Last night we went out to the Primal Brewery in Belmont for fish tacos and beer, to join our sufferings to those of Our Lord. On the way home, my husband had to stop by the Abbey to retrieve something from his office. While I sat in the car waiting for him, I snapped this photo of St. Leo Hall in the falling darkness.
So I'm home this weekend, not in the mountains, but that's not a bad thing. Today our own pub is having its annual Oktoberfest --- polka band, food trucks with Bavarian food --- so that's the new plan. I'm glad and relieved to be finished with my class and done at least with my essays for next week. Next week can be a get-ahead week, or a catch-up week, or whatever it needs to be.
At some point we really need to gather all the Norway travel guides and brochures and everything we picked up there into a folder or something that isn't the dining-room table.
I thought about that all week long, as I sat at the kitchen end of the table recording my class --- I like that end wall as a Zoom background, with my dad's watercolor from St. Peter's Square, two Shaker "spirit drawings," and the Bavarian crucifix we bought from our friend Peter, all behind me in the frame. Every day I sat down and looked at all that stuff strewn down the table. But did I do anything about it? Reader, I did not.
That's been the general theme around here, in fact. The Texasgirl and I were talking about this just the other day: our respective propensities for looking around our houses and going, "Oh, that needs doing," and immediately experiencing a little interior implosion. She was talking about this in the context of her current little part-time job as a housekeeper for a couple of families in her neighborhood. Where she lives, there's a whole online network of Catholic families, where people sell stuff, find babysitters, and post jobs. I think possibly her last real job was one she saw posted on this network, and since she quit that job, she's picked up all kinds of small things: babysitting, help for a family whose mother was in the hospital, and now these little housekeeping jobs where, as she says, all she really does is wash dishes and fold laundry for an hour or so, at $17 an hour.
Anyway, she said that she couldn't help noticing how clean and organized these women's houses were, especially given how many people under the age of 16 lived in those houses. She remarked on it to one of the women, who said, "Oh, well, we have housecleaners come three times a week." Aha, thought the Texasgirl, so that's your secret (And you're paying me to fold the laundry and do the dishes?). And then, in a move so painfully familiar to her mother, she went home, looked at her own house, and thought, Man.
But where was I? See, this is what happens. You start out thinking, "I've got to clear off the dining-room table," and that thought triggers some other thought, and before you know it, there you are with the bougie women in Dallas who have both housecleaners and a personal tidier-upper, who happens to be your daughter. You say to yourself, "Today I really will clean the baseboards in the downstairs bathroom," but thinking about that makes you think about all the things that need doing just as much as the bathroom baseboards do. Then you have the interior implosion and don't do any of it.
Sometimes I think I'm overwhelmed by the sheer size of my house --- which, to be fair, is not that large a house, as houses go. It's not a mansion. It was an extremely comfortable house for six people. So far it's been plenty big to accommodate everybody at Christmas, though my mother and my brother don't think so and have decamped to a hotel for the last several years. It's actually going to start not to be big enough once we have one more married couple, which will happen sooner or later --- we have rooms, but not discrete private bedrooms such as couples like to occupy. I guess when that day comes we'll start booting the unmarried folks onto cots in the upstairs hall, or make them sleep with the dog, or something. As I say, the problem isn't room. I've always thought I could put up a temporary curtain at the end of the upstairs hall, where the little windowseat alcove is, and put a bed in that alcove, and that would be nice. I'm not sure anybody else would agree that it would be nice, but it is indisputably possible.
But again, where was I? Oh, yeah, overwhelm. Sometimes I think it's the size of the house, which could be true, even though as houses go mine is not gigantic. But then the Texasgirl's house is about a third the size of mine, and she experiences the same thing. Of course --- and I have experienced this myself --- smaller spaces are not always efficiently arranged, and they don't always have adequate storage, which is a problem. Where to put stuff so that you can get at it when you need it, other than right out there in the open, is the continual challenge. She also has one more dog than I do, and they've had a revolving cast of sisters living with them at various junctures since they moved in, back in 2020. This has been their first full year, in fact, without a sister-lodger in the second bedroom, displacing Mr. Texasgirl's work-from-home office. And until last fall, both of them were working full-time, which meant that in the free time they had together, housekeeping wasn't what anybody wanted to do. You kind of need some discretionary time to do things like that, rather than blowing the limited time you have for fun on more work.
So we were talking about this. Both of us felt that money spent on professional housecleaning --- assuming you have the money to spend --- is money well spent. I have actually been toying with having someone come once a quarter to do a deep-clean. I haven't priced this yet, mostly because I'm afraid of how expensive it's going to be. But as the subclinical grime mounts up around me, I begin to feel desperate to do something that will actually beat it back down again.
Mind you, the house doesn't read as dirty, particularly. Except for things like the dining-room table, it's relatively neat. We have books piled everywhere, but books aren't mess. Meanwhile, the dishes get done. The bed gets made. The laundry is taken care of. Every surface isn't cluttered with stuff needing to be put away (some surfaces are, but the kitchen counter isn't, for example). Things mostly run pretty functionally. There are comfortable places to sit. I could invite somebody in without having to apologize profusely, even though I'd secretly be saying, Please don't notice the dog hair. Overall, it's not an unpleasant space. But I keep seeing things --- things that are there and need addressing, and I never seem to have the energy or the time to address them. So I keep thinking that having someone come and address a lot of those things for me, resetting everything to a baseline level of cleanliness, would mean that I could then maintain for the next three months, until it was time for them to come again.
Anyway, I'm thinking about all that, but I probably won't do the first thing about it today. The Texasgirl has been better than I am in this respect --- her Instagram lately has been all about fall housecleaning as mine assuredly has not. Mine hasn't been about anything. That's one more thing I don't get around to doing.
I woke up tired today, possibly because I had a whole long involved dream in which I'd been hired to teach third grade. I had my classroom cleaned and arranged, but then somebody started stealing my desks, which in any case weren't enough desks. I had arrangements for maybe ten children, when --- as was borne in upon me --- I would have a class of thirty. I also realized that not only did I have to arrange the classroom, but also to decorate it in some welcoming way, and have a curriculum. When I asked where the curriculum was, people said, "You just gotta make it up." So I climbed out of bed and had some coffee instead. That'll show 'em, those dream-school administrators. I quit, and I'm not going back.
You see why I lack energy for cleaning my house. My dream life is way too draining for all that.
But hey. It's Saturday. Gonna have a waking life, even if I don't clean the house.
And friends, here's what I'm wearing for it:
I'll probably lose the alpaca cardigan before I go outside, but it's only 67F right now, and cooler in the house. I hadn't worn it with this dress before, but I can see that, again, it's going to be a staple. It goes with everything, truly. Aqua, the go-everywhere neutral. You have just got to love it.
Anyway, here's Brooklyn, in fun Saturday mode, worn with my red Xero Cassies, because it seems like a good day for barefoot shoes, as a change from Birks. For once I'm not wearing a Kosher Casuals crop top under, but instead have on this Pact bralette/crop top, which offers lower coverage but still coverage --- even if my dress fell completely open, I wouldn't be flashing my obvious underwear. I am actually wearing an obvious bra under the Pact piece, for whatever that's worth. I broke down and bought a couple of "nicer" bras, I guess --- nicer in the sense that they actually hold stuff up a little more, without being underwire. I have to admit that I like the way they fit. They're not natural-fiber, which I don't like. I always feel I've got to wash them after every wear, though as I'm hand-washing whatever I take off as I take it off, that's not so onerous. Still . . . I can tell I'm not wearing a natural fiber, and I wish very much that makers of cotton, bamboo, and wool underwear would come up with a design that actually does something other than be natural on your boobs.
But whatever. I put one of those bras on today because I just feel like looking extra-nice, for fun. That's why the red shoes, too. They're a little extra.
Of course I'll probably lose the cardigan, or at least put on a much lighter one. The high today is 83F, quite pleasant, but warm.
You see, don't you, why I never have the energy to clean my house. I'm too busy doing important stuff like this.
You flounce around in the bathroom mirror for ten minutes, and then, I tell you, it's all over. You're done for the rest of the day. Positively done.
Except that now I need to walk the dog --- stylishly.