My window again, the morning sky dissolving into mackerel cloud. The sun is supposed to burn off that cloud, leaving us with a bright day and a high of 75F, which seems lovely. I look forward to it with a great deal of pleasure.
On today: not much, really. Same old, same old, which isn't bad at all. I want to do some more house cleaning, mostly just attending to woodwork with my cleaning wipes (which are wasteful, yes, but then I don't have to waste a lot of water washing my kitchen rags, and sometimes whatever will prompt you to do the task is the thing you have to do, and hang every other consideration. Remember: This is the Do Your Best house).
Yesterday, the first full day home after our long weekend away, I was noticing in myself what I think is a little uprising of envy in my soul. I recognize this uprising, because I've had it before, specifically about houses. I love houses. At night I walk around the neighborhood fantasizing about what it would be like to live in any of a number of houses I pass --- not really because I want to live in them, although if someone said, Here, we're giving you this house for free, I would say, Why, thank you. It's mostly just that I enjoy houses and enjoy engaging with them imaginatively. I appreciate architecture, I appreciate color, I appreciate design, I appreciate well-ordered space, I appreciate beauty.
But sometimes that appreciation becomes dissatisfaction with what I have. After a weekend in a brand-new house, immaculately appointed and kept --- my friend Christine does quality control related to food, so you had better believe that her kitchen is next-level clean --- my own house is looking pretty rough to me. Now, it's not that I actually want the other house. It is a beautiful house to visit; I don't want to live there. But I do want my own house to be . . . better. And I'm frustrated with all the ways that it's not.
Now, some of this is honestly valid. It's hard to clean my baseboards and window frames, because years of moisture issues (mostly resolved by basement work last summer) have resulted in cracked paint, thanks to the constant expanding and contracting of the wood. It would be actually not safe to have a toddler in this house, and that bothers me. But it also bothers me that the woodwork is hard to clean, and when it is clean, it still looks bad.
I'm bothered by the way the paint is wearing off my kitchen cabinet doors, and the way the worn places collect grime that I can't get off. I'm bothered by the doors themselves, which are old laminate, disintegrating around the beveled door detail, so that they too collect dirt, above and beyond what the beveled detail already collected, and are that much harder to clean.
Don't even get me started on our back porch, which is filthy, thanks to the wind and weather, and also hard to clean, because the surfaces aren't just wipe-down-able.
And then there's my laundry room.
The list goes on and on. This is above and beyond the list of repairs that really need doing. The ventilation hood above the stove hasn't worked in at least five years (and now the paint is peeling, so that I can't clean grime off it, so it's just this filthy defunct thing hanging above my stove). There's rotten wood under the fridge, where the old fridge leaked. There's rotten wood under the broken tile in the downstairs bathroom floor. There's rotten wood by the tub upstairs. Window frames are deteriorating --- though we had them re-puttied and painted a year or so ago, which has improved them on the outside, there's really no help for rotting wood.
I try not to think about these things. In a lot of ways, they're just the trade-off for decisions to travel the last couple of summers --- decisions I cheerfully signed off on. But as I told my husband last night, I would really really like to prioritize our house, because apparently we're living here until we die, a thought which currently fills me with panic. I have seen old people live out their lives in decaying houses, and that's not how I want to spend those years --- in a house I can't maintain, that constantly overwhelms me with its needs and demands.
Anyway, a lot of my current house-related mood is valid. There are things I've lived with for a long time, both cosmetic and . . . what's the word? . . . deeper than that. Other people fix up their houses. Why can't we? That's what I think, and I don't think that this is a bad thought to have.
And part of the remedy, for sure, is just talking about it so that we can find a solution. I can deal with a future in my house (which I do actually love at least as much as I hate it) if I can envision its being made more functional, more maintainable, and more aesthetically pleasant in places where it's not. I have no issues with my living room, for example, or my dining room, except that the woodwork paint is cracked and needs redoing. I have no issues with my front porch, except that the door has been scratched up (thank you, Dora) for two years, and now the screens have a lot of holes, too (thank you again, Dora). I mean, I really can't get too upset about damage inflicted by the dog I chose to have . . . though I do want the screens to get mended, because if they don't keep out the mosquitoes, why have them at all? (Also, I can banish the dog from the porch, which in fact I have done. No more porch time for poor little Dora).
BUT if I have that thought like a constant weather of resentment, then that is bad. If I have that thought because what's in my mind is comparison to someone else's situation, then that's bad, too. By bad I mean disordered and unhelpful, not bad as in a definition of my human character. It's a thing I should take to confession, even if it's not a thing I'd go to hell for, just because I could use some grace to help me amend my tendency to ruminate on these things. So much about sin is just this persistent low-grade spiritual ick, like a virus you can't shake. You feel almost fine, but not really.
So, there's all that. But I can do some things, and doing them does make me feel better. I give myself one little task a day, and it makes a difference. Yesterday I hung some additional tasks on the situation with the ants in the dishwasher. The dishwasher is now ant-free and has had the deep-clean it needed anyway (I had been behindhand about wiping around the inside), but since I had the cleaning wipes out, I did tackle the cabinet doors --- which was frustrating, because see paint deterioration, above, but they do look better.
I had also already vacuumed --- when we got home, the house seemed to be drowning in dog hair, so I did that before we sat down to dinner. I'm being kind of a dragon about having the vacuum cleaner put away in my study closet (closets, now, are a Whole Other Issue, which I am choosing not to think about at this moment), not left upstairs by whoever used it last, because if it's upstairs, then that will derail me completely from any use of it downstairs. The extra step of going up to get it and haul it down: total no-go.
Of course, the other neurodivergent person in my house has the kind of working-memory thing where instead of the first step (which is my issue), it's always the last step of a task that is the bridge too far. Closing a door. Unlocking both bathroom doors. Putting things away at the end of a task. If I struggle to get started, he struggles even to see that he's not finished with something, that there's one more step involved in tying off the thing he's doing --- and this is no more his fault than the trouble getting started is mine.
It's a hurdle, and an obstacle, and one way or another you have to deal with these things sometimes. You can't just sit there going, "I don't do that," unless you actively want a reason for things not to get done. And sometimes, you know, tasks are undesirable, and you want a reason not to do them, and your internal wiring hands you a valid reason --- but then the things don't get done, and life is not better.
AND when you have two people involved, and both of them have these wiring issues, but not precisely the same wiring issues, sometimes that's good. My husband will do things for me that I find hard. He will make appointments, because I have trouble just picking up the phone. He will do legwork, because that's not hard for him. We can work together to accomplish things, and often we do that really well.
On the other hand, I've almost completely taken over meal cleanup, after years of insisting that the rule was that the person who cooked didn't clean up. This is a good rule, by the way, and many married couples follow it. It's logical and fair. But it doesn't work if the person who didn't cook has trouble with follow-through. If that person's working memory is like, The steps involved in this meal are: 1. Eat the meal, and that's it, then you have a problem.
Specifically, you have an expectation problem. You are expecting the other person to understand that there's a Step Two, which is to clean up, and that person does not see it at all. Or doesn't see that it needs to be done right then, and that the task is hanging there unfinished until it is done. This may be exacerbated by your deep interior knowledge that you, the person who has trouble getting started, have in fact gotten started. You cooked the meal. You didn't procrastinate. You got this train going, but now it's got to arrive at the station, and the person whose job you think it is to park it is happy just to keep going and going and going, maybe even forgetting about the train. Maybe just getting off and letting it go. And this makes you homicidal, every night.
You can see what a recipe for success this whole pattern is. And the key thing to remember is that it's nobody's fault. Nobody is deliberately being a jerk in this scenario. People are just doing what their wiring makes it natural for them to do. But from the outside, it looks like two people treating each other really badly. It looks like one person being a lazy, ungrateful butthole, leaving the kitchen in a shambles. And it looks like the other person being --- depending on personality --- a constant nagging harpy butthole or a passive-aggressive, kitchen-cabinent-slamming, snarky butthole. The two people might begin to resemble those things to each other, which is where the real problem is.
I got tired of my own passive-aggressive kitchen-cabinet-slamming snarking tendencies, and I didn't want to nag. I also could see that no matter what I did, it was always going to be hard for the other person involved to believe that there was any urgency about the completion of the whole meal task. So now he does many other tasks, which I recognize as valuable and necessary (like heavy yardwork, which I also used to try to do), and I do the entire meal task. Among other things, this means that everything gets put away where I want it, without my having to snark about how the serving tongs don't belong in the bucket of cooking tools on the back of the stove. The whole arrangement is a lot happier and more peaceful.
Addendum: He does sometimes do the dishes after dinner, especially if I'm busy with other things, or sick, or whatever. He is a nice man and he genuinely wants to help me. And the fact that he's not saddled with that job all the time, as his designated chore, means that when he does do it, he's a lot more willing to do it my way, on my timeline. His chore, his timeline. That's the way it works --- which is fair. But doing-my-chore-as-favor: my timeline gets accommodated, because the whole gesture is an accommodation. Again, fair. It works. And nobody is nursing grudges, which really works. ******
We still haven't cracked the business about putting the vacuum cleaner away where I can access it, but I understand that this is part of a pattern that is not the other person's fault, and I do my best not to be snarky. I practice saying right out, "I get derailed if the vacuum is not where it belongs, downstairs, when I am ready to vacuum. If you would like for me to do this task, please put it away." That's actually hard for me, but the vacuum is a relatively low-emotion thing, so it makes a good opportunity to practice not being passive-aggressive.
All this brought to you by feelings triggered by time spent in someone else's very nice house. I do want to be more grateful for the house I have, because it is a cool house, and I do love it. It's just a lot sometimes --- a thing I really didn't anticipate, in all the years that I fantasized about living in a rambling old house. The key word here, of course, is fantasized. Yes, yes, there's a lot that's really romantic about my house, and I recognize that and enjoy it much of the time. But then there's the reality of needing to keep it clean and maintained, because we are the homeowners and it's our responsibility. It's part of being a good neighbor to our neighbors, but also part of our respect for ourselves, and our gratitude for our home as a blessing. That last part, really, is the antidote to envy, and a virtue I need to work to cultivate more. But also I need to work to figure out how best to communicate so that problems I've detailed above stop being merely complaints, and enter on some actual problem-to-solution trajectory --- a thing the other neurodivergent person in my house is actually on board with, for which I am grateful.
So, yeah, happy Wednesday, how's your day going so far?
Wearing today:
*Wool& Audrey dress (S) in Black Heather, bought November 2022, last worn August 27. 2024 wears to date: 21.
*Thrifted very old Talbots cotton cardigan, bought so long ago I can't remember when, redyed by me in the fall of 2022, last worn May 13. Total 2024 wears to date: 5
*Secondhand Kalso Earth Shoes Mary Janes, bought August 2024, last worn yesterday.
Day 2 hair pulled back in a more controlled half-updo than yesterday's: more hair in the claw clip, less hair loose and around my face. I like this, especially as my hair gets longer.
I took my Audrey dress to the river house last weekend but didn't wear it, opting for my Smock dress instead. In fact, those two dresses have been weirdly interchangeable, I guess as dark neutrals in my wardrobe. I could ask myself why I have both, except that the answer is that one is linen and the other wool/tencel --- in the summer, especially, I have opted for the floatier linen --- and the silhouettes are so different that they aren't really duplicates.
My Audrey remains the serious workhorse of my wardrobe, too, on a year-round basis. I need to plan some presentation/conference-style outfits around this dress, because I will almost certainly pack it for these upcoming events in the late autumn.
It's a great transitional-weather dress, too, good for when you're not sure what the weather is going to do, or for days like today, when it's less hot but still not that cool, yet it's after Labor Day and you feel like not looking like the last rose of summer. The coverage of the maxi-length skirt is helpful --- I can wear bare legs underneath, but not feel too bare. It's not a heavy, warm dress (though it is plenty thermally insulating in cold weather), but the darker color reads easily as a fall-winter tone.
I like the long flow of my dress with this cutaway cardigan, which I also love. I especially love it in this "Wine" color, which is the result of a dye job almost two years ago. I leached out its original dark brown --- usually I overdye colors, but this was so dark that I really couldn't have done that. And the clear wine red is so nice, a red I can readily wear next to my face.
It's not so bright that it overpowers my medium-contrast coloring. And it's a pinky, wine-y red, not a brick or orange red, so that it picks up, rather than competing with, the pink tone of my skin. I might benefit from some lip color, but eh. Am I going to bother? Nope.
I've worn this cardigan so often on Christmas, and then on Good Friday and other liturgically red days. But as with yesterday's purple, I'm making the effort to wear this color, and this particular item, more often in the course of the seasons --- because I have it. It's part of my wardrobe. I chose it for good reasons that still apply (silhouette, craftsmanship, etc). Also, although I don't wear that much cotton anymore, this transitional season is a good time to wear it. I don't need the better insulation of wool or cashmere or silk. But it's not so hot that I'm going to sweat a lot and need something more moisture-wicking (wool, linen, silk). It's not raining: no clammy damp clothing next to my skin.
And I like the contrast of my brown shoes with my gray hemline. I could have worn black Mary Janes, but I think that would have looked more boring. I also like the way these shoes bring in some subtle pattern.
Today's outfit is not exclusively, but is mostly, secondhand. And it is basically what was on my plan, though I'm not sure I planned for this cardigan. It just occurred to me as a good thing to wear with the dress I'd put on the list.
It's a good day for all these things, and now I'm going to go live.
*****But I should also add, with regard to this whole chore question, that we have had to revisit these issues since our last kids moved out. When we had teenagers at home, especially, there were a number of chores that just got done. I did the bulk of the cooking, but a child almost always did the dishes. Supposedly the children were responsible for the upstairs bathroom (and I do mean supposedly), as well as their own rooms. Some people were better at these things than others. And although chores did get done (sometimes well, sometimes haphazardly), the house was never really clean or straight or organized, because more people = more entropy, especially when literally every person in the house is neurodivergent in some way, but no two people are neurodivergent in the same way.
But now the whole house is the responsibility of two people. On the whole it stays neater, because fewer people live here, though I still constantly battle visual clutter, which truly does raise my cortisol levels. And what does need doing can't be delegated to progeny. It's us or nobody. So all of this is still sort of fresh territory, still being worked out, even though we're embarking on Year Four of the rest of our lives as people with no children at home.
More marriage observations:
*It is no harder to say nicely, "Would you please put those dishes in the dishwasher," than it is to say something snarky.
*Self-regulation is the key to lots of things. That doesn't mean you tamp down your emotions and pretend they're gone. It just means that you make the effort to say what you need to say with kindness, charity, and respect for the other person. Sometimes that's a monumental effort, but it is one you have to make. That person is not there to be your punching bag (this message brought to you by years of not actually having the requisite level of emotional self-regulation OR the tools to know how to deal with unwanted emotions, and the acknowledgment that the fact that I am still married is down to pure grace and nothing else).
*It is okay to clean up someone else's mess, but not okay to be resentful about it. If you find yourself feeling martyred, then you MUST say something about the thing you're feeling martyred about, unless you really do want to poison your marriage. It's natural to derive a certain amount of energy and validation from the feeling of being a martyr, but "natural" doesn't always mean "healthy." Digitalis is natural, but you don't want to make it part of your daily diet.
LUNCHTIME (no, I did not have digitalis for lunch, thanks)
I have accomplished some cleaning with cleaning wipes:
*bathroom counter
*some bathroom woodwork
*one bedroom door
*door from bathroom into my office
*kitchen swinging door
*some kitchen baseboards (what I could reach without moving anything)
*dining room woodwork all around the room, plus swinging door
This didn't take long, it wasn't hard, and the results are subtly satisfying. Cleaning woodwork isn't one of those hugely transformative things, but the house does look cleaner when you do it.
That's enough for today, but it all makes a difference.
EVENING UPDATE:
Waiting for the husband to come home and eat the chili I have made: ground beef, a can of black beans, a can of cannelini beans, some beef broth, about five peppers of various kinds, both sweet and hot, and a can of pumpkin, because I need to use it up before I start buying this year's, and it's a reasonable substitute for tomato/tomato paste in chili --- a little odd, maybe, but I've done it before, and the taste is good. Adds a bit of sweetness to the heat.
I haven't been that productive in a writerly way --- tinkered with some lines, but that's all. BUT I have sure cleaned some woodwork downstairs. That's something. I have to remind myself that housework, too, is productivity, and anyway, I'm supposed not to care about "productivity" all that much. I have also walked the dog again. And I ordered groceries, for delivery tomorrow, because that's free. We still have milk and eggs, and I had enough supplies to make this chili for dinner, so I figured I'd take advantage of free delivery. I think I'll try to keep doing that. I tip my shoppers well, but I really don't need to pay up to $9 extra to have them come to me. If I have my ducks in a row, I can plan ahead and not need my groceries like NOW.
I also took a little time and played with possible conference outfits involving this dress and other items from my closet.
The rayon bolo/shrug cardigan: a definite take-with. It dresses up anything it touches. I'd be wearing tights at the very least, possibly either Papillio wedges or even boots. That applies to all the following outfits as well. But I do like this. I'm not sure I've actually worn that cardigan with this dress before . . .
I really dunno about this plum merino blazer cardigan. I like it, but somehow I always wear it less than I think I'm going to. It's a little boxy. Not sure about it, but it is one option for dressing things up in a loosely professional way.
It is a little more finished with a scarf:
Scarves are so super easy to pack. I'll definitely take both of these, just in case.
But then . . .
