Magazine Mogul Killed By Own House!

All week I have had a swollen scratchy throat and thought I was either coming down with a cold or having really bad allergies. I have never been stuck in stage one of a cold for more than two days so by the fifth day I finally believed I was going to slowly die of my allergy attack.

But then it occurred to me, when I saw what looked like roadkill stuck to my bare feet in my house...maybe it isn't allergies...maybe I'm dying of the dust and fur balls that are traveling in mighty little caravans across the wide expanses of my floor?!

This picture was taken after the first sweep through. I wanted to spare you the real horror.

I decided I needed to drink some more water just to deal with this startling train of thought and approached my fridge with deep trepidation. That's not a good sign. One should never feel they have to sneak up on their own fridge to grab a glass of water. But DUDE! Do you know what kind of stuff was living in there? There was a liquefied cucumber oozing around. No wonder I haven't been in the mood for salad lately. There were other scarier things too. Things you should never say out loud for fear that naming them will give them the power to spring to life and come get into bed with you in the middle of the night.

I have a very special fear of old meat. On several different occasions I decided to give the babies a little treat and served them up some yummy wet food. They didn't eat it all right away so the flies in our house, which we always have because we never shut our doors when we're home until we go to sleep (why bother? Chick will wrestle down any intruders*.), so the flies (as I was saying) decided that the wet food was a marvelous nursery for baby flies. There are few things more disgusting than seeing fly eggs on cat food**. And let me tell you- those flies work fast! They laid eggs within two hours of the food being out.

So I accumulated a few cans of wet food in the fridge. I got too grossed out to give it to the cats but felt too guilty about not using it up to actually throw it away.

I don't eat meat for a number of very good reasons, but one of the most compelling is that old meat is one of the most disturbing things in the world. Putrid meat is fifty times worse than liquefied cucumber. If I don't eat meat then I never have to deal with it going bad and leaving its smell in my nose.

By the way, this is the only reason why I never pursued a career as a mortician or a CSI. Oh, that and not going to college. Or even knowing that those were job options.

I was brave enough to open the top of the cans of cat food but once I saw inside I could not bring myself to clean out the cans to put in recycling. I realize this will make your respect for me plummet. I am grieved that I couldn't just deal with the festering ground beef bits. I will have to make up for this in some way.

So much was tossed out. I think this is an excellent moment to point out that if one keeps on top of the contents of their fridge there is less chance for this kind of waste. Waste is the enemy of economy and responsible landfill stewardship. Every single item that ended up in my trash can yesterday represented dollars that I spent and then threw out. That makes me a little sick when I realize how little we have right now.

I cleaned my fridge, my kitchen, one bathroom, and the floors. I don't know where I got the energy to do it but boy did it feel great. My throat is still swollen. So I'm going to have to conclude that it's allergies after all. I have to say though that I sure do hope to get the rest of my house cleaner because it feels so much brighter.

I am going to make kitchen curtains today. I've been meaning to make some for months. Every day I say to myself "Maybe I can carve out some time to make them today." and then I don't. I need a punch of color in there to tide me over until we get the walls painted. They're going to be Dustpan Alley blue (a retro looking dusty turquoise, see top of blog). The cabinets will remain egg shell colored but Philip is going to paint medieval scenes on them in a light brown.


*I really can't say for sure, but I wouldn't count on her to keep an intruder intact. Especially if they are men and have poor hygiene.

**Fly eggs that have hatched are worse, of course.

Bends In The River

(For Angela and Hope)

There are themes cropping up everywhere like garish flashing pop-ups that you can't close down even when you pound your computer screen with a hammer. Themes such as the economy and what it means to each of us personally to clean up George Bush's ass of a mess; how change doesn't always announce itself in advance; impermanence.

I spent four hours cleaning my old house to get it ready to sell. Four hours in which I got up close and personal with the rude mess that life leaves in it's back draft. What's left when you've gutted an old habitat to move to a new one is poignant and telling. I was cleaning out our refrigerator, scraping old crumbs and wiping up sticky juice, thinking about two women I had conversations with earlier in the day that got me thinking.

I believe I may have been carrying on about six threads of thoughts at one time. As is so often the case, I find that my mind occupies opposite territories at all times which makes it awkward at to explain how things work in my head. It is in my nature to collect objects and to fill my environment with those that are most useful and beautiful to me. It is also in my nature, though greatly obscured by my predilection for stuff, to strip myself of belongings, of furniture, of anything not completely necessary for breathing.

I have just described my exterior and my interior. There is a part of me that hungers for the austerity of empty rooms full of weather and silence. There are always curtains, and the expansive windows are always open. The atmosphere is crisp and fresh and it blows through my body like a cold baptism. My old house gradually reached the ideal of my interior landscape so that I while I cleaned and the house lost the dog hairs, the sticky fingerprints, the dust, and the scraps of life that had littered the floor, I began to see my soul in real time, reflected in my environment. My soul looks like a scoured unencumbered house waiting for the next Starling to come with it's feathers, happy chatter, and it's rich treasure of nesting materials.

My soul is a crossroads. A place where other souls stop to take a drink and then change direction.

I see so clearly my eyes have no color.

There are two things this day has reminded me of:

Life is delicately ephemeral and that is a large part of its and gorgeousness.

The conversations we have with ourselves are the most important ones we will ever have.

Today a dear friend described her belief that life is a river and that each event in her life is taking her where she needs to go down her personal waterway. She can't always see around the bend but she trusts that wherever the current is taking her is where she needs to go. I thought a lot about this as I scoured the old life off of counter tops. I see life the same way.

I have thought of life as a river for a long time. It's not really a thought as much as it simply exists as an unexpressed image. It might be water. It might be pure energy. It might be a river of liquid light. Life is definitely a river of something. Life is a current and my brain, being off kilter has had a tendency to try to swim against the tide. That's what mental illness feels like. Like you're always swimming upstream.

So many of us are coming to bends in the river that we can't see beyond. The whole country is approaching a bend in the river blind. As above, so below. It's important for all of us to trust that whatever experience we're headed for, politically, economically, personally, or ecologically, we are headed exactly where we need to go. That's the only direction life flows in. The forward direction. The comfort isn't in the outcome. Tragedy could be where we're headed. Hardship can visit us all at any time. The comfort is in knowing that if we go forward with some trust that we're going through exactly what we need to go through we have the potential at all times to come out of the bend in the river intact, possibly stronger than we went into it.

If we don't come out of the bend in the river at all?

Then we have the opportunity to sink with grace. With honor. With wit.

How we talk to ourselves while navigating the waters can determine what kind of voyage we have. It's more important than how we talk with others. Be kind to yourself. Be your own mother. Be your own friend. Give yourself good advice. Enjoy yourself. Light your own way in the dark. It isn't something that you either have, or don't have; it's something you work at every day like every other important relationship in your life.

I am tired all the way through my muscles. I am satisfied with this day's work. I am lusting for sleep. I will drift now.

Let the strength of the river carry you beyond the bend.

Baking With Buttermilk

on a cold winter day

Something about a day dusted with snow that makes me want to bake. I'm not a big baker but I do make corn bread, one of the few things Max will eat that doesn't come in a package. About a week ago I bought some low fat buttermilk with the plan to make some twice baked potatoes with buttermilk in place of butter to see if it would be good. I don't have much experience with buttermilk and it kind of weirds me out because of it's thickness. Thick milk seems wrong.

However, I made the corn bread in Deborah Madison's book "Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone" and they are a hit. I substituted the milk with buttermilk and it worked very well. They didn't rise a lot, but that may be because I substituted half the white flour for wheat flour (since that's how Max likes cornbread best). Small but good.

I also used the buttermilk for the twice baked potatoes and I hear they were good. I didn't have one myself but Philip said they were very good and I have the word of my dog Chick, who ate four of them when I wasn't looking, that they are not lacking at all in allure. Now I'm wondering what else I can use the buttermilk in. I don't make pancakes much though that would be the obvious use for it.

A totally bizarre affect of my new increased dose of Paxil is sleepiness. I went to bed early Sunday night. Then I woke up early Monday morning all fresh faced, yet by eight am I was hardly able to keep my eyes open and so fell asleep for two more hours. I woke up in time to take Max to school late which is lame because school had already been delayed by snow for two hours. I trudged him to school, came home again, and fell promptly asleep for another hour. Last night I was sleepy by five pm but hung on until 9pm at which time I fell fast asleep. That's a lot of sleep for a person who doesn't sleep well or generally much. I hope this isn't a permanent feature of an increased dose of Paxil with a decreased dose of Welbutrin. Getting some sleep is good stuff, but I hate sleeping too much, it makes me feel queer, as though time was slipping away from me and it makes me feel slightly disconnected from life in my waking hours.

I'm really hoping the change in medication will result in me shedding my inertia, not adding constant drowsiness to the table of contents. Often the side effects of phyche meds are temporary. I hope that's true here. What I desperately need is ENERGY.

Here's what I'd like to do today: make bread, make duvet covers. Somehow I cannot seem to get these kind of things done. Why? I must do it today. I must not let anything get in my way! Bread and duvet covers. New duvet covers would make me feel so happy. Most of mine are covered in Max bloody nose stains (have I mentioned recently how bad I am at doing laundry?*) or they are worn out to the point of being depressing. Not to mention not being very attractive.

Speaking of bloody noses, Max has been having them again. We did get a respite for about a month and a half. Not many of them and very mild ones now replaced by lots of bad ones. I dread having to put Max through the nasty (and expensive) nose cauterization he went through in the other side of his nose but it was effective. I don't have any bed linens without blood stains on them. I'm going to need to buy one set just for guests that must never be on the guest bed except for when guests are over. Very embarrassing to present the guest bed and have to explain that those dubious looking stains aren't from me having messy menstrual cycles but from the kid's nose. Like that's so much more comforting.

I cannot seem to get a handle on my house. On organizing it, putting it together, putting everything in a place, or on clearing things out, so I can actually clean it. My house should take between 1.5 and 2 hours to clean with the laundry only taking one day. I can barely make a dent in it in that time. I didn't come up with that time frame arbitrarily. That's how long it used to take me to clean it at my old place where everything more or less had a place to go so that I could straighten up quite easily. Now I start straightening up and three hours later I've barely made a noticeable change.

Yeah, this is why I need more energy, not LESS. Plus my brain needs to be in better shape. Not frizzy and jumping all over the place all the time.

Today is a new day. A day with buttermilk muffins and winter squash soup. Maybe today is also a day for a cup of caffeine? (We only have decaf coffee right now) Stormy, cold, grey, quiet, and I'm home. Something good's gotta happen!



*You would be proud of me Dominique for having used the Fels Naptha several times to good effect, but I cannot keep up with the blood stains around here. That would require energy that I don't have.