The truth is, I never thought much about growing up and being married, having kids or "keeping a house." First, I just wasn't that kind of gal. I was never the Barbie doll, toe-nail polish, start planning my wedding at the age of six type. Nope, I was more the get muddy, find a boy to beat up, make my five step plan for becoming an astronaut type. Funny how things turn out, isn't it? I ended up getting married to man who sells Barbies for a living and having a daughter who wants desperately to paint her toe nails while she is planning her future wedding. I love them both more than I can put into words, but I do sometimes feel as if I've fallen down the rabbit hole! My point here is simply this, upon getting married and having my first daughter I immediately felt horribly unprepared to do what every other woman seemed to have such a firm handle on. Even more simply put: I suck at being a housewife. Don't bother trying to convince me otherwise because the facts back me up on this one.
1. I can't cook.
I mean really, really, can't cook. And I don't just mean that I cook things and they taste bad, although that is certainly true as well. I mean that when I try to cook, things catch on fire. A lot. Fact: for our first wedding anniversary J bought me a kitchen fire extinguisher. Fact: I have used it. Twice. The first time was during my only attempt to make a Thanksgiving dinner. Somehow, the stuffing (Stovetop...who can mess that up, right?) burst into flames and to this day I have no idea how or why. And that's the real problem. Things start out okay in the kitchen, under control. Then I blink or look out the window and get distracted wondering if being a rodent, which is already vile and disgusting, makes rats immune to viruses that might cause the Zombie Apocalypse and all of sudden all hell breaks loose, there is egg on the ceiling and something is burning. At least the fire extinguisher still works well.
2. I am disorganized.
Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, "Well, that's allright. As long as you know where things are." And you would be right! The only problem is, I don't know where things are! I don't remember where I put anything away or even if I did put it away. I am fighting a losing war on all fronts. Entropy is winning in a very big way. It's like carrying a bucket of water up a hill only to get to the top and realize it has been leaking the whole way and is almost empty. So you trudge back down the hill, refill it and head back up, forgetting once again that it has a hole in it. To me, being able to keep things organized seems like some sort of voodoo magic. I see a tidy and well organized household and think, "Wow, this person has sold their soul to the devil, only instead of riches and fame they got an electronic label gun and the know how to use it effectively."
3. I can clean well but have no real interest in ever doing so. Ever.
That's not to say I won't clean, but when your motivation level to do so is so low to begin with it's not like it ever gets done all that effectively. In my household there is a lot of halfhearted sweeping at surfaces with a dustcloth and picking blankets up off the floor and tossing them onto the mattress, thereby "making the bed." I have convinced myself that the simple act of sweeping the floor of one room actually makes the rest of your house look sparkly clean. Just last week I beat my own record by spinning the same load of laundry over and over in the dryer for two and half days because I didn't want it to get wrinkled but I certainly didn't want to fold it!
That's just the tip of a very large iceburg! But, before I go any further, I want to let any young ladies who might be reading in on a secret I have just recently discovered:
It's okay not to be a great housewife!
After years of stressing about it, chasing my own tail and feeling more than a little inadequate, I have finally realized that the world is not going to end if my refrigerator has a few things in it that are slightly past their expiration dates. I love my family, care for and feed them (albeit often with burnt food!), keep our house danger proof and sometimes semi-clean and you know what? They love me right back! No one is dissapointed in me, and going a little easier on myself has allowed me to enjoy being with them more, as well as allowed for more time to ponder weighty issues like what I would say if NASA offered me the chance to be one of the first settlers on Mars. No, right? I mean, I have kids so it would be wrong to just up and leave. But what if they could almost guarantee my safety and I could just stay for a while? Then it would be okay....right??
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A Tale of Two Mustangs
I would like to take this opportunity to officially apologize to anyone I have mocked in the past for claiming to suffer from "jetlag". I am sorry for sneering at you and accusing you of attempting to prolong your vacation by faking extreme fatigue caused by something as simple as air travel. I am also just now emerging from my own fog of exhaustion and the feeling that the whole world and everything in it is just a little bit...off. After my recent trip, sans kids, to Hawaii (thanks again J!) it has taken me three days to even think about sharing my thoughts on what had to be one of the coolest weeks of my life. Following of course, the week I got married, the two weeks my girls were born and the week that The X-Files first premiered on televison. Now that I am finally feeling more myself, or rather a more tanned, relaxed version of myself, I have been trying to decide where to begin. After going around and around, it eventually hit me that there is really only one place to start. The Mustang.
White, shiny, new....fast....The Mustang (can you hear the caps? When I say it you can always hear the capital letters) was the car J upgraded to for our trip. His work was springing for a car (no caps there!) but this was Hawaii and what's the point of being in a tropical paradise if you can't feel the wind in your hair and really get sunburned while driving down the coast? So he spent the $300 dollars and The Mustang was ours for six glorious days. And the minute I saw it my heart thumped in my chest as I flashed back to the first time J drove up in a Mustang.
He had finally got the nerve up to ask me on an actual "date", or maybe I asked him, I can't really remember. What I do remember is my heart going so fast I thought it might actually crawl up my throat and run away. I remember the jingle the car made as he drove up, a leftover from some problem with one of the wheels that I never really understood but which made it easy to hear him coming from a mile away. And there he was, getting out of the oldest, reddest, coolest car I had ever seen. I wouldn't have even been able to tell you it was called a Mustang back then, only that it fit him to a tee. I didn't know wether I was going to laugh or throw up; I was so nervous. Which is funny really, when you have been friends with someone for a while, playing scrabble until all hours of the night and talking about nothing for hours at a time. But there is something about a date. A real date. Something official, scary, something that shouts out, "Here we are world! Together!" And it scared me to death as he strolled (oh, he was so amazingly handsome and the epitome of absolute cool...still is!) up the walk, took me by the hand and opened the door of that first Mustang for me. It's not like I had never been in his car before, but this felt different somehow. As if by getting in and going on this date it was becoming not his Mustang, but ours. And it did.
Oh, I know the red Mustang wasn't all sunny days and romance. It had more than its' share of problems - no seatbelt on my side (sorry mom!), no heat or a/c, a leaky top, a tendancy to just stop going. Honestly, it was a wreck. But J loved, and still loves, that car in the way that men have which, while I will never understand, I don't begrudge him. When it died for good he spent weeks trying to move the engine, which still worked somewhat, over into the body of another mustang he had found. Of course he knows very little about how cars actually work, so, while he did get the engine in and started once, it ultimately died and was put to rest in that second mustang. And if God was an author he would have been using a bit of subtle foreshadowing. That mustang was white.
Which brings us full circle to Hawaii and J opening the door for me in the Hertz parking lot. Only this time, 20 years later, I wasn't afraid. Oh, my heart was thumping, but it was thumping to the beat of all the good memories rushing back and the thrill of knowing that there were so many more to come. When he came around and got in, J grinned at me just as he had back then and I thought to myself, "This feels like coming home."
I know, I know, you're thinking I didn't actually tell you anything about our trip to Hawaii. Sorry. The rest of the trip was awesome, beautiful, exciting. There were expensive meals (again on the company, thank you Mattel!), glorious sunsets, dolphins and whales, shopping, everything you want in a tropical vacation. There was even the heart pounding excitement of an impending Tsunami and the resulting rush up into the mountains and night spent sleeping in the car. But, for me, it was really all about The Mustang and the man driving it...again.
White, shiny, new....fast....The Mustang (can you hear the caps? When I say it you can always hear the capital letters) was the car J upgraded to for our trip. His work was springing for a car (no caps there!) but this was Hawaii and what's the point of being in a tropical paradise if you can't feel the wind in your hair and really get sunburned while driving down the coast? So he spent the $300 dollars and The Mustang was ours for six glorious days. And the minute I saw it my heart thumped in my chest as I flashed back to the first time J drove up in a Mustang.
He had finally got the nerve up to ask me on an actual "date", or maybe I asked him, I can't really remember. What I do remember is my heart going so fast I thought it might actually crawl up my throat and run away. I remember the jingle the car made as he drove up, a leftover from some problem with one of the wheels that I never really understood but which made it easy to hear him coming from a mile away. And there he was, getting out of the oldest, reddest, coolest car I had ever seen. I wouldn't have even been able to tell you it was called a Mustang back then, only that it fit him to a tee. I didn't know wether I was going to laugh or throw up; I was so nervous. Which is funny really, when you have been friends with someone for a while, playing scrabble until all hours of the night and talking about nothing for hours at a time. But there is something about a date. A real date. Something official, scary, something that shouts out, "Here we are world! Together!" And it scared me to death as he strolled (oh, he was so amazingly handsome and the epitome of absolute cool...still is!) up the walk, took me by the hand and opened the door of that first Mustang for me. It's not like I had never been in his car before, but this felt different somehow. As if by getting in and going on this date it was becoming not his Mustang, but ours. And it did.
Oh, I know the red Mustang wasn't all sunny days and romance. It had more than its' share of problems - no seatbelt on my side (sorry mom!), no heat or a/c, a leaky top, a tendancy to just stop going. Honestly, it was a wreck. But J loved, and still loves, that car in the way that men have which, while I will never understand, I don't begrudge him. When it died for good he spent weeks trying to move the engine, which still worked somewhat, over into the body of another mustang he had found. Of course he knows very little about how cars actually work, so, while he did get the engine in and started once, it ultimately died and was put to rest in that second mustang. And if God was an author he would have been using a bit of subtle foreshadowing. That mustang was white.
Which brings us full circle to Hawaii and J opening the door for me in the Hertz parking lot. Only this time, 20 years later, I wasn't afraid. Oh, my heart was thumping, but it was thumping to the beat of all the good memories rushing back and the thrill of knowing that there were so many more to come. When he came around and got in, J grinned at me just as he had back then and I thought to myself, "This feels like coming home."
I know, I know, you're thinking I didn't actually tell you anything about our trip to Hawaii. Sorry. The rest of the trip was awesome, beautiful, exciting. There were expensive meals (again on the company, thank you Mattel!), glorious sunsets, dolphins and whales, shopping, everything you want in a tropical vacation. There was even the heart pounding excitement of an impending Tsunami and the resulting rush up into the mountains and night spent sleeping in the car. But, for me, it was really all about The Mustang and the man driving it...again.
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