*This started out as a funny "Dang, it's hard being poor at the end of January" post and wound up an introspective musing about ending my internet addiction. Enjoy. Snort.*
January is a long month any way (sing it with me: "Thirty days has September..."), but for teachers in our county, it's a reaaaaally long month. In an effort to help out with Christmas spending, the powers that be pay teachers (and other employees) for December before the Christmas holidays. Theoretically, this is great: it loosens up finances for holiday expenses and you don't have to worry about eating whatever you can find out in your yard for New Year's Day brunch. (I will point out that I actually DID eat something I found out in my yard for New Year's Day brunch. Yay for mustard green frittatas!)
The problem is that come the end of January, ye old bank account is looking grim. I know, technically, that this should not be the case. Technically, we should all have set aside our money for Christmas months earlier and we wouldn't be dealing with this issue now. Technically, I should be dipping into our winter stores and pulling out the cans of tomato sauce and jars of green beans and running out to the chicken house for some eggs since it's so frickin' warm this winter that my chickens would probably still be laying. But. I'm not doing that.
Instead, I'm doing things like trying not to chew my own ears off while Jeffrey whines about having to eat Corn Chex (left over from party mix) agaaaain for breakfast. (Seriously, Chex boxes are the size of airplane hangars.) I'm doing things like slinging Rice Krispie (left over from Rice Krispie Treats) boxes at him and yelling, "You want VARIETY? Have some VARIETY." I mean, it's great that my kid has a good vocabulary and yeah, yeah, yeah he's a good speller and soooo smart and it's awesome. Yay. But wanting more variety at breakfast? Really? BE GLAD YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO EAT, SON. Don't make me tote out all the starving children in the world.
What?
I can't remember where I was going with this. The variety threw me off.
Oh, right. So, we're really not self sufficient or grateful for what we have or capable of entertaining ourselves without spending money. I mean, if given the opportunity--and by "opportunity," I mean "utter collapse of American civilization to the point of Laura Ingalls Wilder times"--I'm pretty sure we could pull ourselves together and make do, but right now? Not so much.
Our kids complain about having to eat boxed cereal at the end of the month that's perfectly tasty and healthy for them, other than the fact that it's processed and in a box.
Jeffrey unloaded maybe six pieces of firewood from the back of the truck yesterday and acted like we had chopped his arms off and were dragging him over hot coals and fireant nests.
We live on an acre of land and buy every tomato product we eat.
We look at our weekly eating out as a right we have, not as a treat.
My kids are, right now, sitting in front of the television so I can type peacefully before work. They could be cleaning their rooms, feeding the dog, or reading a book, but I want them to be quiet.
This is, of course, a recurring theme for me. My biggest obstacle as a human being isn't lack of compassion or intelligence or loved ones or funds. My biggest obstacle is lack of follow through. I make big plans and then they unfortunately sort of shrivel up and die because I don't follow through with them. This isn't beating myself up: it's just the truth.
This obstacle has dogged my path (or sat squarely in the middle of my path) my entire life. Plans to write books, lose weight, plant gardens, yadayadayada litter my timeline. I don't find it as disheartening as you would think. At least I've been consistent.
At the same time, it's a little frustrating to think of the way that I would PREFER to live compared to how I live in actuality. I would PREFER to be on a little farm, writing books in my cozy office and taking clients out to the lavender patch for a photo session until the kids come home from school and we do our chores before sitting down to a home cooked meal that is 3/4 of our hard work.
Now, it's maybe not possible to have that life right now. My acre is going to have to do until we can afford the little farm. But there are certainly things I CAN do now. I can plant a better garden, finally get the dang chickens we've been talking about, sew down that pile of fabric and patterns that's cluttering up my dining room.
It's going to require that I do something that I both dread and look forward to: I'm going to have to kick my internet habit. Honestly, I joke about Crackterest, but in the past few days, I've come to realize that I've gone from using the internet as a tool or a way to hang out with my buds to using it like I used to use cigarettes. It's a time filler and a time waster. I will literally spend hours sometimes going from Facebook to the Huffington Post to The Pioneer Woman back to Facebook to Pinterest to CNN and then back to the Huffington Post and then maybe a little Twitter. And then I look up and whoopsidoodle! The laundry isn't washed and it's time to go get the kids.
It would be kinda funny and "I'm just a housewife sitting around eating bonbons" except that it ISN'T really all that funny and, especially in the winter when I'm prone to the blues anyway, it becomes actually a little bit serious because I feel the blues veering into something more grim and grayish and the constant cycle of internettedness gets a little...damaging-feeling. Isolating. Not good at all.
So I'm going partially cold turkey. Partially because I can't completely disconnect from my computer. After all, I have photos to edit and blogs to write and a media presence to build and maintain if I want to be successful as a photographer. Also, visiting with online friends is an important part of the who that I am right now that I'm content with. But I simply have to wrench myself out of the cycle of surfing that is dragging my down. I'll be online in the morning before the kidlets wake up and again in the evening after they go to bed, and I might tweet a couple of times during the day, but for now, while I try to get some plans that have become giant rock piles in my path cleared up, that's going to have to be it.
I'll see you around, of course. Just...not as much.
Showing posts with label Home Improvement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Home Improvement. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
A Parallel Universe
Have you noticed that my header is still June's header? Pitiful, I tell you. For some reason, I had this idea that as soon as the kids went back to school, I would be wallowing in a veritable swamp of time, whilst angels with timers and acoustic guitars played in the corners and all of the chores and projects I had would leap through my capable hands and into the world.
Um. No.
Instead, I somehow got sucked into the parallel universe that is my laundry room. Up until the past week, I had no idea that it WAS a parallel universe. I just thought it was a really messy room that, no matter how many times I tried, I simply couldn't keep organized. I've written about it before, I've posted pictures, I've entertained you with the gory awfulness of the clothes rack, but I don't know if I've ever fully articulated how mind-numbingly NASTY my laundry room is on a continual basis. It's crazy. And I decided that, within the confines of my budget and with all the extra time I have lying around, I was going to tackle that beast once and for all. With SHELVES!! And storage bins!!! It was going to be glorious.
The first step was to corral all of my photography equipment. One day when I am self-actualized (I've decided to stop using the term "grown up," because I AM an adult, dang it, even if my career aspirations remain as maddeningly fickle as they do), I hope to have a separate studio with an attached garden and all sorts of shelves and bins and rooms and feediddlepots that will make my compartmentalized heart sing. For now, I scavenged a piece of plywood from the shed and attached it to the wall and to the first shelf that Will and I ever made together and, lo, it was good. Ish. Two cup hooks and a strip of elastic later, and my bean bag was stowed away neatly, as well as my containers of headbands, blankets, and assorted bits of equipment. Tirra lirra lay, I sang. It was all very festive. Of course, there was a big pile of stuff that had been wadded up on the FSTWAIEMT that was now on the floor, but that was okay, because I was soon to be making a trip to the supply store for the second part of the shelving system.
And here's where I hit the first snag (the first of many, many to come.) Because of the placement of the rack where I hang Will's clothes before I iron them and because of the big pile of stuff, measuring the wall for the next shelving unit was going to be difficult. I planned a shallow shelf for book bags and shoes that would fit beside the door into the house. Braced on the sides of the shelf and fitting over the top of the door frame would be a single shelf which would house stuff we don't really use that much, like camping equipment and extra bags. (We have a bizarre amount of extra totes. It's mildly disturbing.) In order to measure for this shelf, I'd have to hang over the side of the clothes rack while balanced on a step stool, which was difficult at best, so I asked Will to help me.
Now, I love my husband. He is awesome and handsome and great and all that mess, but he drives me up a fricking wall when I ask him for help, because there always has to be a DISCUSSION about it. Why do I need to move the couch? Why do I want to paint the living room? Do I REALLY think it's a good idea to expand the garden? You get the drift. If he isn't asking me questions about the logic behind my decision, he's making observations on how the process could be easier, faster, or cheaper. When we got into the laundry room, he helpfully pointed out that it would be easier to measure the wall if the big pile of stuff wasn't there. REALLLLLYYYY? I lovingly didn't bite his face off, although I wanted to, and told him that I'd just do it later, because I needed to do something else, and the kidlets helped me out here by yelling at each other in the living room. I mean...y'all. I know it is not a particularly pleasant side of myself, but sometimes, I just want some dang help MY WAY without having to write a dang dissertation about all aspects of the project with which I need help. Bless my husband's sweet heart.
Anyway, I wound up measuring the wall by taking a piece of the coarsest yarn I have (honestly, it's like a brillo pad....I can't figure out why I ever bought it) and taping sections of it to the wall after I found the tape, which wasn't as easy as it should have been (there's a reason I need more organization in my home) and pretty much balancing on the clothes rack and step stool via my toenails and my left breast. Then I measured the piece of yarn on the floor with a tape measure. I know, right? How very competent and Martha-y of you, Heather. DO NOT BE DECEIVED. Remember that my laundry room is a parallel universe...
More competence ensued at the supply store where I bought all the wood I needed for the project. I briskly picked out three straight boards and one almost straight longer board and assorted screws and brackets, got the boards cut, and headed home. Things went downhill from there.
The first part of the shelf was easy and based on the design of my pantry shelves, which I also built. I made a ladder of sorts out of the 1x6s, making sure the entire time that everything was square and level. This is important when building shelves so crap won't fall off them. The shelf-ladder was a thing of beauty until I put it up against the wall that would be its home. Then, it suddenly became the world's most crooked shelf. It wasn't level. It wasn't straight. Hell, the two legs somehow weren't even the same length. Inside the house: level. Inside the laundry room: shelf that Picasso built. Erm. Okay. I shoved a shim underneath one of the legs and screwed the resulting (in a parallel universe) level shelf into the wall. Then I grabbed the board that would be the shelf over the door and got a splinter. It was a sign of things to come.
The door-shelf board was too long. Like, tragically and horrifically too long. Wanna know when it's a really bad time to discover that a nine-foot board is too long? When it's propped up over your head as you balance on a step stool. Not only was it too long, but it also got stuck several times as I shoved it up and down and all around and tried to figure out what in seven hells had gone wrong with my measuring.
Now, here's where my biggest carpentry flaw comes in: I don't like using saws. I mean, I will use a jig saw, but anything more complicated than that makes my teeth curl. I can measure, level, drill, hammer, and screw (ahahaha) with the best of them, but I think my Daddy messed up way too many of his fingers for me to ever whip out a table saw and cut some mess. So I decided that I would, instead, shave off some of the wood with really rough sandpaper. Because I'm a masochist.
I did this three times. The first time, nothing changed: the wood STILL got stuck. The second time, something changed: I apparently somehow ADDED wood to the board, as it got stuck farther down on the wall and actually threatened to block me inside the laundry room. The third time, the wood moved a little bit higher on the wall on one side, then got caught and stuck on the other side in a new place. ARGH. At this point, I had to go pick up the kids, so I braced the stuck piece of wood on the laundry room door and the door frame, said a prayer to the threshold gods, and left.
When Will got home that night, he was fairly discomfited by the pile of crap on the floor and by the precarious placement of the board, but his comments were confined to pointing out that I must have measured wrong (REEEEAAAALLLLY?) and how he was sure I was frustrated and did I want him to saw the boards for me? No. No, I did not. Instead (because I'm a lunatic masochist), I decided that the really bright thing to do would be to get a hack saw and saw off the end of the board. Outside. In the hundred degree heat.
Sigh.
Y'all, listen...it's all well and good to be strong and capable and whathaveyou, but when that good stuff winds up with you squatting over a piece of wood with a hacksaw as gnats crawl all over you and sweat drips off your nose, take my advice and LET YOUR HUSBAND HELP YOU. Sheesh. Because there I was, squatting, maniacally sawing the end off of the piece of wood while looking, no doubt, like the world's most incompetent Neanderthal at her fire drill. Much grunting and snorting ensued. Finally, I finished sawing off maybe an inch and a half of wood, brought the board back inside and OH MY FILING CABINET--it was exactly the same.
How? How is that possible? Hoooowww? I called the piece of wood a bitch, went back outside, hacked off THREE inches of the board and pretty much slung it up over the ladder shelf and door frame. It fit. Barely.
So then I started trying to get the top shelf attached to the ladder shelf and the sides even. This proved to be difficult, as somehow, putting the board on top of the shelf has skewed the levelesqueness of the ladder shelf. I...I don't even know how to explain it. At some point in time, I realized that I needed to unscrew the ladder shelf and then screw it back in to a different place to get everything square. I did that: while bracing the ladder shelf with my hand, my hip, and my shelf, I screwed it STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL--and it somehow pulled two inches to the left. AND SHRANK THE TOP BOARD by an inch. What? Just...what the hell, y'all?
ARRRRRHGGGGHHHHH!
By this time, I had figured out that the room wasn't square, the floor wasn't level, the walls weren't flush, the boards were possibly possessed by Satan, and I was apparently stuck in one of Douglas Addams' more obscure books. I needed a ladder (which my husband had helpfully taken to his mother's house), a few more arms, and an interdimensional time-traveling space ship. And laudanum. I had none of these things. What I did have was a very heavy basket. The basket is heavy because we use it to store various stone tools and weapons that have been found across the years at my husband's family farm in Mississippi. I decided that it was the PERFECT implement for me to use to hold the top shelf steady while I dealt with the ladder shelf.
Wait.
Read that again.
Yes, children, I put a heavy, laden-with-rocks-and-tools-shaped-by-Native Americans basket on the UNFASTENED SHELF hanging over my head while I pulled and pushed and swore at the ladder shelf below and beat at it with various power tools. I know this was neither safe nor logical, but like most things involved with the laundry room project, I have no excuse or explanation. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Eventually, with rocks and cursing and prayers and 5000 splinters and lots of sweat and a few glares at my husband, we managed (I had to bring him in to deal with bracing the last corner of the top shelf because I was afraid that I would accidentally go insane if I had to do it) to get the shelf up and move some of the crap from the pile to the shelf.
Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go out and get MORE wood to get the next phase of the project built and I have to be honest with you and tell you that I'd rather get my eyeball tattooed than deal with it. I think I'm going to give it another week and let the parallel universe that the laundry room is chug along without me and my power tools and arrowheads and scrapers.
And cursing.
Um. No.
Instead, I somehow got sucked into the parallel universe that is my laundry room. Up until the past week, I had no idea that it WAS a parallel universe. I just thought it was a really messy room that, no matter how many times I tried, I simply couldn't keep organized. I've written about it before, I've posted pictures, I've entertained you with the gory awfulness of the clothes rack, but I don't know if I've ever fully articulated how mind-numbingly NASTY my laundry room is on a continual basis. It's crazy. And I decided that, within the confines of my budget and with all the extra time I have lying around, I was going to tackle that beast once and for all. With SHELVES!! And storage bins!!! It was going to be glorious.
The first step was to corral all of my photography equipment. One day when I am self-actualized (I've decided to stop using the term "grown up," because I AM an adult, dang it, even if my career aspirations remain as maddeningly fickle as they do), I hope to have a separate studio with an attached garden and all sorts of shelves and bins and rooms and feediddlepots that will make my compartmentalized heart sing. For now, I scavenged a piece of plywood from the shed and attached it to the wall and to the first shelf that Will and I ever made together and, lo, it was good. Ish. Two cup hooks and a strip of elastic later, and my bean bag was stowed away neatly, as well as my containers of headbands, blankets, and assorted bits of equipment. Tirra lirra lay, I sang. It was all very festive. Of course, there was a big pile of stuff that had been wadded up on the FSTWAIEMT that was now on the floor, but that was okay, because I was soon to be making a trip to the supply store for the second part of the shelving system.
And here's where I hit the first snag (the first of many, many to come.) Because of the placement of the rack where I hang Will's clothes before I iron them and because of the big pile of stuff, measuring the wall for the next shelving unit was going to be difficult. I planned a shallow shelf for book bags and shoes that would fit beside the door into the house. Braced on the sides of the shelf and fitting over the top of the door frame would be a single shelf which would house stuff we don't really use that much, like camping equipment and extra bags. (We have a bizarre amount of extra totes. It's mildly disturbing.) In order to measure for this shelf, I'd have to hang over the side of the clothes rack while balanced on a step stool, which was difficult at best, so I asked Will to help me.
Now, I love my husband. He is awesome and handsome and great and all that mess, but he drives me up a fricking wall when I ask him for help, because there always has to be a DISCUSSION about it. Why do I need to move the couch? Why do I want to paint the living room? Do I REALLY think it's a good idea to expand the garden? You get the drift. If he isn't asking me questions about the logic behind my decision, he's making observations on how the process could be easier, faster, or cheaper. When we got into the laundry room, he helpfully pointed out that it would be easier to measure the wall if the big pile of stuff wasn't there. REALLLLLYYYY? I lovingly didn't bite his face off, although I wanted to, and told him that I'd just do it later, because I needed to do something else, and the kidlets helped me out here by yelling at each other in the living room. I mean...y'all. I know it is not a particularly pleasant side of myself, but sometimes, I just want some dang help MY WAY without having to write a dang dissertation about all aspects of the project with which I need help. Bless my husband's sweet heart.
Anyway, I wound up measuring the wall by taking a piece of the coarsest yarn I have (honestly, it's like a brillo pad....I can't figure out why I ever bought it) and taping sections of it to the wall after I found the tape, which wasn't as easy as it should have been (there's a reason I need more organization in my home) and pretty much balancing on the clothes rack and step stool via my toenails and my left breast. Then I measured the piece of yarn on the floor with a tape measure. I know, right? How very competent and Martha-y of you, Heather. DO NOT BE DECEIVED. Remember that my laundry room is a parallel universe...
More competence ensued at the supply store where I bought all the wood I needed for the project. I briskly picked out three straight boards and one almost straight longer board and assorted screws and brackets, got the boards cut, and headed home. Things went downhill from there.
The first part of the shelf was easy and based on the design of my pantry shelves, which I also built. I made a ladder of sorts out of the 1x6s, making sure the entire time that everything was square and level. This is important when building shelves so crap won't fall off them. The shelf-ladder was a thing of beauty until I put it up against the wall that would be its home. Then, it suddenly became the world's most crooked shelf. It wasn't level. It wasn't straight. Hell, the two legs somehow weren't even the same length. Inside the house: level. Inside the laundry room: shelf that Picasso built. Erm. Okay. I shoved a shim underneath one of the legs and screwed the resulting (in a parallel universe) level shelf into the wall. Then I grabbed the board that would be the shelf over the door and got a splinter. It was a sign of things to come.
The door-shelf board was too long. Like, tragically and horrifically too long. Wanna know when it's a really bad time to discover that a nine-foot board is too long? When it's propped up over your head as you balance on a step stool. Not only was it too long, but it also got stuck several times as I shoved it up and down and all around and tried to figure out what in seven hells had gone wrong with my measuring.
Now, here's where my biggest carpentry flaw comes in: I don't like using saws. I mean, I will use a jig saw, but anything more complicated than that makes my teeth curl. I can measure, level, drill, hammer, and screw (ahahaha) with the best of them, but I think my Daddy messed up way too many of his fingers for me to ever whip out a table saw and cut some mess. So I decided that I would, instead, shave off some of the wood with really rough sandpaper. Because I'm a masochist.
I did this three times. The first time, nothing changed: the wood STILL got stuck. The second time, something changed: I apparently somehow ADDED wood to the board, as it got stuck farther down on the wall and actually threatened to block me inside the laundry room. The third time, the wood moved a little bit higher on the wall on one side, then got caught and stuck on the other side in a new place. ARGH. At this point, I had to go pick up the kids, so I braced the stuck piece of wood on the laundry room door and the door frame, said a prayer to the threshold gods, and left.
When Will got home that night, he was fairly discomfited by the pile of crap on the floor and by the precarious placement of the board, but his comments were confined to pointing out that I must have measured wrong (REEEEAAAALLLLY?) and how he was sure I was frustrated and did I want him to saw the boards for me? No. No, I did not. Instead (because I'm a lunatic masochist), I decided that the really bright thing to do would be to get a hack saw and saw off the end of the board. Outside. In the hundred degree heat.
Sigh.
Y'all, listen...it's all well and good to be strong and capable and whathaveyou, but when that good stuff winds up with you squatting over a piece of wood with a hacksaw as gnats crawl all over you and sweat drips off your nose, take my advice and LET YOUR HUSBAND HELP YOU. Sheesh. Because there I was, squatting, maniacally sawing the end off of the piece of wood while looking, no doubt, like the world's most incompetent Neanderthal at her fire drill. Much grunting and snorting ensued. Finally, I finished sawing off maybe an inch and a half of wood, brought the board back inside and OH MY FILING CABINET--it was exactly the same.
How? How is that possible? Hoooowww? I called the piece of wood a bitch, went back outside, hacked off THREE inches of the board and pretty much slung it up over the ladder shelf and door frame. It fit. Barely.
So then I started trying to get the top shelf attached to the ladder shelf and the sides even. This proved to be difficult, as somehow, putting the board on top of the shelf has skewed the levelesqueness of the ladder shelf. I...I don't even know how to explain it. At some point in time, I realized that I needed to unscrew the ladder shelf and then screw it back in to a different place to get everything square. I did that: while bracing the ladder shelf with my hand, my hip, and my shelf, I screwed it STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL--and it somehow pulled two inches to the left. AND SHRANK THE TOP BOARD by an inch. What? Just...what the hell, y'all?
ARRRRRHGGGGHHHHH!
By this time, I had figured out that the room wasn't square, the floor wasn't level, the walls weren't flush, the boards were possibly possessed by Satan, and I was apparently stuck in one of Douglas Addams' more obscure books. I needed a ladder (which my husband had helpfully taken to his mother's house), a few more arms, and an interdimensional time-traveling space ship. And laudanum. I had none of these things. What I did have was a very heavy basket. The basket is heavy because we use it to store various stone tools and weapons that have been found across the years at my husband's family farm in Mississippi. I decided that it was the PERFECT implement for me to use to hold the top shelf steady while I dealt with the ladder shelf.
Wait.
Read that again.
Yes, children, I put a heavy, laden-with-rocks-and-tools-shaped-by-Native Americans basket on the UNFASTENED SHELF hanging over my head while I pulled and pushed and swore at the ladder shelf below and beat at it with various power tools. I know this was neither safe nor logical, but like most things involved with the laundry room project, I have no excuse or explanation. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Eventually, with rocks and cursing and prayers and 5000 splinters and lots of sweat and a few glares at my husband, we managed (I had to bring him in to deal with bracing the last corner of the top shelf because I was afraid that I would accidentally go insane if I had to do it) to get the shelf up and move some of the crap from the pile to the shelf.
Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go out and get MORE wood to get the next phase of the project built and I have to be honest with you and tell you that I'd rather get my eyeball tattooed than deal with it. I think I'm going to give it another week and let the parallel universe that the laundry room is chug along without me and my power tools and arrowheads and scrapers.
And cursing.
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