we moved into this house in december. it's a little post-war bungalow, and it turned me into a susie-homemaker. in retrospect, i think the ghosts of Housewives Past were gently nudging me along with their dustpans. i mean, i was on the verge of buying a cake platter. and maybe a crystal candy dish. i even made christmas nuts'n'bolts -- and what says '50's housewife' more than savoury recipes involving packaged dry cereal? when the step-bug came home at lunch, i would have a cheese and (soy) luncheon meat sandwich ready for him on the table with a bowl of canned tomato soup.
all i wanted to do was cook, clean, and smile fondly over steaming casseroles in my oven mitts.
mind you, the glass doorknobs, marbled single-sheet linoleum floor and retro aluminum rimmed counters really did seem to make it all easy. easy to hum and scrub, easy to bake and pinch, easy to greet your sweetheart at the door in nothing but an apron and a wink.
and i was interested to see how long it would last, this playing house. the only things i never get tired of are: doing something different every day, and lying around thinking. the perfect day involves both. it's not that i'm easily bored (in fact, i often feel that a tendency towards frequent boredom indicates a severe lack of imagination, or possibly even feeble mindedness), it's more that i despair easily. and feel easily imprisoned. and being required to participate in unchanging routine seems to bring the grumpy crazy out in me. other people can be habitual around me, and i'll often find it wonderful and soothing -- something to rely on -- but when it comes to needing to pull it off myself, well... it goes beautifully for a while, and then just stops.
"what?! you want dinner again?! didn't we just do this yesterday? ugh. you've got to be kidding. look: there's the fridge. go make yourself something involving vegetables."
"what?! i *still* have to water this plant?! it never ends!!"
i can handle doing a thing or two that i don't like from time to time, but if it's the same one or two things every day? every day? i get reduced to distracted fidgets, and then i start to snarl.
i can't tell if this is just my basic character, if it's a result of spending so much time alone as a kid, unrelied on, or if it's because i'm an introvert, or a spoiled brat. in any case, i find not following my nose is like swimming upstream. last night i spent 6 hours cleaning the kitchen because i felt like it. i was up until four. i wiped everything. if, however, last week you had told me to spend six hours cleaning the kitchen, i would have... well, i would have ignored you. and now, i may not clean a thing in the kitchen aside from the dishes for a month or more.
is this weird?
i feel weird.
why is the day-to-day so challenging for me? i'm sensing that J and i are both looking for some one to be the Routine Anchor for the team, and neither one of us seems to be able to pull it off for the other. it's a problem we're going to have to figure out. but how?
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