Great, and yours?

So, how was your weekend, this beautiful last weekend in September? Did you go apple picking? Ride a bike through the first stunning bursts of fall color? Put your garden to sleep? Doze in the sun?

Ha ha, I have you all beat: I got to clean raw sewage out of the basement. And carry everything non-sewagey out onto the porch. Then scrub the floor with bleach. Now our house looks like an episode of Hoarders: But Where Will They Keep the Board Games? Also, my knees hurt. Also, I still have half the basement floor to scrub. Augh. Damn house.

Actually, I have an odd confession to make: except for the raw sewage part, and also the argument that ensued upon the finding of the sewage*,  it wasn't so bad. Cleaning the basement was not at the top of my list of things I wanted to get done this weekend - but it wasn't on the bottom, either. I mean, I wasn't planning to bleach the damn thing. But there was some serious organizing that needed to happen down there. And, uh, still needs to happen, only now it needs to take place with objects stored on the couch, the front porch, and the back porch. But taking everything apart is a critical first step, and that step is DONE. Also, there's no hesitating about chucking a beloved childhood toy when it's soaked in sewage. It makes the weeding out process go really, really fast.

Also, I was the only one with the time to do any scrubbing (exams to grade! so sorry!), which meant that out of guilt M. took care of all the parts that I loathe about this sort of event: the calling and the hiring, and the making decisions about the Solution. Usually we share this part, and I haaaate it. I hate calling people on the phone. I hate making decisions like shall we spend $5000 to do a partial fix, or go all the way and spend $10G to Do It Right? And most of all I hate Talking It Over. I don't want to talk. I just want to jump to a conclusion, stick to it, and run away and pretend we never had that $5000 in the first place.

So anyway, our basement is now really, really clean. Even cleaner than the last time. Except for the parts I haven't gotten to yet, and also the old uncomfortable futon that we've taken to affectionately calling the pooton. (Ewww.) Out it goes, as soon as it's dry enough to lug upstairs without contaminating the whole house.

*Bonus marriage gossip tidbit: One of the most common marital arguments in the Melospiza household involves how we respond to calamity, and, related, how we think the Other Person should respond to calamity. I tend to expect M. to use Pa Ingalls as a blueprint: "Where there's a will, there's a way!" "All's well that ends well!" Which, barring expletives, is pretty much how he does respond. Eventually, and minus the whistling and the extra-soulful fiddle-playing. But he first blames everyone under the frigging sun for the calamity, in language that would singe Pa's eyebrows. It drives me crazy and also, ironically, to the use of non-Ma-approved vulgarity of my own.

Holiday interlude *edited to add pictures*

Merry Christmas, dear readers!

So much, of so little note, has happened since we last spoke. There have been birthdays! holidays! museum trips! family visiting! present purchasing! purchase regretting! present opening! There have been tantrums large and small, mostly from strung-out children, but also a few adults (okay, ME). Remarkably, the worst of the Christmas season has passed without any major family snarking. We are all still on speaking terms. The season has been good to us and ours. Dearly beloved people have come and gone, leaving the Melospiza household lonelier but less chaotic.

M and I, like the kids, had to make do with partially fulfilled wishes this season--we still have no kitchen, but on December 23 we got lights and power in the front half of our house and we quickly moved into Christmas Mode, hauling out the boxes of ornaments and nostalgia, stringing up lights, taking photos. We cleaned the trash out of the fireplace, drove nails into the 2x4 fireplace frame, and hung our stockings with care between the ShopVac and the table saw. We regifted some of our Christmas cookies to Santa and brought out rugs and pillows and camp chairs. We had a right jolly old Christmas morning. Then yesterday we took it all down again, in the hopes that the builders would come today as promised (as of a quarter to noon, no dice--our builders are like the bad boyfriend, the one who never calls and never quite gives you his full attention).

However, I am always telling the kids that unfulfilled desires build character. (THAT'S what you call this pain and resentment swelling within my head!) Really, I guess, it's how we respond to unfulfilled desires that build character, or perhaps that response is how our character reveals itself. Anyhow, my character, or that of my household, is less gracious and unflappable than I could wish.

Hmm. I sense a resolution brewing.

Kitchen, bitchin, & other territorial struggles

So, like other people, I (belatedly) read Elizabeth Weil's NY Times article about her marriage with a mixture of fascination and sympathy; like many other people, it made me think about my own marriage a little differently. A lot of what I thought was, I must admit, "wow--you fight about THAT" and "whew--that's NEVER been a problem between us." Obviously, part of this is the nature of describing intimate fights to other people (would you feel a bit smug, for example, if I said that one of big simmering issues in my own marriage right now is whether the room currently housing our TV was designed to be, or was ever used as, a dining room?)--however, how a couple handles sensitive territorial issues, such as who does what in the kitchen, sits at the root of how they interact in all sorts of other ways. Hanna Rosin's passionate response (and associated comments) to Weil's article is an example of this. And for the most part, I think, Hubs and I play well with others when it comes to the kitchen.

It helps that we have fairly distinct spheres of duty, so we don't need to uh, instruct each other. Hubs handles pancakes, taco salads, and spicy salsa (I know, I know, it's straight from the 1950s mom-dad playbook); I do almost everything else, food-prep wise. We both do coffee and dishes, and we have come to an agreement about The Best Path for both activities. No "letting the dishes soak" except on special occasions; no undue uptightness about the blade cleanliness of our cheap knives. This means that either one of us can make the coffee or do the dishes without the other one silently steaming about how the other person Never Does It Right. Hubs tends to keep the refrigerator wiped down, too, something that for me is an all-day labor involving sorting through antique condiments and for him takes five minutes and leaves the food storage area much more appealing than it was.

As we run our kitchen, so we run our lives: neither one of us is especially finicky or slovenly. We don't tend to obsess; nor do we feel the need to impose "my way or the highway" rules on most activities (one exception: bedtimes. I have tend to think my life will disintegrate if I do not get to bed exactly eight hours before my alarm clock goes off, and I also worry about how many hours the kids sleep. To little avail, BTW.) We try to give each other reasonable amounts of space, both in terms of hobbies and in terms of, say, parenting strategies. As much as possible, we try to enjoy each other's company and that of our kids. We try to make things stable yet fun (in theory, anyway).

Now. If only I can figure out how to adopt this ability to nurture shared but respectful space in how I interact with my kids, I'll be all set.