From Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, via Wikipedia.
Dear Internet,
I woke Sunday morning buried under the covers and clinging to TheHusband. With my penchant to sleep late on weekends, to make up for the shortened sleep cycles during the week, I was surprised to find it was barely 9AM. The clawing fear of sinking deep again has abated for the morning, but hangs over me like a terrible rain cloud. It was not helped when as I was preparing for bed last night, I remembered I was teaching a college-wide class this week and needed to finish the prep work, thus my anxiety shot through the roof.
After getting out of bed, and spending several hours of catching up on newspaper reading, both this weeks and past editions, TheHusband and I began the yearly house cleaning. We’re having friends over this weekend for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, then the following weekend is Thanksgiving which will mean people will be coming and going all weekend. With the addition of my mother-in-law is coming between Christmas and New Year, we could not procrastinate any longer.
In the past, we’ve divided up the housework one to two days, which is overwhelming for two people in a house as large as Throbbing Manor. TheHusband’s recommendation this year was to break it up into chunks, and pace it over a week, and we decided to start in the Rumpus room in the basement and work our way up.
The Rumpus Room and other rooms in the basement were to get a once over on Saturday, but we ended up not getting to it so we tacked it on to today’s work. Within a couple of hours, we had swept, vacuumed, mopped, dusted, and sorted the Rumpus room, foyer into the Rumpus room, stairs and landings down to the basement, the upstairs pre-foyer and foyer, first floor living room, solarium, and dining room. Monday is the kitchen and downstairs bathroom, Tuesday will be the stairs and landing connecting the first and second floors, then Wednesday will be our bedroom and respective bathrooms. Thursday I’ll be on campus for roughly 12 hours as I’ve organized an author’s reading so no cleaning, and I’m off on Friday. So whatever we don’t absolutely get done will be done on Friday and allow for any other errands I need to run.
We were done with Sunday’s bits within a few hours, which beats the usually 8-10 hours it takes us to get the whole house down, giving us time to do whatever else we planned for the rest of the day. The one task I’ve been dreading all week is responding to my mother, and after much discussion with my shrink about it, opted to send her a decline to her dinner invite for Thanksgiving. I wrote something along the lines that I appreciated the thought, but we must respectfully decline and perhaps another time in the new year. Maybe I’ll be up for talking to her then, maybe I’ll be up to sorting us out, but not now. Not here. Not because my brother is desperate for our family to be whole.
As I paid bills, and did a few other administrative tasks, I kept an eye on the weather – ready to run down to the basement, the dog under my armpit, at the very last minute if need be.
Grand Rapids did not get the brunt end of the storm band as some areas did, but the wind was obnoxious and the rain, sometimes mixed with hail, pelted against the house. TheHusband predicted the storm would passed us by quickly, which it did, but several hours later we’re now getting the second wave. I’m grateful we didn’t get hit hard, and it seems no one I know across the storm’s path were in trouble. Many blessings were sent to the gods and fates for sparing us today.
I fretted, as I always do, about the safety of the house – did shingles get ripped off in the storm, did a leak spring up, did something happen that I may not have been aware of? TheHusband tutted my fears – the house is made of brick and has stood for 90 years and will probably stand for 90 more. He then pretended we were one of the three little pigs and the wind was the big, bad wolf. TheHusband huffed and puffed, and the house did not fall down.
xoxo,
Lisa
Tag: Unfucking Throbbing Manor
Day 13: Tales of the Blue Monarch Unlocked
Not much terribly to report for Sunday. TheHusband and I went to Meijer Gardensto take advantage of the beautiful 60F+ weather we were having and he had never been, so we thought why the fuck not? The downfall was that the gardens were not in bloom and the interior + sculpture park were jammed with kids with overly engaged parents. By overly engaged, I mean parents who completely disregarded the signs to not touch the sculptures and letting their children use them as play things. We saw more people posing pictures with their kids to illustrate WHAT A FUN TIME THEY WHERE HAVING over, you know, actually having a fun time.
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Day 12: Unlocked
- Broke down all the recycling and stuffed our 96 gallon recycling bin. Recycling pick ups in GRap are every OTHER week. Thanks to Amazon.com Prime, we keep UPS delivery guy busy and our recycling bin filled to near overflowing.
- In an attempt to unfuck the porcelain cooktop to our gas stove, we found Barkeeper’s Friend, which unfucked a lot of the mess TheHusband tends to leaves behind when he cooks and which I can never get clean. It also apparently works well with stainless steel sinks, so you know what is going to get unfucked next. Huzzah!
- Unloaded the diswasher, reloaded it. Washed the hand-wash only pots and wiped the sink down.Then put away ALL THE THINGS. Countertop AND sink are now empty!
- Cleaned down the working areas in the kichen, EVEN PICKING UP THE THINGS I USUALLY WIPE AROUND, and put all putable items away.
ProTip: You know the problem with having a house that is 3200 sqft (297.28 m2) and served over three floors? You need 3x as much shit! You don’t “a” broom, you need THREE brooms (one on each floor). Thus, for every X thing we need for one floor, rule goes you need the same item on other floors. Yes, yes, you could argue you could have one thing and carry it between floors, but let me tell you, that shit gets old quick. Especially with cleaning supplies.
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Unfucking Throbbing Manor
Recently, I saw a bit of Tumblr posts on Twitter scroll on by from Cat Valente, which the titles lead me curious and curiouser down the dark rabbit hole that is Tumblr. I was fine with this since the occasional tapping of the Tumblr vein never really hurt anyone and Cat’s posts all pointed to the nirvana – a blog called Unfuck Your Habitat.
After perusing the site for a bit, it took me a minute to figure out that Unfuck Your Habitat builds/uses the same methods as The Fly Lady, only in a more OMGBBQ and animated gifs heavy way, with a teensy dose of profanity. Which if I’m honest amongst my close friends here on the intarwebs, I’m moar likely to use something where “fuck” is sprinkled liberally about and the cherry on top are vaguely obnoxious animated gifs say over a site that seems to be geared towards, well, women I’d like to strangle on a daily basis.
The premise is simple: You find something you want to unfuck and you unfuck it. It can be as small as simply taking the steps to making your bed everyday and laying out that day’s clothes the night before or even just unfucking an area that is always in a cluster and working on keeping that unfucked on a more regular basis. In an related but not kind of way, I’ve been working on unfucking my emotional/creative life for the last month by meditating every morning for five minutes and then writing for 7 minutes before I begin my day. And by “begin my day,” I mean pour coffee down my throat in order to become human.
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