I have a case of the grumps, and I can trace each grump directly to its source, and they are all very mundane and so silly that my inner critic is standing there with her hands on her hips and her head tilted condescendingly saying, “Perhaps you should be grateful that you aren’t an Afghan refugee instead of whining about your perfectly lovely life, ever think about that, hmmm?” Well. She can eat a bee. Sometimes the only way to escape a particularly irksome grump is to share it, so here we go.
- I am living in filth. My lovely, creative, crafty daughter has crafted our house into a trash heap. (I trust that you will understand I mean “likes to make crafts” here rather than “deceitful and cunning.”) Her gorgeous brain is constantly coming up with things to make and build and decorate, and I love it. I do. I am astonished by the things she thinks up and astounded by how she can bring them to life with scraps of plastic and bits of cardboard and copious amount of glue. And yet despite my pride and delight in her crafty pursuits, I have begun to feel like I am living in an actual garbage dump. Carla has an entire designated craft cabinet in which to stow her materials, but the results of her work end up everywhere. Little tiny seashells made into crabs. Skewers turned into swingsets and chopsticks and the legs of little clay beings. Cardboard shelving units and apartment blocks. Toys wearing clothing made of paper and string. Purses made out of plastic and cloth and clay. Little bits of paper that now represent dog food, toilet paper rolls, confetti, Barbie workbooks. There is no place to PUT these creations, and of course each one is rare and precious, so we have designated a section of the dining room (which is never, ever used for dining) as the Craft Waiting Area. But do the crafts wait quietly in their area, until such time as Carla deems them ready for the great Outdoor Craft Storage Compartment? No they do not. They migrate. And, with them, creative detritus piles up. Sheets of foam that have been cut into jagged lace. Broken bits of pottery. Plastic baggies. Pencils. Scissors. Sequins. Stickers. Chunks of clay. Slabs of dried glue. Q-tips. Empty play-doh containers. Rocks. Fluffy rainbow pom poms. Barettes. Three sets of needle nose pliers. Pencils, markers, paintbrushes, and pens. Corners and slips and strips of paper. Plastic baggies filled with scraps of paper and broken crayons and tiny rubber bands and bits of yarn. IT IS A GARBAGE DUMP. And, have I mentioned, every single scrap of anything is PRECIOUS and USEFUL and NECESSARY. If ever I suggest moving any of these items into the trash, Carla collapses in tears of betrayal and shock.
- My family and I continue to require sustenance. Dinner continues to seem like an alien concept. I continue to suffer from meal-amnesia. Since Monday, my family and I have eaten tacos three times: I went to the grocery store with literally only the single idea for a meal this week (tacos), hoping that the shelves would shove meal ideas at me (they did not) (except, I guess, in the case I am about to describe), and when I walked in, there was a display of everything a human could need to make fish tacos, so I bought those things and we ate fish tacos Monday, leftover fish tacos Wednesday, ground beef tacos Thursday, and, on Tuesday, the chicken shawarma that I had planned and purchased for the first week of October. Yes, the broccoli managed to survive that long in my crisper. I have absolutely NO IDEA what to make for dinner tonight. My in laws are back next week (for two weeks), and I doubt that they will be as amenable to Tacos Every Day as my husband and child are, and yet I have no ideas. Food is a mystery. And even though I have catalogued my own meal planning here for several years now, and have multitudes of recipes both in my online files and in the files in my kitchen… and despite having access to both dozens of cookbooks AND the internet, I have no ideas. None. If you were to press a recipe into my hands and say “Make this,” it would surely gradually dissolve into gas and float away on the air.
- My husband is giving me guff about holiday cards. It is no secret, either here or in my marriage, that holiday cards are MY FAVORITE PART OF THE HOLIDAYS. I love to send them, I love to receive them. I love them. I thought this was well-established. I thought that my husband, who doesn’t give a goat’s beard about any of it, had nonetheless fallen in line. AND YET. I requested that we go somewhere pretty this weekend to take a family photo for holiday cards, and he grumbled that he doesn’t WANT to do holiday cards. They are stupid and a waste of time and money. While he is entitled to his own grumps, of course, I am feeling CRANKY AND STUBBORN. This is My Thing. Why is he objecting? It will take an hour, maybe, to find a spot and take a serviceable photo. I will do the card-options-narrowing-down work, and offer him a few to choose from. I will send them out. It is not a big drain on him, time-wise. Money-wise, sure, it’s not super expensive. But it’s not going to break the bank. Why can’t he just bend to my will? Why can’t he just fall in line? WHY????? (We have taken exactly two (2) photos of the three of us since summer of 2020. Neither is holiday card worthy, you will just have to trust me. And I would slap a bunch of photos from throughout the year on a card and call it a day in a frosty second, but my husband always, always hates those kinds of cards when I mock them up, and despite the fact that he is making the whole thing harder than it needs to be, he and I still feel he gets a say in a card representing/featuring him that goes to all our friends and family.)
- Our health insurance is being downgraded. Oh, excuse me: “improved” and “enhanced.” I get that my husband’s company is a business, and they need to find ways to keep costs down, blah blah blah. And I get that I am very fortunate to have access to health insurance at all, and the means to pay for it. But I am still DEEPLY ANNOYED. Mainly because my husband’s hospital system is trying to spin it as a benefit when it clearly is NOT. They sent out this piece of direct mail giving us a heads-up about one of the changes to the insurance plan, which is that they are going to now “leverage” the hospital system’s own pharmacy system. Isn’t that great?!?! Aren’t we so happy?!?! They alluded to benefits from this change: We are now going to “get the best medication outcomes.” What the fluff does that mean? We will now have the “convenience” of using hospital pharmacies (NOT convenient, unless you are at one of the FOUR ON-SITE PHARMACIES in a 100-mile radius) or mail-order (NOT convenient if you have a necessary daily medication that happens to be a controlled substance and may not be available via mail order). And we will have “one card” for pharmacy and medical insurance coverage. Wowee, what a benefit! (Eye roll.) I suppose they do also allude to lower costs. There is also a black box notifying us that we need to stock up on medications so that the switch to the new plan doesn’t affect our prescriptions. Is this even possible with the medications we have? WHO KNOWS. And then it says to go to the website of the new company for more details. But the website does not have ANY USEFUL DETAILS for non-members. This does not feel like they are “expanding and enhancing” my healthcare benefits, that’s for sure.
- We still have not completed my gallery wall dream. I have been saying for years that I want to have a gallery wall of photos/paintings in our living room. And my husband keeps jumping on and off board. The artwork and empty frames that I had chosen for the gallery wall have been pushed up against the dining room wall (see above) for months and months now, and I think I may have to admit defeat. It is not going to happen in this house. My husband has no interest in helping me plan, but I will need his help to execute the whole thing, and I just don’t know if I can summon enough umph to see it through. So I am summoning grump instead.
To help counteract the Grumps, I will share two goods:
- The other day I went to a Work Event. I was very anxious about a) being around a bunch of people at a restaurant and b) feeling self-conscious about all the weight I’ve gained since I last saw these people and c) worrying that my much-increased social anxiety would make me panicky and weird. I went out and bought an entire new outfit; I haven’t had to don Office Wear regularly since 2016, and I have since been hard at work “expanding and enhancing” my size, so I had nothing remotely appropriate to wear. I got a pair of black dress pants and a burgundy sweater at Talbots (for 30% off! plus 10% off for joining their rewards program! plus $10 off for joining their mobile mailing list!), which helped tremendously. I felt like I looked put together and appropriate, and like someone who would be totally competent at doing freelance work in the future. But, even better, the event was GREAT. It was outdoors, everyone was vaccinated, and I hadn’t seen most of the attendees in five years. People gave me hugs and seemed genuinely excited to see me and we had comfortable, easy conversations and the whole thing was super, super lovely.
- I have hacked away at some of the trash heap. Just now, I got a surge of Living In Garbage-related energy and tackled both the Dining Room Trash Heap and Carla’s craft cabinet, and threw a LOT of stuff away, but also organized everything. It doesn’t look good, but it looks significantly better, and now feel much less Strangled By Junk. Hopefully I can persuade Carla that I kept most of her things and simply organized them all in a way that looks like I threw most of it in the trash (I did throw a lot of things in the trash – but really, WHO NEEDS ten plastic baggies filled with tiny bits of paper and string and the cottony ends of Q-tips? The garbage bin, is who.) I need to take a similar approach to her desk in her bedroom, and then we’ll really be rocking and rolling.
Tell me your grumps, if you’ve got em.
SHE CAN EAT A BEE is my favorite.
I get so angry about health insurance spin. I would be SO MUCH HAPPIER OVERALL if they said, “Welp. It’s happened again: health insurance has gone up in price to the point where we have to downgrade in order to afford it. Here’s a list of the things that are going to piss us all off.”
I am feeling weird about our holiday cards this year, because we take a photo at Thanksgiving (started the first year a kid was away at college and I realized that was my chance), but this year Rob is not coming home for Thanksgiving and he won’t be home until Christmas. It feels weird to take a picture without him. But…I guess that’s what the next dozen or so years will be like, with kids gradually leaving home and not being in the family photo anymore? Or I guess we’ll start doing what I’ve seen older couples doing, which is they include a photo from whenever the family was last all together. Or a photo of just themselves, with their cats or whatever. I mean I guess that’s what we’re hurtling toward.
Would Rob play along with this plan? Have him take a nice picture of himself, print it out, and include it in the picture with the rest of you. Send Rob a nice picture of the rest of you, having him print it out, and have him take a picture with that? Flat Stanley style? Then include both pictures on the card, the one with everyone + Flat Rob and the one of Rob + Flat Everyone.
Well, BOO, the thought of the (natural and inevitable and good!) movement toward Just Me and My Spouse holiday cards makes me feel a little quavery. Ugh Swistle. Come back to the nest, Rob! At least for a holiday card!
With all of your gallery photos already framed and ready to hang, it looks like all you need to do is grab a hammer and go for it! If hubby *must* participate, remind him it will probably be finished in about 15 or 20 minutes, tops. How long does it take to hammer in a few nails? (Less time if you go for an asymmetrical layout than a perfect grid, of course!) Personally, I find my pictures *look* more evenly spaced when I don’t try to measure too much. And I almost always end up with an extra hole, covered by the picture, before I’m finished…. But it sure does feel good to get those long languishing beauties up on the wall!
Also, I’m impressed that Carla’s need is even somewhat contained. My three lovely children make it look like a bomb exploded in every single room of my house, every single day, no matter how much of their precious treasure I offer to the garbage gods.
I debated long and hard about taking a photo of our basement to send you, because it looks like a Barbie factory exploded. And I envy you your gallery wall optimism! I lack basic abilities like “spacing” and “straight lines,” so I really unfortunately NEED my husband.
My husband’s family did photos this year over Labor Day and I’m using one of those cards even though everyone in his family has access to those photos already because that’s the best photo we have and I don’t want to hear a word from my husband and if he says anything to deviate from my plan, I will pretend not to hear it and continue ordering cards with that photo.
My grump: My boss is separating from his wife. It’s sad, I really like her, and she’s moving away. But he’s also absolutely checked out at work and not doing the things that need doing and it’s making my work life stressful. Ugh.
Uggggghhhhh. I am sorry for your boss and his wife but, for you, dealing, however tangentially, with that kind of personal stuff would be super stressful and uncomfortable. I hope they find a new equilibrium quickly.
I’m here to totally validate your grumps! Last week found me saddled with another person to work with; which so far is not giving me the grumps. Monday, I discovered I was saddled with an ADDITIONAL person (supposed to be temporary, we shall see!). AND this person is HIGH MAINTENANCE. As a result, my house looks like a bomb went off and I don’t even have an adorably, crafty person to blame. As The Husband noted the other day, “Wow, it actually looks like an office in here.” as he witnessed all the paper and files stacked willy-nilly all over the table. Not too mention I have been too busy and stressed to even take care of the smallest details around here.
Ugh, on the insurance issue! Seriously…they know it sucks; as Swistle said, just acknowledge it and quit trying to soften the blow.
OH! The holiday cards! This is a stressful issue. We usually try to get a photo at Thanksgiving. But that doesn’t always happen…and this year Man-Child may not even be here for the actual holiday (girlfriend – need I say more?) All I can suggest here is to stress to him just HOW important this is to you and that you need his buy in on this now.
I wish I had a magic solution for your gallery wall. But maybe try tracing the frames on pieces of paper, tape them up on the wall and re-arrange until it looks the way you want. Then you will know where each picture needs to go.
Have a great weekend!
Oh no! An extra and HIGH MAINTENANCE person booooo!!! Hopefully that arrangement is VERY temporary!
Having a place to put the grumps is one of the best things about blogging! I have had a pretty grumpy week and then TODAY! Work was so utterly stupid, plus one of my coworkers is on vacation next week so I am already dreading Monday. But at least it is the weekend, and I have a cat on my lap.
Blech. Work stress is awful! So glad you have a cat companion available for cuddles and commiseration.
Gigi’s idea is how I did a gallery wall, and then I hung it myself, mostly with command strips and a block from my kids’ block set for spacing. However, and this may already be an idea you’ve discarded, I wish I had done floating shelves or a long picture rail, so I could change out the pictures more easily. I will say that I attempted to hang a floating shelf myself and it was out of my DIY zone and it is a smidge out of level and now I think I am just going to hire a handyman to fix it, and to hang the other one.
Seriously, only hospital pharmacies? That sounds like a nightmare for them, as well as all of their pharmacy employees. I’d be very grumpy.
I am so impressed with all of you who feel so confident in doing the gallery wall yourselves! I have serious issues with lining things up so I do not think it would look good if I did it myself.
I have so many things to say.
EAT A BEE is my new favourite.
The craft thing would make me mental too BUT I have to say your piano is gorgeous and so is that blue paint colour with the cream/ white chair rail. GORGEOUS. My older son took up painting in the summer and has not painted since August and yet he still has his easel set up in his room, with his last piece still ON the easel (a painting of an ostrich, which is named Arnold), and underneath the easel is a large piece of paint-splattered cardboard and next to it a very large cardboard box housing his materials. It is in his room, it is relatively contained, and still it makes me crazy. So what I am saying is that while I enjoy his art (“art”) it also makes me feel mental. I have to move it out of the way every time I get his laundry basket. Maybe I should stop doing laundry.
I bought $700 worth of groceries this week and it pains me that I spend so much on food and still have to prepare it.
Holiday cards are also one of my very favourite things and even though it takes literally 15 minutes to get a photo of the four of us, there is always angst involved. I just push ahead with my agenda, then I figure out the layout I want and I go for it, with minimal input from everyone. I think everyone has just given up by now, and by everyone, I mean my husband. I have been feeling a touch angsty lately for exactly the reason Swistle mentioned – when do we start sending cards that don’t have all of us together? Does that happen soon? LANDSLIDE.
I don’t want to sound smug or weird, but whenever I hear anything about health insurance, I feel intense gratitude for our system, flawed though it is. Believe me, the Canadian health care system has lots of faults, LOTS, but at least I can just go to any pharmacy whenever. God, what a nightmare.
Anyway, this is long enough! I feel your grumps and anyone who judges your grumps can totally eat a bee.
Thank you!! It is a Behr paint called Gray Timber Wolf and my husband and I installed all the molding below the chair rail and I loooooove it and wish we used the dining room for more than storage and puzzles.
Perhaps my husband will give up on the holiday card topic soon, but for now he is holding tight to his aversion.
Just want to add to the chorus of support! I also adore “She can eat a bee.”
Dinner, ugh. I would be ALL FOR tacos every night. This week I had a request from Kate (tacos, incidentally), and I planned a crock pot soup (potato), and one night I plan to “make” (haha) frozen chicken tenders (I like the ones they call “fritters” at my store) with some kind of pasta on the side. Keeping it easy because that’s all the energy I’ve got for it.
You asked for our grumps, so here is mine: Our office is moving. We were supposed to move this coming Friday. But then the moving company told us they’d moved us up in their schedule, so it was to start today (Monday). BUT our new space is not yet ready! There’s no carpet and no paint! But we had to get all our stuff packed up and ready to go immediately last week. So we busted it, and did that, and now who knows what will happen. I imagine we won’t move in until Friday after all. So stupid. On the other hand, it barely matters since we are working from home if we want to, anyway.
Congrats on the work event and corralling the mess.
I am leading my book club on Thursday and I am so stressed about it I really don’t have the mental space to worry about anything else. (Except missing Noah, even more than I usually do. Halloween is a big holiday for us and it just seems wrong that he’s not here.)
I have a gallery wall and it’s probably my favorite thing in my apartment. Everything is hung with command strips so I just eyeballed things and started hanging. I didn’t want it to look too polished, just a mish-mash of canvases and framed prints and such, so it helped going into it not expecting it to look perfect. I don’t know if that’s helpful advice or not, ha.
I don’t have too many grumps, I must say! I am finally getting over a viral infection and feeling like a human again, so that’s amazing. And I have a 4-day weekend – yesterday, I read a book in a matter of hours and I might try to replicate that today, too. 🙂
Four day weekends are the best!
You are hiliarious. We need more hilarious people in the world. Thank you for being hilarious. Do not stop the hilarity.
Also, kid messes are insane. My kids will try on an outfit and then take it off, move on to another outfit, and then leave both in a heap on their floor. Then I will tell them to clean up their rooms and they will take the clean outfits on the floor, the dirty outfits they were wearing and put them all the in the laundry basket. And then the laundry fairy will magically wash all their dirty (and clean) clothes.
My daughter is also a believer in the laundry fairy! (Thanks so much for the kind words!!!)