swirthit

There is almost never a television set in the home decorating or architectural magazine pictures of a living room/den. There are couches – multiples, sometimes – and chairs but where is their T.V.? Their furniture is arranged to form a tight little cluster of seating, or maybe faced toward a fireplace or windows.

Are we supposed to believe that ALL of these houses are part of the, admittedly real but probably small, section of the U.S. that doesn’t own a T.V.? Do they have another main room where they keep their secret items, like the television? Or their toaster oven and microwave and whatever else they keep on their kitchen counters. Which is also conveniently missing. I get that you don’t leave out your dirty dishes or the coffee spoon or the socks you shuck off next to your sofa when someone is coming to photograph your house, but give me a break. Here, here is an idea for how your house could/should look, if you abandon half your earthly belongings, give up television and radio and reading (some don’t have lamps that would light anything but the table they’re on), and learn how to make toast and everything else (including coffee) in your oven.

The architectural magazines are sometimes even worse. Where is their anything?! There are literally bathrooms with no towels or toilet paper. No dishes. Or maybe five dishes for a family of four, because they share one set of glass/bowl/plate/mug/tiny plate among them.

Hubs will periodically go through a kick where he laments the cluttered nature of our counters. I’ll admit, at first I thought he might be having a breakdown. Then I realized, nope. So maybe his eyes were somehow disconnected from his reason centers – how else could a man who leaves empty cheese wrapper after empty cheese wrapper on the counters look at a CLEAN counter and say, nope, too much stuff?

One day, there was divine pity directed toward me and a light of understanding pierced my skull. IT WAS THE G-D MAGAZINES. He was comparing our counter, with its toaster oven and coffee maker/carafe and blender and dish strainer with those damn magazines and their abso-freaking-lutely nothing. So I set out to rid him of this notion by carefully comparing our counters to other known counters. No dice. Somehow all the other existing counters we had ever seen in real life were being piped down Don’t See It Alley while our own was taking a hard right toward Freak Out Boulevard. With the exception of his aunt and uncle, who have specialty counters that hide all of their appliances behind roll-top doors. He loves their kitchen. (Who wouldn’t? It’s a great kitchen. Double ovens, giant sink and dishwasher, gorgeously appointed. But not builder standard, for sure.)

Sigh.

Every once in a while, it will crop back up. Like an allergy or shingles or that one guy who keeps wrong-numbering your phone because he’s convinced it’s his cousin David’s. And I’ll have to talk Hubs down again, before he gets weird. One day, I’ll miss it and come home to find all my appliances on the lawn, just wait and see.

Well, one thing’s for sure. Even if we get rid of our T.V. someday (HA!), I’m not orienting anything toward the stupid, stupid fireplace – but my hatred of that fireplace is another topic entirely.

Snow is meant for Christmas – Christmas shopping, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. And also for March, because when is there not snow in March? What a bizarre month.

Did we have snow for Christmas? No. Is it March? No.

Why the persnickety is it snowing so hard out there?

There are a lot of profound things I could say about Midwestern weather, but there’s no room in my head for them because UGH Snow? Really?

Day one: Decide to finally set up a blog (like husband has been bugging me to for years). Decide not to tell husband. Feel both good and not-good about both decisions.

Day two: Forget all passwords to everything. *sigh* Post about setting up blog, just to shake off the first-post jitters. Table decision on whether to mention blog to therapist. Also table any consideration of why you would not mention blog to therapist wherever appropriate and whether it is slightly hipster/too-too-much to mention therapist in first blog post.

Let me tell you a story.

Once, a long time ago, a little girl really liked writing. She did it on her own, for fun, and didn’t care too much if other people liked it. They liked it anyway, for the most part. Or didn’t care, in a way that was totally fine by her. She got As, she won contests, she won awards.

At some point, the fun began to leak out of writing. She wasn’t sure what had caused the leak. Maybe it was her father’s complete lack of interest in anything she was good at that he wasn’t. Maybe it was the blandness of her mother’s ‘It’s very nice’ when said mother read the longest, most intricate story she’d ever written. Maybe it was something else.

The leak grew. The girl became an adult. She doubted that people liked her writing, that she was good at it. She doubted the usefulness of it even if she was good at it. She doubted the long-term value of writing as a lifetime pursuit, even if it might be useful to someone.

She was full of doubt but not so much fun.

Still, though, the stories were inside, pressing to get out. She took a creative writing class to fill a requirement. When her personal world imploded and took her confidence and her career plan with it, she took another one, because she needed it. She tried not think about what that might mean. And then she graduated and stopped writing.

Writing required thinking and time and confidence. Thinking was painful and time was scarce and confidence was vacationing Somewhere Else. She took in other stories, consuming and consuming – books, television, movies, songs, articles, blogs – but tried not to produce anything of her own. What few things that escaped were hidden away and she pretended they did not exist.

Sometimes, she pretended she did not exist.

…

One day, she decided to finally set up a blog. She decided not to tell her husband. And to try not to think about any whys for awhile. Because sometimes… sometimes you have to jump in.