Self Improvement

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Instead of Dinners This Week, Some Rambling (Plus Seriously, Where Is the Ricer?)

It is a Call Week, so I am relieving myself of the drudgery of meal planning for this week. Ahhhhhhhhh, sweet self-imposed freedom from self-imposed obligation.

I just got back from chaperoning a field trip. Yes, the field trip I was whining about last week. I like to drag my worrying out as long as possible.

Taking responsibility for any children more than my own first grader is, as you may suspect, completely outside my comfort zone. The teacher may have understood this – she has met me before, after all – and only assigned me one other charge besides Carla. The little girl was so cute and held my hand whenever the teacher instructed the children to “find their grown ups.” I was HER grown up, so she was going to make sure I didn’t get lost. (Carla, in typical Carla fashion, did not care whether I was in her eyeline, just as long as I was ON the field trip.)

Our destination was what felt like an hour’s drive away. The duration of the trip – or, should I say, the perceived duration – may owe something to the endless games of “Would You Rather” and “I Spy” and “Twenty Questions” we played. We played enough rounds of each for me to have a clear Least Favorite (I Spy) and to never want to play any of the three again. These games were, however, preferable to the game the girls had been playing when we first got on the bus. “Hamster” I believe it was called. The gist, from what I understand, is that Carla was a hamster (hence the thrilling name of the game) and that the other little girl was her owner. I found it highly amusing that the other little girl would hold out a carrot – a completely imaginary, completely invisible carrot, mind you – and that Carla would say, “No, no, I want little pieces of carrot” and then the other little girl would not only not mind this arbitrary distinction (INVISIBLE and IMAGINARY carrot) but would readily comply.

This is the kind of thing that makes me hate imaginary play with my child. Give me reading. Give me art projects. Give me (gourd save me) a board game. (Not Candyland. Never Candyland.) But when it comes to following the meandering and impromptu and too-often contradictory rules of a game of pretend, I would rather stick a fork in my eye.

Speaking of forks, I am sort of wishing that my everyday flatware would wear out. My husband and I chose our flatware purposefully. We loved the contemporary sleekness of it. But most of all, we loved the heft of the utensils. They felt sturdy. Real. That’s the very thing that we hate so much about them now. The stems are TOO heavy; they are constantly falling off the edges of dishes or into bowls. They have rounded edges, too, so they slide off even perfectly flat and still plates and it is super annoying. It is time for them to go. But I cannot bring myself to replace Perfectly Good Flatware, you know? It’s not cheap, to buy a whole new set of forks, knives, and spoons. And there’s nothing broken or damaged about this set. It’s just stupid and irritates me on a near daily basis, that’s all. I guess I will just wait until the utensils wear out and I can happily replace them.

Of course, they are NOT wearing out. Not at all. This despite the fact that we seem to have officially crossed some sort of Household Item Breakdown Threshold, because over the past two years or so, I’ve noticed that more and more of our housewares are surrendering to age or overuse or existential dread. Our everyday dishes (purchased 2009) suddenly have big chips. The handles of our pots-and-pans-set (purchased 2003) have started to detach from the bowls of the pots. Our cookie sheets (2009) are dark brown and have a permanent aura of grime, not to mention they don’t seem to lie flat anymore. We’ve lost enough of our backup everyday water glasses (2009) that I had to order more. Our duvet cover (2009) developed a hole that I was unable  unwilling  unqualified to repair. Our bath towels (2009) suddenly seem exhausted and threadbare and completely resistant to the softening effects of Downy. Our kitchen towels (2009) are universally stained and resist being folded into anything resembling a straight line. Our everyday steak knives (2003) have been washed so many times the wooden handles are sprouting splinters that make dicing onions an exercise in bravery and pain. I am sure there are more examples.

I suppose this is the nature of things: they are temporary. You get as much use out of them as you can. And then you move on. Yet I am nonetheless bewildered by their disrepair. I have used these same pots in four different homes across the better part of two decades! Why would they fail me now? It is perhaps a level of betrayal that one should not feel toward inanimate objects.

We have so far replaced the duvet cover and the kitchen towels and the pots and the cookie sheets. I hope these signs of wear and tear confine themselves to our household items and don’t spread to our actual marriage. Perhaps that’s why their disrepair feels so significant: I am correlating them too closely with my marriage; understandable, since we bought some things when we moved in together (2003) and the rest when we got married (2009).

Moving on quickly lest we get too philosophical/metaphorical here: You will note that I said we have replaced several items. And yet the old, failing items remain. The dark and gritty cookie sheets? Still in the same drawer, on top of the brand new cookie sheets – which are so lovely and fresh looking I have been avoiding using them, lest they lose the newness. SIGH. I glance lovingly at the shiny new pots (well, they aren’t shiny; they’re non-stick) and pass over them in favor of playing another tantalizing round of Will It Or Won’t It Fall Off: Pot Handle Edition. The dingy kitchen towels are still folded, if haphazardly, in the towel cupboard and are still part of my towel rotation. At least I USE the newer towels, though.

I think my husband and I both suffer from (varying degrees of) a very dangerous combination of practicality and sentimentality. Alone, they are often stronger than logic. Paired together, logic has no chance whatsoever. Why do we need three coffee machines?Logic asks. What if we have a lot of people over at one time? Practicality answers.  We have never once used these crystal glasses of your mother’s, Logic points out. Plus, we already have your grandmother’s crystal upstairs in the dining room and we never use those anyway. Inarguable, right? But we might have a big fancy party someday and need EXTRA, Practicality counters. And they belonged to YOUR MOTHER, Sentimentality says. Game, set, and match.

Sometimes I wonder if I should get really into Marie Kondo like its 2014. But – from my very limited understanding of the Kondo method – I petulantly disagree with the whole “keep only things that bring you joy” principle. And I am sure – SURE – that the actual Kondo method has exceptions for things of practical necessity. I mean, no one keeps a bottle of Advil or a plunger on hand for reasons of JOY.  It’s probably more a method of thinning down multiples of things – like cardigans or jeans or stuffed cats (every single one of which brings Carla joy, I don’t even have to ask).

What does Kondo have to say about occasional-use things, though? Like a ricer or a bottle of hydrogen peroxide? Neither is going to save your life (or unclog your toilet), and I am going to venture a guess and say neither is going to bring you any sort of joy. But sometimes you just need a ricer.

I couldn’t find my ricer this past Thanksgiving, to my husband’s chagrin and my moderated glee (he and I have differing opinions about the optimal smoothness of mashed potatoes). And I wondered if I somehow got rid of it without remembering? Would I have done that? Did I say, “No joy” and toss it into a box of things headed to Goodwill? That doesn’t sound like me, (see above re: knives that give me literal splinters) but… I have no idea where the ricer could be. (Where IS my ricer?) Wherever it is, I think it’s rubbing elbows with my knife sharpener, which I cannot find either.

I could see myself applying – with prejudice – the Kondo method to my kitchen. I mean, the pots whose handles are ready to release themselves from the pot at any moment should definitely go. We ALREADY have replacement pots. Sure – addressing Practicality – it’s nice to have extras, but they are rickety and liable to break just as you are transporting a pot of hot soup from stove to counter. And yes – addressing Sentimentality – they were the first pots my husband and I bought when we first lived together a million years ago, but they are JUST POTS. In no way do these pots bring me joy. More like apprehension.

I could also go through my Drawer of Kitchen Crap and pick out the things that no longer bring me joy. The herb stripper I was so excited about when I got it? I use it so infrequently. And really, I don’t NEED it that often. And it’s just the wrong shape for the drawer, so if it isn’t positioned exactly right, it catches on the top of the counter and holds the drawer closed and I have to jiggle and jam my hand into the drawer and wiggle things around until I can get it open again. IT CAN GO.

Kitchen drawer

Drawer of Kitchen Crap

What about the Bundt pan that I have never once used and which I fully plan on continuing to never use?  Just because it is in Brand New Condition is no reason to keep it.

What even is a Bundt cake? Is it really a thing, that people make and eat? Is it, like, cake cake? Or is it, as I imagine, more of a bread? Is it good? Have I been missing out on all sorts of Bundt-related deliciousness all these years that the Bundt pan has been taking up space in my pantry?

I could go for some cake right now, honestly.

After all, even if I have forgone meal planning, it does not mean that I can forgo actually FEEDING my family. They continue to require sustenance. Cake counts, right?

All right, I am off to scrape together some sort of probably-non-cake food for my child. And then maybe see if she can I Spy my ricer.

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Very Loose List of Assorted Aspirations for 2020

Now that I have revisited my assorted aspirations for 2019, I am ready to draw up a list – a Very Loose List, mind you – of aspirations for this year. It WAS sort of fun to revisit last year’s list and see what I’d prioritized and what I hadn’t. And I don’t feel particularly bad about any of the things I failed to do. In fact, I feel kind of pleased that I accomplished ANY of them.

I plan to take the same kind of approach to this year’s aspirations. On this day and time, they are important and worthy of attention. But I am not going to put a huge amount of pressure on accomplishing anything outside of keeping myself and my child alive. Even my husband is ON HIS OWN, for keeping-alive purposes.

Here we go!

Personal

  • Read 30 books. Last year, I read 23 books. Reading just… falls by the wayside. And that’s ridiculous because I LOVE to read, and reading helps inspire and inform my own writing. So I want to really prioritize reading this year.
  • Buy new sport bras. Like last year, I am borrowing this undergarment goal from Stephany. Thanks, Stephany! I have probably around a dozen sports bras. But they are all terrible. Half of them are from high school and college, which, you may recall, took place TWO DECADES AGO OMG. So these sports bras have put in their time and deserve to retire. The reason I keep them around is because they are so comfy when the sports bras I have purchased in the past few years are so horribly UNcomfy. They are too tight or pinch my armpits and at least one of them has created a skin tag on my back which I DO NOT LIKE. One of them has a decorative trim that has come loose and another has a piece of padding that continually folds over on itself and both of these things make me feel unkempt – not that I am at my most kempt while exercising, I understand this – and in general I just hate all of them. What has prevented me from just getting rid of these awful torture slings, you ask? Cheapness, I answer. Sports bras are EXPENSIVE. But I am committing to, if not replacing ALL of them, at least buying two or three new ones that I actually like. I wear a sports bra probably five days a week, so this is a reasonable thing on which to spend money, SELF, ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS LOGICAL ARGUMENT?
  • Exercise five days a week. My husband and I got each other a recumbent bike for Christmas, so now we have that and a treadmill AND I still have a package of barre classes I purchased when they went on sale at the end of last year. Plus I have an abundance of exercise videos and the whole entire internet at my disposal. There is no reason for me to not exercise daily. It lulls the hamsters in my brain and elevates my mood and gives me more energy.
  • Limit my phone usage to one hour per day. Hahahahahahahaha. This is probably the most wild and ambitious goal of all, but I am going to try it. I have set the timers on my phone which is the first step. The second step is to stop hitting “ignore time limit” every time I reach it.
  • Find a good balance of social/solitary time. It seems like I have this bad habit of swinging wildly between over-scheduling myself with social events and then reacting to all the over-stimulation by hiding away and doing absolutely nothing and then reacting to feeling isolated by over-scheduling myself with social events. Repeat. I am an introvert. I know this. I should limit my social activities to once – maybetwice – a week, which should help still the pendulum.
  • Take better care of my skin. I have found a combination of facial oil and moisturizing lotion that I like. I have acquired some moisturizing spray. And now I just need to make sure I wash my face EVERY NIGHT.
  • Practice the piano. I am stealing this one from Nicole, and, admittedly, it is a wild and ambitious goal that I am unlikely to accomplish. Who will even know, anyway, as I do not plan to track my playing on a spreadsheet or even mark it down on a sheet of paper I could leave handily on the piano. So why aspire to do something I have so little faith in doing, you ask? Well, we have a beautiful hand-me-down baby grand piano and I have thirteen years of piano lessons under my belt andI have a bunch of sheet music of songs I’d like to learn/re-learn. Plus, playing the piano is something that would definitely enhance my life, so I am going to give it the old half-hearted try. I will attempt to play the piano twice a week this year. No specific time requirement – just sit down at the piano and noodle around for a while.

 

Family

  • Find a new regular babysitter. I don’t really know how to go about doing this, but our current list of sitters has kind of fizzled out. By that I mean the three young women who regularly sit for Carla are more likely to a) be busy or b) not respond at all when I ask if they are available… and I feel like three in a row of those things really means I should stop bother them.
  • Go on more date nights. My husband and I really enjoy each other’s company. We need to spend more time alone. And I would like to try to see some movies together, like, in an actual theater. Sounds very adventuresome.
  • Undertake more weekend adventures. This is a carryover from last year. It was fun to go on little weekend trips, which I hope we can do again. And for the remaining weekends… Well, maybe we can try to dedicate one weekend day to loafing at home – which we all prefer to do – and the other day to adventuring. I know my husband is on board with this, so maybe together we can make it happen.
  • Plan a trip to visit my niece. We just need to make this happen.
  • Read/skim one parenting book a quarter. That seems like a VERY achievable goal, right? I have a ton of parenting books on my to-read list, but I have SUCH a hard time getting through them. So I need to make it a clearer goal, to read them and then share what I’ve learned with my husband. And then, I suppose, implement the useful ideas.
  • Emphasize/encourage more adventurous eating. Carla eats enough of a variety of foods that I feel like she’s getting adequate nutrition. For instance, when I make her dinner, I can be sure there is something from each category – protein, carb, dairy, vegetable, and fruit – on her plate that she will actually eat. But when it comes down to it, the list of foods she eats is very, very short. Which means that her meals look very similar, from day to day and week to week. (Right now, the only vegetables she will eat are sugar snap peas, tomatoes, and frozen green beans. That’s IT.) Lately, I have been applying a Pick Your Battles philosophy to this aspect of parenting — there are other battles more worthy of picking — but I really do want to help encourage her to eat beyond that list. I’m not sure how to do it, but I think one of the aforementioned parenting books could help.

 

Work/Finance

  • Revise my manuscript. Now that I have all (most) of the words, I need to go through and put everything in a readable order and fill out the places where I just wrote in filler words and basically transform it from a rough draft into something I can send to beta readers.
  • Invest every single month. I am in charge of funding several investments we have. It’s a very simple process, done completely online. And yet I get freaked out by the wild movements of the market and the prospect of losing all our money and sometimes just… don’t invest.
  • Put money into a personal 401(k). Since I am earning money, even if it’s a tiny bit, I can put it into a retirement account. My dad helped me set up an individual 401(k) and I need to put what I earned last year into it before April.

 

House Projects

  • GALLERY WALL. My husband is on board. He has given me full control over the gallery wall, and just needs me to present him with my vision so that we can make it happen. THIS WILL HAPPEN. 
  • Fix the freaking toilet. I have purchased and installed FIVE flappers in our toilet. Perhaps it is a much more finicky and complicated repair than it seems based on viewing YouTube videos of the process, and I am merely missing some crucial element. Perhaps there is something else wrong with the toilet that I am unable to diagnose. In any case, I have reached the outer limit of my flapper-installation/toilet-repair knowledge AND PATIENCE – if you have never had to adjust and readjust and readjust and readjust AGAIN the length of a flapper chain while crouched uncomfortably over your toilet tank you have lived a good life indeed – and need to call in a professional. For my sanity.
  • Sharpen our knives. A local knife sharpener sets up camp at the grocery store at various times throughout the year. I want to load up all our knives (how???) and have him sharpen them, because they are woefully dull and therefore dangerous.
  • Purge old items. We have a bunch of stuff to get rid of. For one thing, I think it’s time to relieve our basement of Carla’s play kitchen. I can’t remember the last time she’s used it, and she’s had it since 2014, so it’s fulfilled its duties to our household. Plus, there are many other things that we just do not need in our basement – two giant duffels that my husband has owned since I’ve known him and has never once used in all those 19 years; the battered remains of our old footstool, which my husband cannot bear to throw out despite it being so gross we had to replace it, the pots and pans we replaced but are still holding onto for some reason, TWO coffee makers that we definitely do not need, tons of shoes I do not wear or Carla has outgrown, I could go on.  I need to decide if I am going to host another garage sale next summer (host? Is that the verb I am looking for? Do I mean “throw”? But that makes it sound like a party which it most certainly is NOT.) or if I am going to find somewhere to donate all the assorted items I need to get rid of. That requires calling places, which is unappealing. But a garage sale is a TON of work, which is also unappealing. MOST unappealing is playing hostess to a growing junk heap in my basement, though.
  • Have a realtor come evaluate our house. My husband and I are really, seriously thinking about moving out of this house. But we will not do so for about three years. If there is work we absolutely need to do to make our house more buyer-friendly, I want to do it now, so we can enjoy it before we move out.
  • Touch up the outside of the house. We have a stain on the siding above our front porch. The paint is starting to peel from the trim around the garage door. Our front door has seen better days. The front porch could use some fresh paint. I need to look into what it would take to make this happen.

 

(WHAT is WITH the spacing in this post??? Maybe I need to make Master WordPress Formatting Issues one of my goals.)

Well. That seems like a good, sturdy list. I fully expect some of these to fall by the wayside, and for other priorities to pop up. But from this vantage point, these seem like worthwhile and achievable goals.

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Goals Report: Revisiting My Aspirations for 2019

Making and tracking resolutions is not really my jam. But last year, for the first time I can remember, I made a big list of Very Loose Aspirations for the year. I wasn’t particularly worried about any of them (except the writing of my novel), and I made the list more for fun than anything else.

I thought it would be fun to revisit that list of aspirations and see which goals I prioritized and which ones I didn’t. (It was kind of fun.) Here are the results:

Habits 

Aspiration: Be in bed by 10:30 every night. 

Result: Incomplete. Actually, I have no idea! I would guess that I head up to bed at about 10:30 to 11:00 pm each night, on average. But there’s really no way to track this without TRACKING it, and I am unwilling to do that. I feel pretty happy about

 

Aspiration: Ignore my phone.

Result: Incomplete. If anything, I have grown MORE addicted to my phone. I installed an app that tracked my phone usage and eventually turned it off because it was so horrifying.

 

Aspiration: Do a practice German lesson every day. 

Result: Incomplete. I realized that I just don’t like learning languages and gave up on this one.

 

Aspiration: Exercise three days a week on average. 

Result: Complete! Although I don’t know for sure because I didn’t track it, I feel like I was pretty successful at this one. There were a few lulls throughout the year, but nothing that lasted more than a few weeks.

 

Aspiration: Eat better. 

Result: Incomplete. I really devolved into a whole lot of Eating My Feelings in September and wasn’t ever really able to get back on top of eating healthful foods in healthful amounts. I currently weigh more than I ever have, which doesn’t feel great. But I’m working on it.

 

Work

Aspiration: Finish the first draft of my manuscript. 

Result: Complete! It’s strange to me that I don’t feel more elated about achieving this goal. I’ve been working toward it for nearly FOUR YEARS. I think it’s because there is still so much work left to do.

 

Aspiration: Figure out what to do with the short story I’ve been working on for a few years. 

Result: Incomplete. Did not think about this once.

 

Aspiration: Set up an interview with a subject expert for my next novel. 

Result: Incomplete. I found that thinking about this project was distracting from my primary project, so I put it on hold.

 

House Projects

Aspiration: Finally get someone to come fix the ice maker. 

Result: Complete! Our ice machine is fully functional.

 

Aspiration: Find out what it takes to stretch the carpet in the upstairs hall. 

Result: Complete! I hired someone to come stretch the carpet, and he did, and it is SO MUCH better.

 

Aspiration: Look into the cost of new windows. 

Result: Complete! I now know far more than I ever wanted to know about windows. I had a BUNCH of window salespeople come over, assess our window situation, and offer estimates. It became very overwhelming – how do you decide between very slight differences in window quality and appearance??? how do you choose to spend $10,000-$20,000 on something that probably won’t increase your home value??? – so we did not replace any of our windows. But we COULD because now I know the options.

 

Aspiration: Revamp the living room in six parts.

  • Put up a gallery wall. 
  • Result: Incomplete. Started collecting artwork, but never got them on the walls.

 

  • Replace the ottoman.
  • Result: Complete! We got a new ottoman with inside-storage from Target. I love it.

 

  • Replace the side table. 
  • Result: Incomplete. I finally found the exact side table I want, but it is MUCH more than I want to spend. And my husband and I decided not to buy any new furniture until we move into a new house (several years down the road).

 

  • Convert our wood-burning fireplace into a gas fireplace. 
  • Result: Incomplete. We did not even look into what this would take. In fact, I don’t think we even mentioned it again until Christmastime, when my husband idly told my father we were thinking about it.

 

  • Paint the baseboards.
  • Result: Nope. I did look at them several times and THINK about painting them. But thinking is not quite the same as doing, when it comes to baseboard paint.

 

  • As long as we’re dreaming, I’d also love to paint the fireplace, get some curtains for the sliding glass door, and stain our buffet. And get a new couch.
  • Result: Nope to all.

 

Aspiration: Get additional craft storage for the kitchen. 

Result: Complete! We bought a set of these IKEA TRONES cabinets and installed them in the hallway between our pantry and laundry room. Yes, they are technically shoe cabinets, but, as I envisioned, they are perfect for storing construction paper and in-progress artwork.

 

Aspiration: Figure out what to do about our grill. 

Result:  Complete! My wonderful father fixed our grill while we were in Europe.

 

Family

Aspiration: Eat dinner together twice a week. 

Result: Complete??? Tentatively??? As with all the goals that actually require tracking to see if I accomplished them, I have no real idea. I THINK we ate together as a family more often – we were especially successful during the summer, when Carla could go to bed a bit later than she does during the school year. And we are definitely better about trying to make it happen when we can. We also started having family movie nights most Fridays, which I think counts. Even though we end up eating together in the basement in front of the TV, rather than at the table, it is a really nice tradition and I hope we keep it up.

 

Aspiration: Do more weekend adventures. 

Result: No idea. We did take family trips to Toronto and Kentucky. And I remember that, shortly after we got back from Europe, my husband and I took Carla downtown to see if we could have a European-style day-of-walking-and-enjoying-the-city-sites. We also took Carla to see a ballet performance of The Nutcracker. And, I mean, we attended SO MANY birthday parties. So maybe we were more successful at this than I think. Okay, I am going to count it as complete.

 

Aspiration: Go on a date night with my husband more often (every six weeks?). 

Result: Incomplete. I do NOT think this happened. In fact, I cannot remember the last date night I had with my husband… so that’s not a good sign.

 

Personal

Aspiration: Be more patient and less yell-y.

Result: Complete. While this is something that I will always continue to monitor/work on, I DO think I made big strides this year in being more patient and less yell-y. Especially with Carla. I have a hot temper that flares up quickly (and extinguishes quickly, as well), so this is something I definitely need to stay on top of.

 

Aspiration: Host friends for dinner. 

Result: Complete! We had friends over several times this past year – which includes the big dinner party we hosted. I was going to say that my enthusiasm for hosting fizzled out toward the end of the year, but we did  have people over for Halloween and then we hosted Thanksgiving and Christmas for our families, so I think I can give myself a pass.

 

Aspiration: Buy new underwear. 

Result: Complete! I bought myself between 8-10 new pairs of underwear, and also got rid of some of the underwear that was hole-y or otherwise cluttering up my underwear drawer.

 

Aspiration: Read 40 books. 

Result: Incomplete.  I read 23 books in 2019.

 

Well, if I did the math correctly, I have a 50% success rate. That sounds pretty dismal, except when you consider that a BUNCH of those incompletes came from my wildly ambitious living room plans.

I have to say, I accomplished more of these things than I thought I would. Still lots of room for improvement, but a pretty successful year.