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.

The one, singular thing that I did while my husband was gone this past week was to take this wall, above, and turn it from white, pockmarked craziness into a slightly-khaki-tannish bit of loveliness.  That strip at the left, was my test, checking to make sure it wasn’t going to go orange on me, which it didn’t.  In fact, it ended up looking vaguely wonderful:

Granted, there are three more walls to do now, but this one, with the least amount of crap to move out of the way — it’s done.  And it’s not even remotely perfect, nor do I have the curtains sewn for the humongous window yet, but I’m still pleased as punch every time I look at it, and that’s worth it for me.

I think now is as good of a time as any to tell you all about this house, and why it presents such unique challenges, both in decorating and keeping it clean.  Make a cup of coffee or two and have a seat.  It takes some explainin’.

See, we don’t own this house.  We also don’t rent it.

No, we’re not squatters.  Though it feels that way sometimes.

J’s job is for his parents.  They own several businesses, for one of which he works.  The shop is connected to this monstrosity of a house, which his father built with his own two hands.  That part, the “own two hands” part, is fairly self-evident, by the way half of it’s not even remotely done, despite the fact that they lived here as a family for almost seven years.  His father is notorious for having resentments attached to good intentions — he meant to get back to whatever it is, but ended up being angry when anyone mentioned it, so nobody did.  And as a result, there are only two working lights in the ceiling of my studio (which used to be the kids’ playroom).  The bathroom lighting upstairs didn’t work.  Large portions of the infrastructure were salvaged (because his father is also notoriously cheap on things that he really shouldn’t be — like heating and electrical work.  Yipes.).  There’s no insurance on the house or its contents, because it’s so badly made that insurance companies won’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole.

It is, for the most part, an industrial building, also.  To see it from the outside, you’d never know that people live here.  The grounds, because of his father’s hoarding problem, look like a junkyard.  So when I tell people I live in a junkyard, I’m only half-kidding.  I’ll get pictures.  It’s kind of scary.

Before we moved in — they gave it to us to use, citing it as “company housing”, which amuses me on a lot of different levels — the house had stood largely un-manned for nearly twenty years.  And it showed.  I’ve mentioned the in-laws’ hoarding problems before, but seriously?  This entire house, which is almost five THOUSAND square feet (seriously), was entirely filled with boxes of trash.  The garage and most of the closets still *are*, in fact.  We rented a 25′ dumpster when his mother and I were trying to clean out all the stuff that they’d “stored” here, and we filled it three times.   Things like four or five old, broken television sets, a broken laserdisk player, old and broken furniture, two couches where an entire legion of mice had lived in the twenty years of vacancy….  it was unhealthy, to say the least, and downright scary.

In the nearly three years we’ve been here,  his parents have touched nothing that they left in our closets and garage.  (Which is, I kid you not, FULL.  FULL OF THEIR STUFF.)  They have added to it several times, but have never touched a single thing they left here. And a few times, they’ve even discussed charging us rent when the propane bills were too high.  (Understand, because of the salvaged furnace, which is an industrial-grade furnace that the FIL took from a demolished building, with a “last inspected”date of 1952, we don’t control how much heat it puts out.  We often joke that we have two settings — Arctic or Hellfire.  There’s no inbetween.)  When we mentioned having the building inspector come look at it to be rental-friendly, they backed off quickly.  (It’s never been inspected.)

No less than three times per year, on average, they tell us they are selling the shop and that we have to move.  This is roughly around the time I get fired up to do something with the place.  We painted the kitchen, for instance, and the next day, the shop was closing and omgwhereareyougoingtolivenow?!?  I think they have a radar for home improvement.  (Of course, they’re not selling the shop, because then they’d have to deal with all the stuff they’ve got stored here — not just in our house, but on all the grounds and in the shop, which is two-and-a-half the square footage of the house, and every bit as packed-tight with crap.)

So the house is in a state of sad disrepair, and we’re half-scared to do anything with it.  It needs new carpets, for sure.  It needs a coat of paint.  It needs ceiling repair in some places.  The fireplace, which is gorgeous by the way, needs extensive cleaning and repair.  The water is so bad that it turns everything from steel to porcelain to skin a nasty shade of orange, but they don’t want to upgrade the well.  (Which, by the way, was also salvaged.)  The back yard is scary, and we have mice in the winter, mosquitos in the summer.

All in all, it’s a giant, festering hole of suck.  And it’s HUGE.  Way more than we would need, if my husband hadn’t inherited the must-own-everything gene from his parents.  (That’s a rant for another day, though.)

I’m not whining about having a home, and a home, virtually, for free.  I know there are people with less, and I’m profoundly grateful for the fact that there’s a roof overhead, even if it’s a roof that’s crumbling and is constantly in danger of being taken away at his parents’ whim.  But it does lend a kind of uncertainty to my days that is unsettling.

There is much, much work to be done to the house.  And I’m now to a point where I just don’t care anymore if it’s not here tomorrow.  I need to bring some stability to my own days — to make my surroundings a warm, welcoming place for both visitors and for my family.

It will not be an easy task.  And I’m sure that the minute I invest in, say, a chimney sweep (chimney services technician, I think they’re calling them now), they’ll be all fired up about selling the place.  But I need this for me and for my husband.   I need to have a base from which to work, and to feel like we can grow our family without the threat of mouse poo or strange rot.  And if that eventually means that we have to leave here to find it?  Well, I’ll have this experience behind me, and I’ll have things cleared out to the point where it should be easy(easier) to pare down further if the situation demands it.

I’ll do a house tour over the next few weeks.  Show you what it really looks like inside, and what I want to do with it.  I’ll be formulating a Plan of Attack.  I’ll update the “About The Project” page when I’ve got a room plan formulated.

It’s time to stop living with someone else’s instability.  It’s my job to create new stability for my family, no matter where we might be.

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.

Okay, this just royally pissed me off.

I’m a big fan of blogs, and of the ideas they give me. I don’t expect, ever, to be one of those types of women who can bake a pie with one hand while planting tulip bulbs with the other. I would LIKE to be, because I love this kind of thing, but realistically? I know that I’m far too focused on other things to be some kind of domestic goddess.

My choices come from me. My idea of what I’d like my life to be like. How I’d like to create that life for myself and my husband and our eventual family. And there are women for whom my idea of a perfect life would be a perfect hell, and vice versa. Such is the joy of feminism and our sisters and mothers who worked so hard to GIVE us those choices. The choice of what we would like to do, versus being forced into a role we’re not comfortable with.

It just irks me to no end that there are still hardline women out there pretending to be feminists who are merely spreading hate and fear that they’ll be shoved into a role they’re not comfortable with. You like your career? You like being single and buying your jelly at the market? Go for it. Have at it. Make yourself happy.

But do NOT tell me that I’m stupid or silly or somehow damaging women by my love of making a pretty cupcake, or sewing my own curtains, or even how meditative I find vacuuming when the vacuum’s working right. My life = my choices, and if Jane’s book sets unrealistic standards for you, don’t read it. That simple.

Leave me to my domesticity and my own expectations of myself. I’m realistic, but I strive for improvement. And what could be more “feminist” than that?

I almost forgot — I put dinner in the crock-pot today, and it was fabulous and easy. So I thought I’d share.

The basic recipe is from a Gooseberry Patch cookbook, but I modified it a little to be a little tastier.

Chicken Cordon Bleu via Crock Pot
serves 4 to 6

ingredients:
4-6 chicken breasts
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
thin-sliced ham (lunch meat)
monterey jack cheese
swiss cheese
1 can of sliced mushrooms
garlic powder
1/4 c. milk

Pound the chicken breasts flat with a mallet. If you don’t have a mallet, a hammer will work if you put something hard on the breasts (like a book) and then pound *that*. (Don’t ask me how I know this.)

Lay a slice or two of the ham on the flattened breast, and top it with thin slices of the two cheeses. Sprinkle with just a tiny bit of garlic powder and salt/pepper as desired. Starting from one end, roll up the breast into a burrito-like shape, and arrange them in the crock-pot in one layer. (You can layer more, if you have a small crock pot — in mine, six breast-rolls fit comfortably in the bottom.)

Mix together the drained can of mushrooms and the soup with the milk. Stir until smooth. Add in just a bit more garlic powder and salt/pepper, if you’d like. (I like. A lot.)

Cook on high for 4 - 6 hours, depending on your crock-pot and the size of your breasts. (The chicken breasts. Not your breasts. Those don’t matter in most cooking.)

To serve, arrange on the plate and ladle some of the cooked sauce over the top. You may need to add a little flour to the sauce and bring it to a boil to get it to thicken enough. Serve with wild rice and a big green salad, and it’s a well-balanced meal, and so easy you’ll have time to do all kinds of other things in the interim.

I’ll be making this again, for sure.

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.

I have a love/hate relationship with Flylady.

On one hand, I’m a giant slob.  Or, at least, I have been a slob in my life.  I’m more of a Recovering Slob now.  (And one that’s been thrown into a five thousand square foot house full of dirt, no less.  It’s got the potential for a bad, bad situation. )  And if there’s one thing that Flylady knows how to do, it’s speak directly to the heart of all the Slobs in the world, mystically telling them that their lives will be a zillion times better if they just buck up and clean for a few minutes a day.

Some of her mailings and key phrases have wormed their way into brain, and come out at the weirdest times.  “Done is better than perfect” comes up a lot in work, where my extreme perfectionism makes deadlines one of those things that fly right by my head, often, for instance.  Or the whole idea that “housework done incorrectly still blesses your family”.  That kind of thing.

I am, at this moment, wearing shoes.  That’s totally a Flylady creation, because I think I was barefoot from the age of eight until the year 2000.  And I’m not all that young, so that’s a long time.

The cloying sweetness gets to me every so often.  The relentless barrage of exceedingly happy people who are just THRILLED to go clean their bathrooms gets to me a lot.  And the way she’s veered a bit off-topic, branching out and bringing in tons of “experts” to talk about everything from child-rearing to how to dress to weight loss…well, that’s where she kind of lost me.

Part of the reason I like her program, however, is probably that my mom?  Totally did Flylady before there *was* a Flylady.  She had different parts of the housekeeping that she did on different days, and she never, ever left a dish in the sink overnight.  She was a bit obsessive about it, actually.  But I can say without hesitation that waking up to get water in the morning from the tap to take with my morning vitamin, and seeing nothing other than (slightly-chipped) white porcelain?  Kind of nice.  Strange how that works.

Before I started with The Project, I tried to do the clear sink thing every day.  My husband is a very early riser, though, and by the time I would get up in the morning, the sink would be relatively full of dishes that he’d worked his magic upon while making breakfast.  Not that I resent that much.  (Ahem.  I’m TRYING not to resent it, at least.  There were days…)  But I kind of gave that up when things got all crazy around here and I lost sight of my housewifely status.  My sink was nothing short of buried under bowls and silverware.

Today, I set the timer for 15 minutes and stuck it to the stove-front.  (Another Flylady thing.)  Every time I went downstairs to reboot the laundry (yet another reference), I’d hit “start” and would get through as many as I could.  I’d put away the drip-dried ones from the last batch (NOT a Flylady thing, since she advocates drying them by hand and putting them away…the horror!), and get through a stack of them, which I’d leave to dry.

Somehow, my entire sink is clear.  Not clean yet, mind you.  But clear.  I can see stainless steel.  (Kind of.  We have the world’s worst water — well water on ancient pipes, which make everything that touches it kind of yellow-orange-rust over time, including skin and hair.  I know, it’s gross.  There’s nothing we can do about it.  Country living at its finest.)

Tomorrow, my extraneous-from-the-necessary project around here is to shine it.  Give it a good ‘ol Flylady shining.  It won’t ever look new again, but it won’t be orange, either.  It requires chemical assistance, though, so I tend to put it off as long as possible.  (We’re talking harsh chemicals that make my lungs hurt.  It’s the only thing that works on the type of rust we’ve got here, though.  And, trust me, I’ve tried everything.)

And better yet, this Project is starting to show some buds of fruit:  My husband was visibly more relaxed when he came in from work today than he has been in recent weeks/months.  It was like he was happier coming home, when the house wasn’t in a state of extreme, insane chaos.  Which stands to reason, but sometimes, it takes an iron-covered brick upside the head to get me to see the obvious.

I’m on my way to getting the base cleaning done so that maintenance can start occuring.  From there, it’s a matter of finding a schedule that works for me, and digging in on making our house here a home.  Clearing away the dirt and debris and detritus is helping immensely — both in my attitude and in my inspiration.

So maybe I do understand the people on the Flylady lists who are immensely excited to clean their bathrooms.  At least I understand a little bit.

Someone told me once that whereas cooking is an art, baking is a science. You utilize chemistry and knowledge of how things will react when subjected to heat, and instead of being improvisational (like cooking), you’re tied to a certain combination, measured in teaspoons and cups. At least you are in the States. Grams, elsewhere, which is even more sciencelike.

I’m a really good cook. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but just to state it as fact: I’m a damn good cook. I blame it on being an artist.

By the same token, I have baking stories that would curl your hair. My family would be overjoyed to tell you about the time when I was eight and we’d just bought our first microwave oven, and I tried the recipe in the instruction booklet for making cinnamon rolls. In the microwave. At eight years old. Let us just say that hockey pucks are still jealous, and my family, still amused.

That said, every Autumn, when the weather starts to turn cool and the night air can make you think that winter’s surely only days away, I get the urge to bake something. Most of the time, that something comes out of a box, for me, because I’m aware of my own limitations.

Partially because of this project, and partially because my husband dropped the bag of apples on the ground while bringing in the groceries, bruising them and mashing them up a bit, I thought I’d try letting the Fall Urge manifest this year in a bit of Apple Science.

I surprised myself.

Not only does it LOOK like pie, but it TASTES like pie.

And the Project begins to bear fruit. Or, at least, bear fruit-stuffed pastry.

The recipe, for your own baking pleasure:

Apple Pie
serves 6

ingredients:
6 cups thinly sliced apples, peeled and cored
3/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
several tablespoons of butter
1 batch of pie crust, your favorite recipe. (or from a box, if you like it easy.)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Mix together all ingredients except apple, butter, and crust until well mixed.

In the bottom crust, arrange a layer of apple so the bottom is covered. Sprinkle this layer with some of the cinnamon-sugar mixture, and dot this layer with butter. Add another layer of apple, more sugar mixture and butter. Repeat this until your pie crust is full or you run out of apples or both.

Cut the upper crust into lattice strips, or cover and pinch closed, cutting ventilation holes.

Bake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 30 - 35 minutes.

Serve warm or cold — tastes great either way.

Mmm, science.