Recently in Housework Category

I walked into a Dierbergs, a locally-owned grocery store here, for the first time in my life yesterday. I recently stopped buying Trader Joe's meat as Chris and I are very particular about cuts of meat and I'm just not happy with the selection TJ's offers. I hate having to go to a frillion places to get one week's worth of groceries. The Schnucks (another locally-owned market) off of Loughborough has a great butcher, but I don't want to drive back and forth between two interstates. So I stopped into Dierbergs to check out their meat.

Ohmygawd.

Their produce sparkled like diamonds. The kids and I were in such awe that passerby must have thought that we were urchins who'd never set foot inside a grocery store before. Their bell peppers? They were meticulously arranged so that all their little butts were pointing outwards. I am freak about my food and we are instant BFFs if you order your kitchen items with a dash of OCD. There wasn't a withered piece of produce in the bunch; there's always a suspicious bag of grapes or a browned apple in the mix but not at this store. I like to touch, smell, and feel up my produce, not unlike foreplay, before I place it in my cart. It seemed pointless to do it here. They had everything categorized. There was a giant ORGANIC sign marking all the naturally grown products. I wish Schnucks organized their organics as thoughtfully. As I only popped in for meat - and OMG those cuts were SMOKIN' - I didn't go through the whole store but I'm sure that the aisles were paved with tiles made from crushed unicorn horns and that there was a pot of gold in the last aisle. We briefly considered erecting a tent in the cereal aisle and just like, live there for ever.

When we approached the register there was - GET THIS - a bagger waiting at the end of the conveyor belt. In some other stores, even when business is slow, I have to practically shake down a cashier to get a bagger. And when one isn't available there's this awkward moment, you know, when you attempt to bag your groceries and you try to hide how you bag them so the cashier doesn't glance over and roll their eyes. You stand there like an unwelcome houseguest as your groceries accumulate at the end of the conveyor belt, like should ... should I start bagging this? No? Is that a bagger over there? Is he...he's coming over here - no, no he's going on a smoke break. Ok, so I bag? When the cashier has to bag your groceries the people behind you in line are all "Gawd, we HAD to get behind a FAMILY purchase," because all they have is a box of wine, toilet paper, and beef jerky (party!) and boooo on you for buying family-size quantities of food. Ok, maybe it's just me. 

But anyway, there was a bagger there and he just stood there and then when my groceries came down the belt his arms went blurry and he bagged the hell out of my groceries like I have never seen them bagged before. When he was done his hands were actually smoking and he blew on him like a gunslinger blows on a gun after winning a draw. Slightly exaggerated, but still. Then the checker gave the boys stickers and because they are bought and sold with anything miniscule so long as it's free, they were all "WE LOVE IT HERE." 

(I was seriously not paid, contacted by, or cajoled by Dierbergs to write this. I just get really excited over little things.)

The other day Chris said to me: "You know what? My grass is looking good. Lookin' REAL GOOD." He said it as though the fescue in the backyard had suddenly developed breasts overnight.

"Yes, it does look nice," I said, looking up from my copy of Domino.

"Yeah it does! It looks AMAZING."

It's spring again, the time of the year when animals come out of hibernation, when baby critters are born, when men ultimately talk about fertilizing their lawns whenever gathered together. It's apropos. At a recent gathering of friends, I noticed that the conversation from the man-half of the group delved into grass fertilization and yard work and mowing and machinery. Whereas a man's fishing stories are akin to a woman's labor story, so is yard work discussion akin to something chicks talk about, I'm too tired to think of a competent analogy. You get it. 

The other day we were at Lowe's, often thought of as man territory, but I love it there. I love the shiny objects and the smell of the wood. Basically, I love it for the same reasons as would a cat. Chris convinced himself that he needed a blower-slash-sucker. Some mechanized elephant to remove the dead leaves from under the deck and from the flowerbeds. He spent thirty minutes examining the different types of blower-sucker machines (my mind is about to explode from the juvenile opportunities here) before trotting out proudly to meet me in the garden department with the box in hand.

That afternoon as I pruned and planted like a 50s' housewife, he stood in the backyard and adorned himself with the blower's bag and strap as though gearing up for a joust. He slipped on a pair of the manliest garden gloves I could find him (blue and green stripes), a pair of yellow goggles, and for a moment, I could've sworn I heard the Vienna Boys' Choir and saw a Photoshop starburst behind him as he stood satisfied, his hands on his hips.

It's almost 11 p.m.
I have two baskets of laundry yet to fold, one of them big enough that it could take me in a barfight. It taunts me when I walk past it. There's a load of darks still in the dryer.

My bedroom is a disaster. Clothes are strewn about the bed, which isn't made - my mother is reading this at work and cringing right now because to her, admitting that your bed went unmade all day is akin to confessing that you wear dirty underwear.

My floors are clean, my bathrooms are clean, if only because, as the only girl in my household, I refuse to let the boys completely overtake everything. A cloud of dust follows them like Pig Pen from "Peanuts."

I need to start the dishwasher, but this being the first time I've sat down all day in a non-excremental manner, I AM NOT GETTING UP.

There are wooden alphabet blocks scattered across the living room floor. Chris might step on one of those because he never looks where he's walking. I'm still not getting up, though.

Liam began kindergarten today and we conducted our first K5 lesson.

It was wonderful. Teaching him is like running outside after the first snowfall of the year to your smooth, blank, white yard. There isn't the intrusion of one single footprint, handprint, or dog print.

Because of this, the laundry doesn't matter. That big basket can suck it. The blocks all over the floor barely register in my consciousness.
Liam had his first lesson. And he rocked it.
I rocked it too, I think.

The years of researching, the previous year of preschool practice, all of it geared for this very day were worth it. I know that I had a good day and I know that I have beginner's zeal. I know that there will be hard times, days where I'll want to hang myself with my fancy bedsheets off my deck, days where Liam's attention will crumple, days where he won't catch on so quick, days where he'll be frustrated and I'll be frustrated and he'll shout how he does "not like learning very much at all!" Like last year, when A Beka said I should teach him cursive and I was all "Okie-dokie" because I was stupid. Now I know better. But there will still be those days.

But it's the days like today that help me move on through.