a cake or the Valentines or some other mother's child's costume for the play and every once in a while some jerk comes around and takes a look and then compliments you by saying, "Must be nice to have time for stuff like that!"

Flrblkjtlimbbb.

Garowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwk

Xchamu! XCHAMOOOOG I SAY!

But actually, it is nice to have time for stuff like that. Thank you God and, to the extent that he will allow me to credit him,  husband. 

It's not my fault people like that are jerks, and if they dropped off their kid at my house in the morning I'd braid that scraggly kid too (solely as a favor to the kid, however).

Blue room

Somebody tell the passionate housewives desperate for God: I finally painted a room in my house. I can't claim it was for a love of beauty; on the other hand, maybe a disgusted surrender to indisputable unsightliness counts for something.

I had some blue paint, so I used it. I think I did an OK job for somebody who was too scared to look at How To Paint Dot Com before trying to paint something. Ignorance is the gift that keeps on giving.

At long last, the point: now I walk into that room and think, "Why is this room blue?" which (substituting in the relevant color) is what I always think any time I walk into a room that isn't white.

I just don't get it.

Let's be clear about one thing.

Cleaning with vinegar makes your house smell like vinegar. Not prelapsarian freshness. Not naturally clean. Vinegar.

This magic moment

One of those threats that gets made about not staying home with kids (for those who have the luxury of making that decision) is about all the magical moments that end up being given over to someone else. The hired hands of the world are getting the first smiles and first steps while the mothers are doing exactly what I do all day except that they do it for strangers.

But the magic argument would not convince me. I'm not a person to get terribly excited about milestones or moments. What I find much more compelling is the grunt work argument. Although I wouldn't be thrilled about the joy of my baby's first smile falling to a hired hand (to whatever extent that might bring joy to a hired hand), I like much less the idea that someone else is doing the filthy work my own choices have generated. I think that the least pleasant tasks which are included in the care of children are most particularly and appropriately mine. It weirds me out to imagine some other person rummaging around in my children's diapers and underwear all day. It's not that I think everyone else in the world is a pervert, it's just that diaper rummaging is really personal and really gross. Is it possible to pay someone enough for changing a dirty diaper? I don't think so. If some fair price could be put on it, I'm sure it wouldn't begin to fit my budget.

Whether it is a good and generous heart or a needy mercenary who is willing to take on these endless, icky, and ungratifying tasks, that willingness does not negate my responsibility. If my kid pukes on someone, I think it should be on me. If my kid's nose is runny, I think I should wipe it. If my kid is spreading a rash, I think I should itch. I'll likely get some magic thrown in too, but that is a gracious benefit. The gross stuff is what I really owe it to the world to do myself, because no one else should have to.

Just give it to anyone! Absolutely anyone!

A very very very fine house

OK, so whenever that was we were having this talk about how to be the most perfectest homemaker and have a lovely home that everyone thinks is so lovely. And there's the, "You never know when the Better Homes and Gardens photo crew might stop by, and who can really be happy if there's grub on the blinds?" camp, and there's the, "If your house looks like a Better Home and Garden and you spend the whole time wiping microinvertebrates off the fridge handle I'm too afraid to visit" camp. And then there's me and my resignation to a house that looks the way it looks (which I think would be something like, not terrible, not great) and an inability to care that much what anyone thinks about it.

But then I visited a house, and it was Cheryl's house, and we had such a nice day even though I brought six kids with me and it was raining and we didn't do anything fancy (except, oh yeah, listen to an unbelievable concert by Cheryl's kids and bum an organ lesson off the Kantor, who happened to be having a birthday the same day a bunch of hungry urchins showed up on his doorstep), and I was like, well what was so great about that anyway?

What was great is that Cheryl is a gracious lady and her husband is a kindly lord and her mother is an honorable matriarch and her children are polite and personable and generous and patient, not to mention that you've never met a more modest group of ridiculously gifted people. I honestly couldn't tell you if Cheryl dusted before we got there or wiped all the hair off the edge of her bathtub (although she probably did). I was too busy having fun, eating a nice lunch, and getting forgiven for all the barbarisms my children were committing* at Cheryl's house to notice.

I know this doesn't totally solve the housewife's dilemma of just how sinful it is not to get the clean laundry put away before you need the basket again, but I thought it was informative.

(PS, Cheryl--I put the Dr. Seuss book on top of the Europe puzzle. Gah!)

*What were they even thinking?

I don't know why it took me so long to get one of these

But I do know that I shan't be without one again. Especially whilst pregnant.

Chances of the floor getting swept just increased dramatically.

Having it all

There is a way to have it all, even for "you can't have it all"ers. That way is to marry late. I can name without much thought a number of smart girls who, not having been given a husband early, found ways to keep themselves busy and solvent and in the process made good names for themselves in their lines of work. Many of them are able to keep up that work after marriage since they established themselves in it beforehand. I wonder if they know how many of us are sitting in our houses feeling really jealous.

If they did, I think a lot of them would come and give us a hard kick.  Many of them sat in their houses at the end of countless workdays knowing every bit of that jealousy. Although I didn't have to live with it long, spouse anxiety is not a good feeling. Everybody wants that question answered. I'm not even going to talk about loneliness; the mention suffices. Though I may envy the lady who now has the husband and kids AND the name recognition and credentials and therefore public respect and earning potential I never will, I would not sacrifice one hour with the husband God gave me for any of that. It is better for me to tend his hearth than to be known and successful in the market. Our length of days together has also meant a family so big we can barely fit ourselves and our picnic into the car.

I like the idea of having it all. But I like my husband, like, so much more (and picnics too). So let's not be jealous, because they're really nice girls and they've earned what they have now. That's how their lives went and this is how my life went and haven't we all wasted enough of our lives wanting things that aren't ours? How much worse is it to mope about something we don't have that we know we don't really want?

". . . and last of all, behold! the mustard pot, which he had been sitting on without knowing it . . . ."

Stir occasionally and keep track of the water

Here's something that seems weird to me about babysitting/day care: the kids get attention paid directly, exclusively to them all the time. That's not how it works at home (mine, anyway). At home I spend as much time as possible picking up, cleaning up, cooking, doing laundry, and whatever else I can to keep this place operational as long as the kids are operational without my direct involvement. They usually kind of follow me around while I do these things and find things of their own to do in the same vicinity (I wear the baby or park her where I'm working). Eventually I get tired enough and/or they whine enough that I will sit down and read books to them for a while (I almost never "play"--I am a grownup, and they can knock down blocks without my help). Then I feed them something and we go back to our semi-interactive businesses for a while. This cycle repeats throughout the day.

A child care arrangement is designed solely around keeping children occupied/entertained. No adult there has to make supper or straighten the bedrooms or keep up with laundry. While I am very aware that it is my job to care for my children and teach them what they need to know, this does not mean that I spend every minute of our shared day crawling around on the floor and providing them with structured activities. My caring for them includes providing an acceptably livable house and decent meals, and that means they don't have my undivided attention all the time. I am always with them, but I am not always singularly engaged with them. I have more jobs here than just child care--thank goodness, because I (like many women and nearly all men) would go completely insane if talking to babies was all the day held for me.

The babies are not a Crock Pot, but they are definitely not a wok. They're more like a double boiler.

To the person who donated these pjs to the CSL Resellit Shop nigh on ten years ago

I just wanted to let you know that six babies have worn them. Thanks. :)

I'm waiting to be impressed

When is TV going to make cleaning up the kitchen as hip as it made cooking?

I really don't care how great this tastes. Where are my sink and counters?

Way to go, everybody else

OK, this is pathetic and small, but the ongoing existence of this blog testifies to my belief that it's a good idea to keep telling the world how pathetic and small I am (yesterday's post notwithstanding).

Nothing makes me more sad and jealous than hearing some other mother praised in the gates, especially by the proud husband and the proud parents, for her work-related accomplishments. That's a bonus I just can't earn.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Making one's toilet

I hereby defy whatever person came up with the idea of cramming toilets into intimate nooks and between bathtubs and counters and behind privacy walls. That person obviously never had to clean a bathroom. I would also like to know if the arabesque sculpting at the base of toilets, a grace enjoyed only by those charged with removing the filth which accumulates daily upon it, reflects some practical necessity of plumbing. If it doesn't, whoever came up with it is another jerk.

I'll wipe that up right after I finish my cake.

And you thought you were hardcore

Recently I wished to express my sympathy to a church lady who had been subjected to suffering at the hands of sinful men: her doctor hassled her so long about something at a morning appointment that she missed being able to get biscuits from Hardee's. (This lady emails a report to interested parties after each of her chemo treatments. The reports are always hilarious, and usually include what she ate on the way home. She would be the best blogger ever.) She affirmed that this treatment had been egregious and went on to tell me that although Hardee's has the best biscuits, "the lard--

[here I begin nodding like the know-it-all I am, expecting a comment on the inferiority of shortening or butter to lard]

"well, you sure can tell the difference between what you get at the store and home-rendered."

Right.

Sellout.

Mercy care of women for the non-deaconess, at-home deaconess, or deaconess who isn't too busy parsing

(It's OK, some of my best friends are deaconesses.)

At one of our stops in the seminary process, we had a baby. A lady from the church to which we had been cobbled at that time gave me a call when he was about a week old and asked if I were up for a visit. She came to the house, sat and talked to me for an hour, and left me with a plate of cookies and a cute burp cloth for the baby.

I haven't seen her since, and the baby peed on the plate of cookies while I gave him a bath on the counter (first boy--I had some things to learn). But that burpie I've still got, and it's one of my favorites. It was just a trifold cloth diaper onto which someone had sewn blue gingham edging. I always put it in my church bag because it looks distinctly unlike a grubby old kitchen towel I grabbed at the last minute, which is what the rest of my burpies look like.

All of which is a long way of saying that I thought it was really nice of that church to have done that for me (particularly since, as seminary hobos, we were just passing through). This relates to one of my troubles: a constant feeling that I'm not a very good church person because it's so hard for me to get out. No infirm or bereaved person wants a visit from a church lady who's dragging five kids with her. Add to that the fact that infirm and bereaved persons DO want visits from their pastor, and it's pretty rare for me to do much calling. The parental divisions and conquerings must be given over to Dad making calls.

But since Dad does get out to see them, it's easy for me to make deliveries. So here are a few little projects I've collected for the invisible at-home mom who wants to express some basic goodwill on behalf of the parish.

New baby. I write a note to the mom telling her congratulations and that she's in my prayers, and send along a cute burpie. There's really no wrong way to make one out of flannel or terry cloth, and the small cuts keep it economical. I keep hoping that the more of these I make the better chance I have of actually learning how to sew. It's nice having a stockpile of them for short-notice baby presents anyway.

New grandma. For the frequent- or primary-care grandma (a common creature in this workaday world), Pack-n-Play sheets are usually a good bet and take no more than a yard of fabric, a little bit of elastic, and not that much time to make from cottons, knits, or flannel (basic crib sheet strategy here). The only trick to this is that PnPs come in different sizes, but my genius friend Gauntlets shared with me a formula to make a sheet to fit any size sleeping baby receptacle:

Width of sheet = width of mattress + (3 x height of mattress) + 0.5

Length of sheet = length of mattress + (3 x height of mattress) + 0.5

Square (cut from corners) = height of mattress x 1.5

Sew your hems at 1/4" and your corners at 1/2"

Chemo patient. Commercial head wraps are pricey, but this here pattern is free, easy, and fast. You can get away with a little shorter piece of fabric if you divide the oblong piece into thirds and sew them together to make the complete long piece. You can also use the scrappies to make a matching fabric headband for the patient's sister, daughter, or friend (another idea stolen from commercial chemo head wraps).

For bereavement or other family emergencies, I send food if Dad and/or church ladies report to me that it's in order. Food is risky what with all the allergies and intolerances and diets and hangups, but I guess it's still the best bet for people with immediate trouble.

I'd be interested to hear about other simple, low cost projects along these lines. I can't knit or crochet, but better wives can so include those too. (I can keep up with this stuff fairly easily since Dad's parishes are smaller--at a larger church, a team of people would be in order.)

Survival tactics

It’s travel season, and for those of us with many grubby sprogs and little grubby money, that means it’s time to go a’visitin’. I think our top vacation spots these days are Grandma’s house and your house. So look out, ‘cause here we come. ;)

We’ve been vacationing via a’visitin’ for a few years now, and have thus learned many, many interesting and useful things, each appropriate to our age and sex. Dad has learned a lot about garage organization and guns. Each child has learned a lot about dress-up or fishing ponds or sleeping bags. I, for my part, have learned perhaps the most important lesson of all: A home-bound woman’s kitchen is an extension of her; don’t touch it.

Hoo boy, this is a big deal lesson. But it is actually very difficult to enact it in real life. You know how it is: You are in a friend’s house and she is busting her tuckus trying to feed not only her own people, but yours. You stand by and watch for a time, but your conscience starts nagging you. Your friend sure is working hard, and there you stand, doing nothing. Soon, you are feeling guilty, and those guilty feelings start to out with nervous giggles and a few, “What can I do to help?” When your friend smiles at you and says that she’s got everything in hand, you try to believe her, but your guilt starts bordering on anguish. She’s working! She’s working so hard! For YOUR FAMILY! This is WRONG! You MUST WORK TOO! AAAAAAAAUGH!

And about then is when you grab a spoon and start stirring something or, even worse, a rag and start wiping down the refrigerator door. Step away from that rag, friend. It’s just not worth it.  

Nooooo, you're not.

When it comes to another home-bound woman’s kitchen, it is nearly always the best, most tactful policy to do nothing whatsoever in that kitchen. Speaking for myself, when I know people are coming to my house during meal time, I put a great deal of thought into planning exactly how, when, where, and what everyone will be eating, and then formulating a War Plan Red on how the food will be prepared. I typically expect that the visiting folk will be occupied with Other Things when it comes time to enact my plan, so I very seldom calculate in their participation. Hence, when someone, anyone, starts dancing around like gas on a skillet, wanting something to do, finding something for her to do is difficult. Trying to help someone “help me” usually pushes dinner back a good half hour, by which time everyone under the age of 10 is crying, and everyone else is standing in the kitchen door looking pathetic.

As I’ve become more competent in my kitchen, I’ve worked at including what women will be in my preparation plans, but this doesn’t always pan out. Even women who are very skilled in their own kitchens (and, likely, even more skilled than I am in mine) aren’t always able to assist in the creation of a meal around here. This is, I think, due to having what my own dear sister-in-law has referred to as a “one-butt kitchen.”  Funny how even a sprawling, state-of-the-art masterpiece-theatre kitchen usually only accommodates one home-bound butt.

Because, like I said, a home-bound woman’s kitchen is an extension of her. She knows it very, very well. A resident visitor doesn’t know it any better than she knows her friend’s unspoken thoughts. You might think you’re safe to put that spatula in the drawer full of spatulas, but what you don’t know is that spatula is only for hummus, and thus belongs in an entirely different drawer. Put it “away” and it will be lost for weeks.

Step away from that spatula, friend. No touchie the spatula. Trust me on this.

HOWEVER! Having been on both sides of those guilty feelings, I know that you absolutely must do something, or you’ll combust. Make that something one of three things:

1. Keep your friend company. If you’re not doing anything to get in her way, then it’s OK for you to be in the kitchen. Just relax over in the corner and talk to her. She likes you. And if you’re lucky, she might take pity on you and let you toss the salad or give the potatoes their spa bath.

2.  Play with the baby. Stress is a crying child in the midst of War Plan Red. Egad. When someone, anyone, everyone starts crying, deal with it. If you find the task hard because you’re too strange a stranger to whomever is crying, quietly find A Way. Be creative. Be brilliant. Be all that you can be. Your friend will love you for it all the more.

3. Find something else to do entirely. This is especially true if you are visiting a friend at the same time as someone in her family. Always, always defer the out-of-the-way corner (and always the stirring spoon) to your friend’s sister or her mother-in-law or her cousin. And it may also be necessary to bug off if the number of women who want to be in the kitchen is odd. It stinks, but it’s important to be cool with being the odd woman out. And if you’re bored as a result, find some kid who’s crying and play with him.

It is possible that after everything has been eaten and you’re sure the cooking phase is over, you might be able to help with the dishes. But even here, proceed with caution. Nothing is self-evident in the kitchen. And there is only one right way to load the dishwasher.

Of course, there are circumstances wherein you absolutely must help in the kitchen, but I think those are few and far between. Then again, I only know what I know. So, you know. Good luck, friends, and happy visitin’. :)

Full kitchen press

A few Mothers Days ago, I received a tortilla press. The white girl is strong in me. I make lousy white girl tortillas. I also learned that making tortillas turns Taco Night from one of the easier Nights into one of the harder ones. So not a whole lot of tortillas get pressed around here.

But I have zero regrets about owning this awkward and heavy piece of hardware, and this is why:

--Runzas are a million times easier now, and I married a guy from Nebraska.

--Until Grandpa gets my pneumatic pie crust press built, I use the tortilla model to train up my pie crusts in the perfectly circular way they should go. (The press is only eight inches but starting the dough there keeps it from taking the shape of some creepy un-pie-like trapezoid so it's easy to roll out the rest of the way. I also think pressing keeps the dough from getting overworked. Or maybe it overworks it. I don't know.)

--This past Laetare I used it to squash beautiful, uniform, round layers of marzipan for our simnel cake.

--Although I also avoid cracker-making on the grounds of pain-in-the-neckness, the tortilla press gets pulled out on the occasional cracker days, too.

--Lacking a juicer, I used the press to squeeze a five-year-old's weight in splendiferous grapefruits we received as a gift (that was after we ate as many as we could--thank you snowbirds!). I also managed to squeeze a "Clever girl" out of my husband for this one, which is all I'm ever really after.

So, white girls, don't rule the tortilla press out of your kitchen's life. There's so much more in the world than tortillas that needs to be flattened.

In praise of parsonages

A few weeks ago, a former pastor of our church who recently fell asleep in Jesus was interred here. The day before the service, his family arrived at the old stomping grounds. Broke into the old apartment . . . this is where we used to live . . . .

So we invited them in. This wasn't one of those courtesy open houses so everybody from church can see that you're not trashing the place and you pretty much figure no one's going to ask to go upstairs (NB: they might). These people grew up here. They were in no way forward or presumptuous, but even I can cipher serviceably enough to figure out that this was more their house than ours. We warned them that we live here and we have five kids, and then we opened every last door. It was nice. :) And how else would we ever have learned that there actually IS a laundry chute?

(An aside before I get all up in your grill. The previous lady of this house told me that to clean one ill-placed window, she would lay a plank from the balcony railing to the window sill, climb out on it over the stairs, and scrub suspended between heaven and earth. Let me tell you, neither that window nor its blinds--which I have given many a resigned thought--are getting cleaned as long as I'm this place's sorry excuse for the lady.)

On to your grill. In seminary there was a general impression that you didn't want a parsonage. It wasn't your house. Church people would expect to be able to come in all the time. They wouldn't take care of problems. They'd pick ugly paint. They wouldn't replace carpets. Oh, those awful church people, whoever they are! And equity, won't someone think of equity??

Here are the disclaimers: as I've confessed before, I'm not exactly an HGTV junkie. Decorative aesthetics are nowhere near the top of my domestic priority list. There are some things about this house that would probably make more attentive homemakers completely freak out, whereas I merely find them funny. There also isn't a white-glove committee from the Ladies Aid stopping in to inspect my mantles for proper dusting. If something needs to be fixed or we want to change something, not only is it not a big deal, but someone from church usually comes over to help. I'm not talking about the horror stories.

But outside of the horror stories, I've got to give the bad parsonage press a hearty MEH. There is no way our parish would be able to offer a salary that could have landed us in a house like this, which allows us to quarter a growing number of people more than comfortably. I have a hard time imagining many congregations of our beloved Synod (at least, not the kind that would call my beloved husband) putting us up so well from a paycheck. And I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb (or a plank 12 feet over my stairs) to suggest that getting out of debt profundis may be of greater relevance to most fresh-faced seminary graduates than more advanced financial achievements like equity.

As for the parsonage horror stories themselves: I recently heard another from someone. If this particular incident had happened to me, in this parsonage, with this congregation, it would not have bothered me in the least. Again, I would have found it funny. I don't know what the context was; I'm sure there was plenty of back story involved. I'm guessing it had a lot more to do with the parish than the parsonage proper. It's hard to imagine a messed up parish and a bad parsonage situation not being pretty tangled up in each other.

Since we've lived here, we've had rocks thrown at our bedroom window in the middle of the night (the phone wasn't working), dozens of centerpieces constructed in our dining room and stored in our living room several times, other large items stored in our garage to the exclusion of our car, use made of our dryer and clothesline, calls from the school requesting clean underoos in a kindergarten size, and various other zany events. Yesterday afternoon someone stopped by to see if we had a hair dryer they could use to defrost a church refrigerator. (Not only do I have a hair dryer, but I also almost never have time to use it, so no rush! Thanks for defrosting over there!) To us these aren't horror or even grumpy stories. They're funny stories about our church and its good and hardworking people, among whom we feel blessed to count ourselves. It wouldn't occur to me to call them grumpy stories if I hadn't heard similar tales classified as such by other pastors' wives.

So there's also some back story on the pro-parsonage side. There's some merit to our very house being owned by the people charged with our care, whose care in turn has been charged to the pastor who lives in it. In our case, it's like a good marriage, where both parties' default position is respect and care; where the conversation starts with "Not to be nosy, but can we help you with that busted screen?" and "Come on in, you're always welcome, and look out for the bowls on the floor because the little guys have been cooking" rather than "What makes you think you can just show up here?" and "Who owns this house anyway?"

And really, who does own this house? They do. It's just true. And who would own our house if we owned it? Well . . . still not us. And who always needs a lesson in humility? I do.

One other thing: although there are trustees here, the congregation's care of our house is not something that happens on some totally official, corporate level. Someone visits and notices the ants which we were perfectly willing to live with; she calls an exterminator. Someone else stops by with his tiller when he's making the rounds in the spring. Someone who does like HGTV can't sleep knowing that the paint in our kitchen is chipping and she repaints for us. Someone who knows one of our kids loves gardening buys a monster cantaloupe and puts it in that kid's squash plant as a joke. Etc.

There's more to be said about this, but as usual I've gone on way too long. I'm glad we're here, and I'm glad we're in a parsonage. I know it doesn't always work out this well.

To the Housewives, to Make Much of Peace, no matter how much you've already made of it

And then there are the times I wish they'd start fighting again . . . or maybe that someone would just miss me . . . so I could sit down and read books for a while.

The sink! Someone has to stay at the sink!

Growl.

I like how everything a housewife does is cool as long as it's not a housewife doing it. Cooking, gardening, sewing, yarny things, painty things, buildy things, and whatever else are cool and require top-of-the-line equipment and accessories when they are pursued by hobbyists. If I do it, it's boring and vaguely embarrassing, and cheapo brand products are more than sufficient tools for my pathetic twitches in such directions.

Best of all, a dad who stays home with his kids is the hugest hero of all time, whereas I only do it because I don't have any respectable education, skills, earning potential, or ambition.

Explanatory variables

I wonder if test subjects were asked to load a dishwasher rather than idly rotating objects in space, women would perform more competitively with men in spatial reasoning?

You call this full?