i made a list

All my life I have hated washing dishes. With a sink full of dirty dishes staring me down, I feel like Sisyphus at the bottom of the hill staring at that motherfucking boulder every morning and hating his fucked up life.

Because dishes are the never ending torment, the liver that keeps growing back so the carrion crows can feast on my entrails yet again (different myth).

All this mixed mythological hyperbole* may seem a little excessive but so is my hatred of dishwashing and its dirty little accomplice, cooking. 

Cooking, baking, frying, broiling - all those bastards turning the kitchen into a wasteland of goo and gunk and gore. Every fucking day.

I love a clean kitchen. Particularly one uncontaminated by the byproducts of the reason for its existence. When I finally wash the motherfucking dishes, you can be sure the counters and stove will end up gleaming too, or at least crumb-free and relieved of sticky stains and the threat of salmonella.

I generally draw the line at sweeping the floor because I have dogs, socks, and bi-weekly cleaners for that.

I stand there for a moment and admire the godliness of it all (it helps if you neatly stack the empty peanut jars waiting to be cleaned and recycled) and pretend I don't see that the ground beneath the boulder is looking a bit dodgy.

All this beauty and it only took me an hour and a half to get here.

If that seems like a ridiculous amount of time to spend on dishes when I have a functioning dishwasher sitting right there, it is. But the dishwasher gets pretty full pretty fast and those pots and pans don't fit in very well once the plates are in there and some don't fit at all - I'm looking at you, broiling pan covered in congealed fat and glued on meat crud.

Every night my husband comes home and cooks us a nice meal and I am supposed to clean up afterwards because that's the deal we made. I actually insist on it because he does not clean to my exacting standards (not really exacting, see above) and I will just end up redoing the bits that bug me the most.

But every night as we finish our meal I feel the weight of the boulder settling onto my shoulders and I struggle to get started up that hill.

I think the reason it is such a struggle is because I am plagued with three debilitating conditions: depression, perfectionism, and procrastinitis. Or maybe it's one condition with 3 intertwined parts. Oh, and a tendency to overthink things (see above and below) That's four. There's probably something else too. Amongst the weapons at my disposal for making my life more complicated than it needs to be are...

Fortunately I have had only one deep depression, relatively short lived (several months) but also the most interminably long and horrifying episode of my life. That was 20 years ago. I lost two babies since that time, endured terrible mourning for their loss, and I still describe my depression like that.

Even though I found my way back to life, the experience of a full blown depression made me aware of a persistent low level of energy that has always permeated my life. I am not sad all the time, far from it, but I can be thrown into the foulest of moods over my inability to do things I should be doing.

Once I got past the general fuckery of adolescence and started to care about the state of my surroundings, I discovered there were many household chores I wanted done. I just didn't want to do them.

Sadly, I often don't care enough about them until they have turned into mega projects that will take far more time and energy than I am currently blessed with, which of course means the project only increases in size while I'm waiting for that one magical day when I feel up to the challenge.

And once I start a project I need it to be done right so that cleaning out the spare room becomes tidying the hall closet to make storage space becomes sorting out piles of papers to see what needs throwing out becomes where's the fucking glue so I can fix this goddamned thing once and for all. That shit is exhausting so I usually run out of steam long before the job is done and have to find some half-assed way to finish up so that the hallway is passable again.

So instead of celebrating what I have accomplished, I'm just tired and a little depressed that I'm going to have to do this project again sometime after it has had time to restock.

Most of the time the memory of slogging through these projects discourages me from starting them at all. If I play enough Candy Crush,** it is likely I won't have time to even begin before it's time to drive my kid somewhere. If I time this all correctly I will avoid all projects and simply have to deal with the guilt of having accomplished absolutely nothing all weekend long.

Sadly this tactic also has a tendency to eat up the prime book-reading/tv-watching time that I used to use to avoid housework during my misspent youth. At least then I was improving my vocabulary.

Getting back to the dishes (I can't avoid those mother-effing dishes), I see the same scenario play out on a daily basis. Sometimes I just wash them right after dinner, give myself a gold star, and go merrily on with my life. Other times, I have to rush out somewhere (see driving kid, op. cit.) or dinner was delayed or somebody pooped in the laundry room (just the dogs, not the kid) any of which conspire against the washing up. Sometimes I just can't stop playing Candy Crush.***

Once the dishes from tonight start piling up on top of the dishes of the previous night (and the night before that) it gets harder and harder to face them, and easier and easier to play another game.****

Before I know it, it's time to walk the dogs or even time to sit down and watch our shows (9:30 pm, aka home free) and I can pretend there aren't dishes taking up every surface in my kitchen just waiting to bitch slap me the next time I walk in.

This would all be a lot funnier if the spectre of my failure to suck it up like a big girl and just do it already wasn't filling me with a tiny bit of self-disgust (or a lot).

When I finally start the plate scraping and the sink filling and the food storing and the counter cleaning and the soaking of old pots and the disposition of fat (congealed or unconcealed) and the scrubbing of stove stains and the tossing of packaging that should have been dealt with by the chef, it still kind of sucks but at least I've got some music playing, I'm singing, and my dog is lying there giving me emotional support. The singing and my iPod are essential coping tools. The dog isn't doing much but it makes me smile when I see him there.

I wash and I wash and the drain is getting full and my back and/or knees are starting to ache and the worst pots are still waiting and they'll need a fresh sink full of water. Doing the task becomes just as depressing as avoiding it.

But I press on like a martyr until finally it is done.

This hateful task seems to me a microcosm of all the frustrating, boring, never-ending day-to-day tasks that seem impossible to attempt let alone complete when you are in a depressed state. When you feel like your world is a mess and it's your fault because you can't even do the most basic things, it's easy to fall into a pattern of self pity and self blame - the kind of thinking you need to avoid if you don't want to go down that path to self-immolation.  I'm always afraid that when I start thinking like this I may already be on that path and I never want to go down there again.

I don't like that I am like this. Twenty years ago I hated myself for being like this.

Lately I have been trying out a new coping tool that I kept meaning to get to but kept putting off. For 20 years.

I made a list.

Every time I think of some task I would like to do I put it on a list on my iPad - this has the advantage of helping me remember what I want done and keeps it handier than a paper list since my iPad seems to be permanently attached to my hand. The list will never be empty because I keep adding new things but after a task is done I check it off and it will disappear until I feel the need to admire all my accomplishments by viewing completed tasks.

Instead of big, overwhelming projects, I put on smaller tasks that will take varying amounts of time. I don't list "clean the spare room" but the components of that job. I reorganized the gift wrapping stuff this Christmas, for example. The under-the-bed storage container that used to store all that crap needs a little more cleaning so I can repurpose it but that's a task for another day.

When I have a little time I do one thing. I do others if I have the time and the energy but I don't kick myself if one is all I can do. Or even part of one.

As for the fucking dishes, I have tried to let myself give up partway if there is just too much for one session, I'm feeling pain, or there's no more room in the drain. Then I finished the job the next night. It seemed to help.

So at the tender age of 54, I am finally taking some simple advice I heard many years ago and it really seems to be making a difference. I truly am getting more done bit by tiny bit and my energy for all the mundane tasks of life seems to be increasing as long as I know when it's time to stop.

And to my frustrated husband who just needs a little room to cook in every night for lord's sake (he would never use that expression), I hope this long meandering tale will explain why I can't always make that space as big as he deserves.

Because doing dishes really does suck.



*The Ancient Greeks really understood the existential horror of a sink full of dirty dishes.
**I'm using Candy Crush metaphorically here because that effing app hasn't worked in weeks. I'm actually playing Minion Rush, Best Fiends, and Cookie Jam in an endless loop but you've probably never even heard of them.
***Seriously, that stupid game boots me out before I even get to spin the bonus wheel.
****I deleted it from my iPad today because the shagging thing was just taking up space. See ** above.

she who does not obey

A while back, She Who Does Not Obey expressed a wish that her pseudonym be changed, offended by its accurate description no doubt. I started to consider it, despite my fondness for the name, but in the meantime a friend of mine had read about her on my blog and commented "she's my kind of girl."

I met this particular friend while working on my English degree at university so I immediately knew what she meant.

The Obedient Female is a literary figure that has annoyed and frustrated me for quite some time. The ideal woman in the White Male dominated world of English lit was an angelic figure who did what she was told, passing meekly and compliantly from father to husband. When blessed with decent parents, or at least one parent of that variety, obedience can work out reasonably well for a heroine. But when she is cursed with a greedy, selfish and capricious family, she becomes a doormat, a vulnerable creature in need of assistance and rescue.

I certainly don't want to raise She Who Marries the Jerk Her Family Foisted Upon Her or She Who Forsakes Her True Love Because Her Family Does Not Approve.

And definitely not She Who Sat in the Cinders because she never had the ovaries to demand the respect she deserved and reclaim her rightful place in her own family. If we all waited for some twit to show up with an uncomfortable piece of footwear, where would we be?

Clarissa who has drawn my scorn on this blog before was very much the obedient ideal, passively acquiescing to every demand of her despicable brother except in one thing - she refuses to marry the Jerk Her Family Foists Upon Her. She also refuses to marry the guy who rescues her from her family and then rapes her, even though that would restore her good name. If she hadn't been so insufferable about it all, I could actually admire her.

One day while I was driving SWDNO to school, she saw a woman wearing a burka for the first time in her life. I tried to explain it in as neutral a way as I could, despite my discomfort with the practice, to say it was a cultural thing and that a woman can choose to wear a burka if she wants.

"That's unfair," she said.

At that point I was forced to agree. I have read finely worded arguments from highly educated Muslim women arguing for their right to wear a head scarf or a burka if they choose, but I can't help wondering how much choice is involved when a woman is subject to a strongly patriarchal society and accepts that a man should have the final say over what she does and how she dresses. Works great as long as you don't end up with a crappy family or a violent husband. Or if you should happen to disagree with the person who has power over you.

Meanwhile, my own culture can hardly be highly praised when there are still so many obstacles for the uppity woman to face. She is still apparently doing most of the housework and the childcare even when she is not a stay-at-home mom. She is still not paid as much as a man. She is still subject to misogyny and violence both in abusive homes and in society at large.

She has never been the President of the United States and has only managed to be Prime Minister of Canada for 30 seconds or so.

I want my girl to grow up to be a strong, independent young woman who will make a way for herself in this world whether she finds her handsome prince or not.

Philosophically, I am as anti-obedience as the rest of my oppressed sisters, but as a mother I can't help wishing from time to time that my little proto-feminist would just once put her damn shoes on the first time I ask.

But she knows how to say "No!" and mean it. That is progress.

bimonthly?

Can someone tell me where March went?

I actually had a post percolating in my head all last month but somehow it never found the way to the great egress.

But at least I can say I posted in April.

And just so I can say there was actual content in this post, here's a quick story:

She Who Does Not Obey was telling me about a nightmare she had the other night. We were at a funeral for three women (?) and suddenly everyone started turning into Evil Lobsters!

Even Her Father and me.

I started to smile despite myself, because Evil Lobsters! How cool is that?

She started to smile too. I didn't want her to think I didn't get that her dream was still scary despite the presence of diabolical crustaceans, pointing out that laughing at a scary dream was the best way to deal with it.

"If you have the dream again, you could throw hot water at them," I suggested.

She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Mom, they were already cooked."

Oh.

wmd

A while back, She Who Does Not Obey got a snow day but I did not. The school board gets very trigger-happy sometimes, closing the schools at the least suggestion of bad weather. My work is less easily panicked, unfortunately.

I usually go with taking her to my work's daycare which is open as long as work's open, but this time I decided to see what her two friends down the street were up to. To SWDNO's delight, friends' mom was more than willing to take her on as there was already one other girl from up the street coming by and even numbers are always better in those situation.

Normally getting SWDNO out of the house on such a day is like trying to pry a lid off a reluctant pickle jar, but this was the perfect carrot. She is always ready to run down the street whenever the chance arises.

After I told her the good news, we were both hurrying to get ready for a change when the phone rang and friend's mom spoke to Her Father, asking if we might have a bit of peanut butter we could spare. It seems they had gotten themselves an unwanted boarder and needed to serve an eviction notice.

SWDNO was overjoyed with the notion of a mouse in the house and tickled at the idea of peanut butter being a mouse's favourite food.

Until it suddenly occurred to her that the peanut butter was going to be used lure the mouse to his doom. It was ammunition for a weapon of mouse destruction!

All of sudden, her moral campass kicked in and she became a conscientious objector - a conscientious objector who decided to hide in her bed and refused to put any more clothes on.

I did my best to rationalize the mouse's death sentence with tales of mouse poop and general untidiness, but could make no headway, all while the clock ticked away inexorably toward 9 a.m. Why couldn't they just trap the mouse? she asked and I could think of no other reason than that people usually went for the cheapest and easiest method of mouse disposal, a philosophical position that she would hardly find defensible in her current state of mind.

Fortunately for me, she hit upon a scheme which many had tried before her - she would just have to build a better mousetrap. She hunted around (clock still ticking!) until she found a shoe box and after some consideration, she demonstrated some methods by which she would lie in wait for the mouse with peanut butter on the lid, and then quickly slam the box down, trapping him as easy as can be.

I quickly agreed that this was an excellent plan -what with mice being so slow and easily fooled -and hustled her out the door.

As it happened, all the trouble was for naught - friends' mom was going to use a humane trap after all. Mickey would be caught and released into the wild to continue his unsanitary marauding somewhere else (or make his way back to their hospitable home once again).

I should have known friend's mom would have planned to use such a trap. One time, she made a foolhardy comment about actually liking our unruly dogs and being quite willing to adopt them should the need ever arise. Lucky for her, Her Father wasn't there to immediately take her up on such a unwise offer.

As for the mouse, he managed to elude capture on that day, despite the ingenious deployment of shoe boxes and other trapping devices. His fate is still a mystery to me.

But if he ever makes his way up to this end of the street, I have a feeling we will soon be the proud owners a yet another pesky pet.

i can haz blog post

When I started this blog I had visions of posting several times a week, encouraged by my favourite blogs which I checked every day - even when I knew the blogger was more sporadic than that.

These plans were quickly downsized to dreams of a weekly post, followed by bi-weekly plans and then monthly.

That was clearly an unreachable goal as well (see December posts, lack thereof).

I shall blame Her Father and his insistance that we trek into the wilds of New Brunswick last week to visit his family instead of staying home and lying idly around on soft cushions, hove off like oriental potentates and stuffing ourselves with Hershey's Kisses. I still have two unopened bags of the things - by this time in the Christmas season, Her Father and I are usually scrounging under sofa cushions for any strays that might have eluded our cavernous maws.

I did start a blog post in a hotel room in Halifax, but sadly there was no time to lollygag around and finish the damn thing. There was breakfast to be bought and the hotel dog to pat. BTW, if you're ever in Halifax and missing your favourite pooch, I would recommend the Best Western Chocolate Lake as a reasonably priced way to assuage your craving for dog-petting. That's Coco the Chocolate Lab in the masthead and she was a real sweetie.

She Who Does Not Obey gives it four stars.

I do love going to Halifax where I also got to see my sister TR and her husband where we can also revel in wild cat abandon as well. My sister is a Cat Person and has just upgraded once again to a three-cat family with the arrival of two cute little fuzzballs named Sonny and Ben. I would enthrall you with Cute Kitteh Photos at this point if I hadn't misplaced my digital camera the day before our trip and not realized this fact until two minutes before the arrival of our ride to the airport.

There were 27 photos on the disposible camera I bought at Shoppers the first day of our arrival. I believe that SWDNO and a few other humans may have managed to get into some of them, but I doubt that they were ever without feline companionship. I'm sure the photos will all turn out something like this, with which you can amuse yourself until I get around to bringing the camera in to be processed.

New Brunswick was nice too, but I could have done without the snow covered drive back to almost-Halifax, watching vans doing pirouettes in the lanes ahead. We intended to go all the way back to Halifax that day but bailed at the airport hotels.

It was probably the most restful part of the whole trip and involved a lot of sitting around and reading an entire newspaper from end to end - which I haven't done in about 8.5 years - while occasionally looking out the window at a storm that I was extremely glad I was no longer in the midst of.

So now I am back home and actually finding the time to post while patting a slightly different shade of lab.

I shall endeavor not to turn it an annual event.

not gone, just probably forgotten

So, hello there. How've you been? Good, good. Having managed to drag yourself from your sick bed to read this, I'm glad to hear you're still alive although possibly not well.

I have been gone, lo these many days, not because of illness, unless it was African sleeping sickness. It would appear I slept October completely away.

But lest you think I was completely slothful last month, I spent a good deal of my waking hours trying to acquire a costume for She Who Does Not Obey who had decided to be a black cat this year.

Last year I helped my mother make SWDNO a Jasmine costume, which took several weeks to do, what with the trip to the fabric store scrounging for just the right shade of aqua silk amongst the fabric ends, the cutting of many oddly-shaped pieces, and the tricky sewing. My mother did all the tricky sewing, however. I did manage to jerry-rig a matching costume for SWDNO's Webkinz chihuahua, Ruffer, though.

Unfortunately, the Jasmine pattern came with an Ariel pattern as well, so SWDNO had declared that she was going to be Ariel next. I felt guilty that my mother had done the lion's share of the work, so I was determined to do more of the work on Ariel even though I had no idea when I would find the time. Ruffer was sure to demand her matching outfit as well.

So when SWDNO declared at the end of September that Ariel's services were no longer required, I was delighted. Black cat was going to be a slam dunk. Black clothes we've got, all we needed were some pointy ears and a tail.

That of course was before the two of us spent three weekends at three different stores trying to find said items. And when we couldn't find what we came for, she still managed to talk me into spending ridiculous amounts of money on spooky Halloween props for a "Tunnel of Doom" she wanted to set up in our foyer - only to have the Tunnel cancelled because several of the things we bought gave her the willies.

Our third store was sure to be the charm, I thought, given that it's the most popular one in town for cheap costumes. Still we were forced to wander aimlessly through the store for ages, like zombies in a vegetable patch, unable to uncover a single feline accessory until we devoured, I mean, engaged the help of a staff member who actually worked in the Halloween section.

Then, when we got it home, the dog ate the cat costume.

Finally we arrived on the all-sainted day, new costume purchased albeit briefly misplaced, only to have a new concern on the horizon. One of her friends down the street had come down with the H1N1 virus.

Everyone in town had been in a mad panic to get the vaccination the day before Halloween after those two kids died up in Ontario, causing the provincial government to crack down and enforce restrictions on who was to be vaccinated. My kid was too damn healthy and too damn old, at the tender age of eight, so she was out of luck.

The news agencies reported that people were considering not going out this year, trying to limit contact with possible sources of contagion, aka candy givers. Most of my acquaintances reported a reduction in the number of kids who came to their doors.

We went trick-or-treating despite it all and survived the experience - even while accompanied by the younger sister of her afflicted friend.

Now we are waiting for our turn at vaccination to come, attempting to fortify ourselves with the large candy stash SWDNO has hidden away in a Secret Box in her bedroom - the location of which is no secret to anyone, the dog included.

Half my choir is missing in action this week, which wasn't that disturbing until today when some of the previously absent reappeared, coughing vigourously throughout the session.

I had the urge to shout "Stop spraying your filthy germs on me you plague-infested swine!" but somehow managed to restrain myself.

Not that I'm getting paranoid or anything.

Still if you would kindly coat yourself in Purell before your next visit, it would be greatly appreciated.

sing low

I did something very unexpected and impulsive last week.

I joined a choir.

I am just that kind of a wild and crazy girl.

I haven't sung in a choir since high school, or was it junior high?

I don't remember high school singing, but I do remember being in Glee Club in junior high - sadly not in the least bit like the new tv show. I really liked being in the Glee Club, but there was one thing I could never come to terms with.

Mrs. Dawson made me sing alto.

I didn't like singing alto. Altos are the third class citizens of the all-girl choir, let me tell you.

Altos sing the same note over and over and over until suddenly they don't and where that next note is supposed to be was usually beyond me. I couldn't seem to anticipate it.

I absolutely love to sing but hated the struggle to figure out just what notes I was supposed to be singing. I have a pretty good memory for songs I like, for anything with a good hook, but we were usually given a few cursory runs through the alto line and then left to fend for ourselves while the sopranos and 2nd sopranos got to breeze through the melody lines.

The fun parts. The parts that made the songs so memorable. The parts that made you want to sing the songs in the first place.

When I was in the 9th grade, our school staged Oliver, one of my favourite musicals. So many of those songs are wonderfully singable - although some of the lyrics (Consider Yourself, Food Glorious Food, I'd Do Anything) are practically impossible to remember if you are a lazy 14-year-old trying to coast by on the memories of other 14-year-olds who were hoping you were going to memorize it.

On the other hand, if called upon, I could belt out every verse of Who Will Buy, including the introductory bits sung by the chorus. It is a lovely song with sopranos offering "ripe strawberries ripe" and 2nd sopranos plaintively calling for someone to "buy my sweet red roses". I could totally hit those notes too, but instead I was called upon to offer "knives, knives to grind" hitting mournful notes that still grind on my nerves.

I suppose the part is actually for bass voices, but while we had many boys in the production, we were in junior high after all - very few testicles had dropped sufficiently at that point to produce sounds low enough. The altos were probably the only ones man enough to do it.

To make matters worse, we had to come in a half beat behind everyone else, on an obscure note that none of us could recognize if it had jumped up and grabbed us by our non-existant balls. Our Nancy, the female lead, was recruited to bring us in somewhere in the approximate vicinity of the correct time.

If all these sour grapes lead you to believe that the part I really wanted to sing was that of the female lead, then you would be right. I did want that part and I tried out for it, but I was no match for the girl who rightfully got the lead. She had a strong, beautiful, mature voice with a terrific range that I never could have matched. She did us proud.

I think that I am a pretty good singer but my difficulties with singing alto convinced me that I was inappropriately placed. I was convinced that my music teacher had never listened to my voice long enough to know what I should be singing.

So when the opportunity to join this choir came along the other day, with the offer of placing you in a section based on a quick check of your range, I jumped at the chance.

I went to the class and eagerly stepped up for my turn to sing my scales.

So the guy listens to me strain for the highest notes and then comfortably sing the low and he pronounces my sentence: Alto 2.

In horror, I begged and was granted the small mercy of Alto 1, but my dreams of singing the goddamn tune already were finally and irrevocably dashed. My voice has betrayed me.

So now I am trying to make the best of it, dusting off my sight-reading skills (almost non-existant), and listening really hard to the ladies sitting around me who apparently know what the hell they are doing.

The first song we are singing is an excerpt from a larger piece. I don't know what it is called, the only thing identifying it is the handwritten word "Pink". I think this might be the composer, although I'm pretty sure it's not this Pink what with it being in Latin and all.

After a few classes, I was starting to think I'd never get anywhere, my memory of the chorus consisting of this:

Gloria in excelsis deo / something something SOMEthing /
some somethingy thing / thingy voluntatis

Also that there was something in there about a minibus.

But then by the fourth class, I suddenly had that, all two lines of it. I felt proud of myself for about two minutes until we got started on the verses and I quickly got in over my head again. By verse 3, we were singing about Chakotay in something or other. I'm still not sure how the tune goes, losing my place on the sheet music quite easily, so I continue to listen hard and try to fake the tougher bits until I have heard it sung correctly enough by my better trained compadres to follow suit.

I will try not to be discouraged. It helps that today the instructor mentioned that composers were not very imaginative when it came to writing alto parts and that they were hard to sing. So I guess it's not just me, then.

I am enjoying it at least even if I still feel the need to mutter under my breath from time to time.

I will go on singing about Chakotay on a minibus at least until the Christmas concert and then we shall see.