Somewhere, in the middle of the most reptilian part of my brain, I’ve got a notion of the Ideal House.

Most of the time, that notion is relatively well-behaved.  It realizes that I only have so many hours in each day, and that if I have any hope of ever finishing any project EVER, I’ve got to prioritize those projects.  (Sadly, I keep letting my job get in the way, but that’s another struggle for another day’s blogging.)  It waits patiently, and lets me coo little platitudes at it.  Things like don’t worry, I can create you one little bit at a time…, or if I just made some time to do this thing or that thing, then I’d be able to bring you to life…   My notion goes on with its notioning (whatever it is when notions do when you’re not actively working on them or with them) and I go on with the INSANE CRAZY THAT IS MY LIFE SOMETIMES.

Every now and again, though, my Notion gets all capitalized and uppity.  It refuses to sit quietly in the back like a star pupil, but instead becomes the village know-it-all and sits in the front lobe of my brain, waving its hand and grunting that IT KNOWS THE ANSWER!  PICK ME!  CALL ON MEEEEE!

Apparently, my Notions are seven years old, and well-read.

Anyway…

The holidays are a catalyst for my inner uppity Notion.  Add to the holiday idea that I just had a giant success at work.  Like, giant, giant.  Huge.  One that will mean a lot more money for my family.  A good thing, at least for a while.  So I have even less time to devote to this Notion Of An Ideal House than I did before.

Oooh, the Notion…   The Notion did not approve.  The Notion has been trying to catch up on her blog reading today, and has come away thinking that if I can just finish this gift for my in-laws, I could TOTALLY make a bunch of holiday ornaments, garlands, an advent calendar, pick up some festive lights and a real Christmas tree this year (we have only a small little 3′ thing that’s totally not in-scale with the rest of our house), and make all my holiday gifts.  And with my free time after that, I can read all those books I’ve been saving (and collecting.  let’s be honest here: my yarn stash is nothing compared with my book stash, which is hideously insane and almost obscene.), AND make a bunch of cookies to hand out.  Oh, and whip up some holiday cards with handwoven pins as the front image.

Um.

Notion?

YOU ARE KILLING ME HERE.

I’m back to the issue of Balance in my wifely pursuit now.  I waste a lot of time every day; I know this.  But I need that creative recharge time to, well, creatively recharge.  Or my brain implodes and I become one of those Scary People you see wandering the malls at closing time, staring blankly at anything with a price tag and trying to rationalize giving her mother-in-law a belt sander for Christmas because the sweater she was trying to knit for her just wasn’t happening.

I’ve been collecting Housewifery books for a while now, and all of them tell me that I need to put my home and marriage (and children, were there any) first, and worry about everything else second.  And I can see that.  I can see that there are major changes ahead if I continue on the course I’m on.  (In the new year?  I’m finally quitting smoking.  I bought the patch already.  I’m serious about it this time.  And I’m picking up a bike trainer.  If I can’t be back home in the Northwest, I can at least bike in my living room and pretend.  It’s time to do something about the fact my pants no longer fit.)

And I think the biggest change is going to be allocating my time more toward my uppity Notion.  Building my house the way I want it, to facilitate more Calm and Peace here (instead of “Chaos” and “Dog Hair Encrusted”, which it kind of emanates now.).  That means my job is going to be taking a bit of a backburner, in a sense, but in a way that will allow me to complete the essentials and still focus on Other Things.  (Right now, it’s all Job, literally all the time.  Soooo not working.)

Looks like I may have finally called on the smart kid in the back of the room.

I’m still not sure about the tree.  We’ll see.

I know it’s been a while. November is a traditionally-hectic month for my family. It’s the one time of the year where I’m making preparations for the holidays so that I can enjoy my December without that pressure to get everything done ALL AT ONCE.

So I do my holiday shopping during November, preferably BEFORE Black Friday (when the rest of the known world goes all crazy with the Visa), so at least my non-handmade gifts are all done and wrapped, and just waiting for the Season to arrive.

Whew.

What this also means is that I’m doing a whole lot of Project-ing that I can’t document publically. Unfortunately. Lots of presents on my knitting needles and flying through my sewing machine, and not a single one has a digital picture taken of it. I mean, in this day and age of Google, it’s may be unlikely that a giftie recipient would find it, but you never know.

Now, all excuses for radio silence aside, there’s a Thing that’s been going on here in my crafting room. (And soon to be followed by the rest of the house.) Some will think I’m insane, given the time of year it is. Some would probably be right — it IS insane.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like we have too much stuff. I think I talked about this before. If not here, than on a few of the message boards I’m on. I’m to the point where even my hobbies are starting to make me feel guilty, because there are Far Too Many Projects(tm), and not enough time in the average lifespan to ever get to them all. My biggest offenders? Fiber and books and fabric. And art supplies from my former life as an artist that I can’t let go of. (My life has taken me in an altogether different direction, and now I’m trying to focus more on my home and family rather than a career in general anyway.)

I have this Scarcity Thing(tm) going on. Like, when I find something, I tend to buy as much of it as I can, thinking that someday, I might not have the money or the availability to it. Which is ludicrous, especially when we’re talking about things like sock yarn or spinning fiber. There is a TON of it on etsy alone, not to mention sites like The Loopy Ewe that consistently get in all the yarns I like. (And they’re about to carry spinning fiber, too, if Sheri’s blog is any indication! That noise you just heard? That’s me, falling over with glee.)

So why is it that I feel the need to cocoon myself in a giant puffball of fiber and yarn and fabric and books!? My studio is a huge room — I mean that. We’re talking right around 30 feet x 20 feet. Giant. Humungous. Very, very large. I’m blessed. I know this.

BUT…and this is a big BUT….it’s full. Full of stuff. Granted, some of it is from my other business, which is fiber related, but oh. mah. maude. It’s obscene.

Last night, while lamenting the fact that my house is still, after several months of trying to make healthier, cleaner routines, and cleaning things out several times before, a giant Ball of Chaos and Crazy…I had this sudden, undeniable urge to get rid of ANYTHING that I’m not currently using, do not love, or that I love and won’t use because “it’s too good”. I mean, there are yarns in my stash that I love so much that I don’t want to knit with them, because it might mean that they’re then gone, which, really, is kind of the epitome of Crazy.

With an iron fist, I made a pass-through the stash, culling out anything that’s just slightly not my style anymore. I filled two baskets. I announced to my local stitch & bitch girls that I was having a clear-out sale on December 1st, and that they were invited to paw through the stashness. Energized by the response and the thought of being free (how sad is it that a stashless — or greatly stash-reduced — state would be considered “free”??), I made a second pass, this time with a giant red pen, slashing out the things I love TOO MUCH, and the least favorite of my favorite dyers. (I let myself keep a bunch, but told myself that things? They had to change. And there are some that I, honestly, like better than others, even from my favorites.)

When all was said and done, with my books, my fabrics, my art supplies, my yarns, my fibers for spinning….the pile looked like this:

Forgive the nasty flash picture.  It was midnight by the time I was done.

Two baskets, a rubbermade bin (one of the big ones), a full tabletop (and it’s a 12′ table!), and a spinning wheel.  I kid you not.

Anything that doesn’t sell to the girls will end up going on etsy or ebay.  I’m determined to hold the din of clutter down to a dull roar.  I still have a fair bit left, but the amount that’s left over seems like a walk in the park — carefree, and without guilt.  It’s an amount that makes me a little anxious (what if I run out!? keeps going through my head — a scenario so unlikely that it’s probably MORE likely that I get hit by a bus in my living room.), but it also makes me feel like I COULD go through it all.  That I COULD get everything done.  That I COULD, in theory, knit and spin and make everything I want to make, and still have time left over to play with other stuff.  It makes me undeniably happy.

Of course, now I want to play with everything I have left, but THAT kind of pressure I can deal with.  It’s now a reward for housekeeping — do 15 minutes of work, and I get to play for a few minutes, instead of dragging my tail to the studio and wondering where to even start.

I love that.

Two little hints of note:

1.  I found this little tidbit from the Happy Slob about cleaning out your dryer lint-trap, since dryer sheets can actually damage your dryer over time.  Interesting!

and,

2.  If you’re on Ravelry, there’s a group there called “Reclaiming the Home” that’s run by the girl from this site.  She’s doing recaps of the discussion on her blog, and it’s turning into a great resource to read through.  The crock pot recipes have me dancing in the aisles.   It’s actually a discussion on this board that got me going with the stash clearout.

Random aside:  While doing the stash clearout, I also got rid of some old momentos from a previous relationship.  (I’m a widow, now remarried.  Yes, I’m only 36.)  I didn’t even look at them.  Just tossed them in the trash.  It was a giant milestone, since I’ve been lugging them around for ten years.  It was awesome, and added to the feeling of Finally Free.

I’m home alone again at the moment.  J’s been gone for just over a day, and luckily will be back tonight.  Which, of course, means I need to feed him, and I’m just NOW getting my tail into gear.  I’m smelling a grocery-store run in the very near future.

For the record, we’ll be out of town this weekend, so I haven’t wanted to battle the grocery store when we’ll be gone for four days anyway.  Plus, the past two days, we’ve been dealing with a lot of stuff with our little visitor-dog.  Apparently, she’s microchipped, but the owner?  Total garbage.  Said he was coming to get her and didn’t show up, and since she was injured last weekend and needed vet care, this was A Very Bad Thing.  According to the laws of the land, apparently, if we got her vet care, not only would we not be able to recoup our losses if the former owner DID show up, but we’d also be open to being SUED for doing anything to his “property”.

What kind of world is it when you find a creature that needs help, get them help, and lose your pants in a lawsuit?  So not fair.

So we are going through the proper channels to make her ours so this never happens again.  She’s at Animal Control right now, and in five days, we pay the ransom..er…fee, and pick her up again.  Her microchip will read *us* as the owner then, rather than the guy who obviously dumped her off.  At least we’ll know she’s safe.

And it’s another step on the road to becoming a ginormous pack of dogs in general.  Four??  Like I need more dog hair around here.  My husband sheds badly enough….

I’m looking forward to three uninterrupted days in the hotel, though.  I have some knitting I want to get done  (I knit.  A lot.  And I’m a joiner, obviously, so I’ve now joined two different shawl-knitting challenges.  Two.  Because I have eversomuch free time.), and I plan to, well, do some planning.

Over at this new site I found, Reclaiming The Home,  she’s posting her to-do lists.  (She’s also a knitter/creative type.  I like knitters.  And creative types.  They’re just my type of crunchy granola with a side of wool.)  I’m still planning on posting mine over under that “About the Project” link, when I can sit down for three minutes and come up with one.  Possibly tonight.  And there may be a few posts in here tonight, as well, when I can locate the camera cord.  I’ve been a nutjob for work the past two days, and haven’t had much of a chance to do the things that I WANT to do for my home and family.  I really need to re-examine my priorities, I think.

There’s a cold north wind blowing in, so I should let the furchildren inside and close up the house.  (I was airing it out — it gets very musty in here, what with it being a giant metal box and all.), but there will be more later.

I’m really, really enjoying connecting with all these people who value the home and family as much as I do.  I was beginning to feel just a bit like an isolated breed when I started this blog.

Well, that kind of sucked.

The very second my husband went out of town, my voice started acting wonky. And since my other job requires my voice, I had a little bit of an inner squee, thinking that I’d have lots of time to work on the house. I mean, after all, you can’t have wife-guilt if you literally can’t do your job-for-pay, right?

Trouble is, the laryngitis came with some friends — fever and congestion — who were very bad houseguests and caused me to lie about, snuffly and whining, all by myself, for most of the duration my husband was gone.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men, blah blah blah. Sigh.

However (!!), I did get one wall of the studio painted, which will probably eventually become a playroom for the kids if my ovaries would just stop with the nonsense, and I survived. There were days I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to, but the virus-laden bus that appears to have hit me also appears to have moved on to the next lucky recipient of it’s mucous-filled joy. Whew.

So I promised a couple of book reviews, and since I was down for the count when I should have been writing them, I figured I’d do those now, and take some pictures of the New Wall when I get some curtains sewn for the window. (This week. Or bust.)

(put behind a cut, since they got a little longer than intended…)

(more…)

Remember how I said I loved the new vacuum?

Yesterday, I finally ventured downstairs with it.  (I’ve had it upstairs, deep vacuuming the bedrooms and hallways and office spaces that were knee-deep in dog hair.  It’s been an uphill battle, really, and even though I’d gone over them once a day every other day, I was still pulling up dirt and hair with every pass, until yesterday, when I seem to have finally gotten it all under control.)  The living room area of our house is particularly nasty — the carpets are matted and ancient (at least 26 1/2 years old, with dirt probably just as old), and there’s a phantom cat-pee smell somewhere in it that we’ve tried everything short of a nuclear explosion to remove.

So down I go with the vacuum.  It was hard to push on the carpet, probably from the way it’s loose in some places and flattened in others.  (I have no idea why.  It needs to come out, but it’s over concrete, and I’m not prepared to put in a new subfloor over it at the moment.  Hopefully, we won’t be staying quite that long.)  I could literally do about a six-foot-square bit of carpet before I had to stop and empty the canister…it was *that* disgusting.

Mind you, I vacuumed regularly down there until the other vacuum(s) broke.  It’s not as if it’s been sitting without any cleaning for 26 1/2 years.  We’ve even steam-cleaned it to try and rid it of the phantom cat-pee.  Twice, just since the beginning of summer, even.

I noticed, taking the canister off, that it felt heavier than it had upstairs.  Upstairs, it had been largely full of dog hair and a minimal amount of dust.  But on the carpet downstairs?  Emptying the canister, I found that almost ALL of what was inside was dirt.   And not DUST, either….DIRT.  Like we’d been trying to start a garden in our living room.  That heavy, powdery dirt we get out here in farm country, the kind that blows around in the air and gets in your eyes and hair.  The kind that the whole “dust bowl” thing from the depression era was named after.

The carpet is perked up now.  Still not pretty, by any means, but it feels cleaner and looks a hundred times better.  Just from one pass with the Dyson.

Best of all, though?  I pulled out TEN POUNDS OF DIRT with that one pass.  Ten.  Freakin’. Pounds.  I know this because I weighed it.  (Yes, I might be a little quirky.)  I couldn’t help it — the bag I’d been dumping it in was so heavy that it got me curious, and I had to know.  Ten freakin’ pounds of dirt was lurking in my carpet, apparently hiding from the other vacuums.  Seriously.

My other bit of news — my husband’s leaving for almost a week, starting tomorrow at 7 a.m..  He has an out-of-town job that will keep him at least through Thursday, possibly as long as Monday or Tuesday of next week, depending on weather and extraneous construction factors.  (He welds when he’s not on stage.  I tease him about being too metal for metal.)

I’m sad about this, of course.  It’s the first time since we’ve been married that we’ll have been apart for more than 48 hours, and even that was only earlier this year.  I’m worried I won’t be able to sleep without him in the bed with me, or that I’ll forget to eat until eight p.m. and wonder why I’m feeling all woozy.  (I do that.  You wouldn’t know it to look at the size of my rear, but I really do forget when left to my own devices.)  I kind of miss him already.

The positive spin to this, of course, is that I have an uninterrupted week to get a whole lot of work done on this Project.  I’m hoping to take the before pictures of the house, and plan a few weeks’ worth of menus, and solidify my sleep schedule, and do a few preliminary decluttering days.  I’m hoping to spin the yarn for his holiday presents this year, and maybe get started on some knitting for the other ones.  And I’m hoping to have that uninterrupted time to think, too, about what it is I really want to get out of this Project, and out of this marriage, and out of this Life Together.  Maybe do some research or reading about marriage and wifeliness — if I can find any books that don’t piss me off too much.  (I’ve got two, both given to me by well-meaning, thoughtful friends, that just irk me to no end with certain parts of them.  I’ll review them here this week, too.)

I think I need a more specific road map of where I’m going, so that I’ll know when I get there.

But the house is going to seem awfully big and more than a little lonely without him here, too.

Expect lots of postings this week!  (Not that anyone’s reading yet, I think.  No subscribers on bloglines that I know of, and no comments yet.  I’m pretending I’m talking to a small group of you readerpeoples to give myself some accountability for posting, see, but I’m writing for myself.)

I wish I had fabulous pictures for you today, but out where we live, there’s been a string of dreary days with very little sun and torrential rains, and my camera…? Does not like flash. Turns a perfectly lovely picture into a washed-out, overexposed bit of digital celluloid. So rather than scare you with flash-ridden ghouliness, I decided to forego the photo-ing until later today, when we’re supposed to see a bit of blue sky. I, for one, can’t wait. And to say thank you for reading ginormous blocks of text, I’ve got a recipe for you, below.

This whole week has been about trying to find a routine that works for ME. One that can give me some stability and is healthier than the stay-up-until-dawn type of a routine I had before. I realized I can’t take care of my family and my house when I have no energy as a result of the poor habits I’ve cultivated, and the artificial caffeine-laden energy peters out so quickly that I was spending much of my life in a haze.

And I’m fully proud to say that I believe I might have done it. I’m in bed no later than 11 most nights. (Last night was an anomaly, but my husband had a performance and didn’t get home until 1:30. But it was the exception rather than the rule.) I’m up no later than 6:30. The first few days, I was a little bleary-eyed in the morning (and found myself cursing that giant yellow hurty-orb in the sky for being so bright), but by Friday, I was bounding out of bed like the morning person I used to be.

As a result of all the new energy (and the amazing new vacuum, which I’m still loving, by the way), my house is cleaner than it’s been in the last year. Seriously. There’s a long way to go with it, but my carpets are the colors that the factories intended, instead of being grey-brown with dirt and dog-hair, and I can’t tell you how many dishes I’ve done. There’s less clutter because I’m throwing things out, and our bills got paid on time because I knew where they were.

It was made a little more complicated, however, by two things:

First, we woke up on a very rainy Saturday to find a new dog by our door. She’s small and adorable and well-trained, which, to me, says she’s somebody’s pet. We put up signs, checked her to see if she’s microchipped, and called to notify all the area pet shelters. Nobody has claimed her, though, and after ten days, she becomes ours if we want her. Because, you know, what I really need is more dog hair. But she loves us, and the other dogs are starting to love her, playing with her and nuzzling her, and while we don’t NEED another dog, this one sort of found us, so I think we might be stuck with her. And by “stuck”, I really mean, “OMG SO CUTE! MINEMINEMINE!”. Unless her real owners show up. I’d rather see her happy.

Oh, wait!  I have the picture of her we used on the Found Dog posters…lemme find it….

Aha!

Second, our oven broke. It was bad timing — right as I was getting into a routine of making our dinners instead of buying the pre-packaged crap, and baking more than buying a lot of high-fructose-corn-syruppy stuff. I ended up getting intimately acquainted with my crock-pot. Like, to the point where I may never go back to a regular oven. (I will, once it’s fixed, but I’m hyperbolic in my love for this week’s crock recipes.) There’s something fabulous about being able to throw in five or six ingredients and some baking potatoes, and walking away to do whatever you need to for the next seven hours while your kitchen slowly fills with the smell of dinner cooking without you involved.

And with that, a little recipe for you.

Easiest Meatloaf Ever
(makes enough for 4, easily)

2 lbs ground beef
1 packet of onion soup mix
1 packet of ranch dressing mix, your favorite
1 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs
1/2 c. ketchup

Mix everything together in a gallon-sized baggie or a bowl. (If it’s in a freezer baggie, you can totally freeze it for a later date.) Really knead it around so it’s all combined well. Form it into a loaf shape, put in the crock pot with several baking potatoes and carrots arranged around the meat loaf. Cook on low for 7 hours, or until no longer pink.

See what I mean? EASY. And it’s moist — much more moist than any baked meatloaf I’ve had. I love that.

This next week, I’m going to be finishing up the basic cleaning of the rat-trap we’ve been existing in and doing some decorating while my husband’s away on business for most of the week.  (I’m going to be alone for the first time, really, since before we got married.  He went away once, for one night.  This time, it’s *five*.  I may have a meltdown, or I may end up getting a lot done.  We’ll see.)  If I do, there will be pictures.   Hopefully, he’ll approve.

Let’s talk for a second about the Sundance Catalog site and catalog, shall we?

I’m not a big catalog shopper.  And I’m really not into the type of “country” decorating that makes use of lots of little pastel pink geese or delft blue flowered wallpaper.  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s just totally not me.  And it’s not my husband, either.  Thank God.

(Of course, if left to his own devices, thanks to childhood programming and his relentless drive to rebel against something, his style is  all about the gothy black punky bachelor-pad type lava lamps and black and silver. Yes, I know I used the word “black” twice.  It’s to emphasize the point.  Ugh.  I outgrew rebellion-by-goth in my late teens, and I ain’t goin’ back, man.  Just for the record.)

A while back, and I’m not sure how, exactly, now that it’s been a zillion years….I found the Sundance Catalog.

Can you hear the angelic chorus in the background?

It says something to me that through all the purges of extraneous stuff I’ve had over the years (always re-amassing a load of crap I don’t need later, but at the time, very thorough clear-outs…), I still have many of the catalogs I’ve received.    (I get maybe one a year, so it’s not like it’s a big stack.  But I did somehow keep all but maybe one or two.)  For me to keep them, and refer back to them, says things about me, most likely.  Or at least about what my fantasy life is.

I feel like the home is my responsibility.  That making a nice, clean, decorated one is my contribution to the family, even when that family consists of just my husband and me, and our four dogs.  (Yes, I said four.  There was a temporary addition over the weekend.  A tiny little jack-russell-type dog was outside our door and wouldn’t leave.  We’re looking for her owner, but we’re fond of her.  She might stay.  This is why I need babies…to stop the relentless inflow of dogs.)  I feel that making a home to which my husband can not only invite our friends, but also which makes him feel welcomed and relaxed and at home is a very important part of my “job” as a wife.

It’s not easy with him.  He’s grown up in a great deal of chaos.  His parents are both hoarders, possibly of a clinical type even.  Their 12,000 square foot home (that’s not a typo.  Twelve *thousand* square feet of space, including an indoor pool that’s unfinished, and seven bedrooms, four bathrooms.  Seriously.) is ENTIRELY FULL OF USELESS STUFF.  Stuff they’ve bought at auctions, garage sales, and dollar stores cover every room.  No surface is uncluttered.  All the closets and drawers are full of unnecessary items that were a bargain.

Thinking about their home makes me need a little lie-down to recouperate.  It very honestly makes me tired, and a little bit unable to think.  I can’t deal with that much clutter, though my tendencies to collect it are just as strong.

For him, this clutter is normal.  So we’re constantly fighting the battle against having too much stuff.  My tolerance level is so much lower than his, it’s scary, and a source of friction between us.

But that’s not what I set out to write about.

If it was up to me, and my life was ideal and I had some kind of magic money tree that sprouted hundred-dollar-bills every day, I’d live in the Sundance Catalog.  It’s country, but it’s that New Country — more ranchlike and cabin-y than duck-and-goosey.  Lots of wrought iron and kilim fabrics, clean lines and antique, recycled woods, all made by artisans rather than factories.  The art is well-selected, the accessories are evocative of one’s life and travels.  There is enough storage, and no clutter.

The bedroom above (picture ruthlessly ganked from the website) is what I’d do with my rooms, if I could.  Plaster-colored walls, warm fabrics and woods, inviting-looking linens.

This is the kind of home I want to make for us.  Lives pared down to the essentials so we can be with each other and not be distracted by all our stuff.  Beautiful, but in a simple way.

As my house gets cleaner through this Project,  I want to dissect this catalog.  Find what it is about it that gets under my skin and makes me want to live in its pages.  Find the parts of it that are so appealing and emulate them, but with a twist that fits both my husband and I.

Today has been amazing, largely due to the Project.  I was in bed last night at a reasonable hour, WITH my husband, rather than long after him.  I was up early, made him breakfast, started dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and continued cleaning up the house, and still managed to get my work-for-money done in the meantime.  I’m feeling the urge, after cleaning my physical space, to clean up my virtual one, too, and for the first time in probably five years, my email has been answered on-time and the number in the inbox is less than ten.  I’m so much more on top of things.

I’m anticipating that as the project goes on, and my surroundings express more of what’s really me, and I’m focusing on my marriage and on my duties within it, this trend will continue.  That life will only continue to get easier when I let go of the expectations of the world and just focus on what I require of me, and what my husband desires of me.

Harmony.  I’m starting to hear the first refrains, and I can’t wait for more.

In an attempt to keep up my momentum today, I waited until J got home from work and went to Target to pick up a new vaccuum cleaner. Ours was eaten about a month ago by the Demons Of Dog Hair, and upon the recommendation of several of my cleaner friends, I’d decided to splurge a bit in the vaccuum department and get something that was made for The Pet Hair Of Dooom (insert ominous-sounding music here).

I’d thought I’d pick up a different model of Dyson, one of the upper-level, sell-your-kidney-to-science-to-pay-for-it models, but when I got to the store, they were running a promotion on the little baby pictured above. It’s not top of the line, but it’s still a Dyson (and has a five-year warranty), and it’s PINK. Not only am I kind of a fan of pink, but Dyson is donating $40 to the Breast Cancer Reasearch Fund with every purchase. So I’m getting rid of my dog hair AND I’m helping women everywhere to have healthier breasts. I’m all for healthy breasts, since my own aren’t so healthy. (That’s a story for another day, though.)

Of course, I immediately came home, assembled it, and started vacuuming everything in the house. No surface with dust or hair is now safe — it even has an attachment that will work to brush and vacuum the dog hair…directly off the dog. This makes me happier than I really want to admit to anyone other than y’all. (I just keep imagining there are a handful of close friends out there reading this with me. So I’m talking to you.)

Also in the wifely “Exceedingly Geeky But Happy” department of purchasing, I thought I’d spend my 30% off coupon at Borders bookstore on another knitting book (my library is insane…), but I thought I’d look through the domestic arts types of sections in an attempt to further this Wife Project a little. Normally, I hit the magazines and the crafty-type area, and maybe get some coffee, but I found the cookbook sections today.

As I wandered into the aisle, my eye caught something a few shelves down that made me squeal a little. I wish I could say it had been an under the breath kind of squeal, too…but it wasn’t. I scared people in the diet section, the next aisle over.

What I found was this:

The Cooky Book, by the Betty Crocker Editors.

Seriously.

When I was growing up, my mom had this book.  The original, 1973 version, with the color inserts and the vintagey-looking recipes with the letterpress-type flourishes and illustrations and all.  I used to sit there at the kitchen table — the impeccably clean and dressed kitchen table, with its matching placemats and seasonal floral arrangements and not a speck of dust on the counters — and go through this book page by page, picking the things I would bake as soon as my mom would help me.  Our family’s favorite EVER sugar cookie recipe comes from this book, which I’d thought was out of print.  Apparently, the Betty Crocker folks brought it back this year, and is publishing it in its original form.  It even looks the same on the inside!

I beat tracks getting to the counter, clutching it to my chest like I’d found an abandoned puppy or something, and paid so quickly that I forgot to use my coupon.

I’m forseeing lots of cookys (sic) in my near future.  Which, of course, won’t help with the getting-in-shape part of my goals, but will definitely help me get in the kitchen more often, and has that whole Fifties Housewife feel about it.

I’ll make sure to take pictures.  If I’m not too busy baking or vacuuming, that is.

It’s late, I’m exhausted, and my studio has gone from having a relatively clear floor to being a giant disaster area.

But, you know what?  I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

In the interest of getting started with the “nurturing relationships” part of my general set of first goals (see the About the Project page over there on the left…), I hosted a huge (for me) party for about a dozen crafty women tonight.  At one point, half of them in the room were people I didn’t even know.   And for me, that’s big.  (You’d never know it to “meet” me online, but I’m horribly shy in skinspace.  It takes a fair bit of caffeine and possibly some tequila before I’ll start talking to strangers.)

We all came together under the banner of yarn.  We knit and spun and crocheted together, talking sometimes amongst ourselves and sometimes as a group.  I taught two people how to spin yarn with a spindle, and we collectively dumped out the cullings of our wool-and-fiber stashes on the studio table and picked through them for new things to take home.

I had intended to make it a little more personal — I wanted to make homemade cookies or pies or something — but we ended up with pizzas and garlic bread from a local chain, and the world did not implode.  My house was not 100% clean, but the sky did not fall.  Hell, I wasn’t even wearing a bra when the guests started to arrive.  But it all went incredibly well.

There’s a lesson in this for me.  For a while now, I’ve been too worried that things weren’t perfect at home, and that when they were, finally, I’d start inviting people over more often.  I thought I’d take that step when I’d finally started in with the house, so at least I could blame the chaos and disarray on being in the midst of rennovation.  But I don’t need to wait until things are perfect.

I just need to take the steps, be a gracious hostess, and do what I can.

The rest takes care of itself.

(Not that it’ll stop me from starting the rest of The Project.  But it’s good to know that I’m able to look past it long enough to really connect with people if I need to.  It’s all part of this evolution, baby…and if it means that next week there are painted walls and I serve hors d’oeuvres in an apron — or not — that’s fine, too.)

Step one, taken.

I’m one of those people for whom a book can be made or broken by its first paragraph.  I’ll stand in the bookstore and read the first page of books I’m considering, and if it bores me, or at least doesn’t intrigue me at all, I put it back on the shelf and walk away, looking for something else to read.

So maybe this first post has a bit more significance to me.  I’m hoping to come up with just the right paragraph that will set the stage, tell my story, serve to introduce myself and this project.

It’s a lot of pressure.  I think I need more coffee.

In a lot of ways, I’m a first-time housewife.  We’ve been married for two years now, my husband and I, but for a lot of that time, I’ve been fighting against the internalized belief that I had to do something.  Make money.  Be productive and responsible in the world at large.  Have a career my husband would be proud of.  Somehow, I thought that taking care of him, the dogs, and the house, and preparing for and working toward having children wasn’t as good as if I’d been out in the world, bringing home a paycheck.

The other day, though, I sat down and looked around at my life.  I’m relatively successful, I work at home, and my body is falling apart.  We won’t even talk about the state of our house.  (Let’s just say that the dust bunnies?  Spawned.  They’re now dirt elephants and they keep trying to carry off the dogs.)  The whole point of my rearranging of my work so I could do it from home is lost when I’m working from home for eighty hours a week or more, and there are two weeks’ worth of dishes in the sink.

I have strengths and weaknesses, and goals I want to achieve with this project.  I’ll list them over there in the sidebar, under the “About the Project” page.  (Understand, this project and site are primarily for me to keep track and record my own process.  It might also apply to you, but I’m not trying to make this universal.  Feel free to use the information as applies, or not.  Either way.)

Through this blog, this Project, I really want to learn things.  Improve things.  Stop being ashamed to tell people that I’m a housewife or homemaker, or feel like I have to gloss that part over when people ask me what I do.  I want to focus on what’s important, my (hopefully soon) growing family and our lives.  I want to make my husband’s life easier the way he wants to do the same for me.

And I’m inviting you along for my wild ride.

Enjoy the roller-coaster.  I know I’m going to.