houseplants

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Friday Randomosity: December Backslide and Some Festive Stuff As Well

December, for all its holiday magic, has been less ideal in other ways. I feel like I’ve lost any and all (admittedly questionable) momentum I’ve built at any point in the year. Maybe it’s been channeled into stamping, licking, and addressing a million holiday cards, I don’t know.

On the holiday end of things, I am, of course, doing my Last Minute Panic about gifts. My husband and I bought my kid’s one and only Hanukkah gift on the afternoon of the first night of Hanukkah, and then wrapped it quickly while she was getting the candles set up in the menorah. (And then it was the wrong size, so I added “exchange pajamas” to my holiday to-do list the other day and the same jammies were not available in store or online in Carla’s size, so I ended up getting her some Snoopy Valentine’s Day ones.) (They are SO SOFT but they don’t match the socks we got her, which are no longer available online.) (Oooh, I didn’t see that they have Hanukkah socks!)

The stocking stuffers seemed unbalanced, so I got my dad these engraving pens to go with his spicy peanuts, but I also added a tube of hand cream because I noticed his hands were so dry the last time I saw him, which meant that he had five items for his stocking and everyone else had only three… and then I got my mom these watercolor pens to even it out a little, and then I threw in a pizza server because I have a problem. And then I found myself in an Urban Outfitters and ended up buying these socks for my mom. Of course, NOW I feel like my husband’s stocking is going to be the emptiest but I am out of ideas, and, I think, out of time. And also THIS IS SO DUMB WHY DO I DO THIS EVERY YEAR.

(My husband, who is usually The Voice of Reason, did text me yesterday about another gift for the cat, so at least I’m not the only one who goes a little insane this time of year.)

I am getting distracted. Oh yes, I was about to list my failings as a human this month, above and beyond the regular.

Let’s see. I don’t think I’ve walked outside more than handful of times since Elisabeth stopped holding my hand.

After NaBloPoMo ended, and San and crew stopped holding my hand for that, I have pretty much abandoned my book blog once again. And listen, I know it probably makes zero sense to you why I even have a separate whole blog just for discussing books, but it makes sense to me and I am currently choosing to be stubborn about it. Which means, apparently, neglect.

While moving an armchair to make space for the Christmas tree on December 1, I borked my back and haven’t worked out since. For a few days, I walked slowly on the treadmill to at least get some sort of movement into my days, and then that practice became covered in piles of snow and shipping boxes like everything else.

Yes, I have completed (COMPLETED, hear that, Suzanne????) my gift buying, but I only just got the last couple of gifts for out-of-towners in the mail yesterday. Hopefully they will arrive on time. I STILL have yet to get some of the holiday cards in the mail, AND I under-ordered so some people are getting cards from Trader Joe’s and Aldi – which are, to be fair, very cute. If you send holiday cards, and some of those cards go to other bloggers, do you send out different cards to each set of people? I kind of like the idea of having a special set of cards just for blog friends, but I barely got one holiday card ordered in time this year so perhaps that’s an idea for Future Me.

I do have tiers of recipients, though. No, “tiers” is not the right word; that implies a hierarchy, and this is not a matter of A List, B List, etc. My card recipients diverge along different information branches, maybe??? Like, this year I printed out a mini-Christmas letter that I stuck in the envelopes of people who I thought would actually care about the minutiae of my family’s year. Mainly that consists of my aunts and uncles and a few of the residents of our old neighborhood. I did not think that the handful of my husband’s high school friends with whom we exchange cards would miss such a letter, nor would any of the families of Carla’s classmates or my old coworkers. People in my inner circle already KNOW all the stuff in the letter, so it felt redundant to include it and I didn’t, but I feel sort of bad about that. Am I overthinking this? I am overthinking this.

Sleep continues to be a huge pain in the ass. I am managing to use my CPAP approximately four hours a night, but I have been more aware of it lately and more likely to rip it off my face in the middle of the night. Also, through ALL of November, I woke up at 4:30 every morning. Did I exercise in that “extra” time as I had planned? No, I did not; I wrote blog posts. BUT, I was pretty excited to have adjusted my wake-up time so easily. In December, I slid inexplicably back to waking up at 5:30. And then there have been a few mornings where I’ve slept until close to seven! It feels decadent but a) I’m not getting GOOD sleep during those extra hours and b) I don’t have enough time in the day as it is and c) I STILL manage to be a floppy tired mess by nine pm, regardless of when I wake up.

The cat continues to be Extremely Fluffy. When we brought him home, the cat breeder noted that he will have two “shed” events each year – once in the spring and once in the fall – but I am beginning to believe his whole life is a shed event. He does that adorable / alarming cat thing where he’ll be sitting or resting contentedly and then will suddenly leap into action, and each time he leaves a puff of fur in his wake, Looney-Tunes-style. I brush the beast daily – sometimes multiple times daily – and yet I am constantly picking up little tumbleweeds of fluff that decorate our dark floors like some ephemeral species of flora.

“Meowp, meowp!”

Seriously. There is fur everywhere at all times. I will vacuum the floors and then a little puff of fluff will drift down gently from the sky where apparently even the air is participating in a shed event. Even though I looked at them with great interest, I did not buy myself the laundry pet hair removers or the little purse lint remover. And yet as the days pass, I grow more and more aware of how completely covered in cat hair I am. Maybe there’s still time?

My beloved housecleaner is pregnant, and admitted the other day that she’s been suffering from morning sickness. While she has been my housecleaner for nearly a decade now, and therefore probably knows me better than anyone on the planet, we have a fairly distant relationship. Not cold or anything, but professional, which feels right and fine. But now that she’s pregnant, I feel SO BAD FOR HER. As someone who suffered from intense morning sickness for most of my pregnancy, I cannot imagine, say, CLEANING TOILETS. And yet, I don’t want to infantilize her or pathologize her totally normal condition by saying “no need to clean toilets for the next seven months.” The best I could come up with was say, please let me know if you need any accommodations, and please do only what you can do. I really hope she will speak up if she feels like something is too much for her. (Obviously, I recognize that she might be totally fine and happy to work as she normally does and I don’t want to over-emphasize something in a way that feels demeaning or sexist!)

Do you remember the palm plants I bought earlier this year for our sunroom?

They were glorious when we first got them!

I brought them inside earlier this month, once the cold started to hit, and THEY TRIED TO PERISH. Like, one day they were flourishing and the next day they were all brown and crispy. It was Quite Alarming, especially because they were Quite Expensive. I did some googling, and I took three immediate actions: 1.) I moved them into a slightly sunnier place. 2.) I hacked off all the dead portions, which left a bunch of stalks and a couple of sickly green shoots. 3.) I heaved them into my sink and let them soak in water for 15 minutes, to re-hydrate the root ball. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Okay, I also bought some fertilizer specific to palms and ferns and fed the plants accordingly. And then I got a teeny little humidifier and have been humidifying the plants for a few hours each day. They look… well, they still look terrible, but they look much better than they did when they first alerted me to their imminent demise.

Green and perky, with some new growth.
I think the tallest stalk, which seemed to be hanging in there, needs to go. It no longer seems to be among the living.

Speaking of plants: my husband occasionally buys me flowers for our anniversary. This year, not wanting to assume either way, I gently reminded him that most flowers are toxic to cats, and our cat has not got that memo and likes to chew on any and all plants in his realm. On our anniversary, my husband came home with this – and then put it together for me. The “putting it together” was a little gift for him, and the permanent non-toxic flowers were a little gift for me.

Leo is Not Allowed On The Table, and yet no matter where I stood or how often I deposited him onto the floor, he was CERTAIN that I was trying to photograph him. (The plants in the tiny pots are teacher gifts and only temporary, lest you are worried for Leo’s safety.)

How is everyone feeling in your household? We keep getting ominous emails from Carla’s school, listing the number of students who have reported influenza diagnoses. First email about one kid on Tuesday. Second email about two more kids on Wednesday. Third email (also on Wednesday) about four other kids. No emails yesterday, but then this morning Carla cheerfully told me that lots of her friends were out with “the barfing sickness.” Well. She only has a class event, a schoolwide talent show, a birthday party, and a sleepover one more day of school to survive and then she’s on break, so I’m sure we’re in the clear!

Okay, that may be the limit of my Non-Holiday content at the moment. I am really just steeped in Holiday Mode, you know? One thing I have not done – or even really thought about – is bake any sort of cookies. Maybe now that I’ve got gifts figured out (YOU ARE DONE SHOPPING, SUZANNE) (except maybe for something else small for my husband’s stocking?????) I can turn my attention to baking. I’m not really in the mood to do a cookie plate this year, but I do have a hankering for some big, soft molasses cookies. I would be making them right now, in fact, except I am out of both ginger and cinnamon.          

Maybe baking cookies will be an item on my Winter Break To-Do List? My kid is going to be off school for fifteen days, and my husband is taking nearly two full weeks off, and I am giddy with the idea of so much time together. However, I know that two weeks could easily go the way of each of us zoning out in front of our separate screens, which would feel wasteful and depressing to me. To head off this potential issue, I am trying to encourage my family to come up with a real list of things that we want to do during the break, fun things and work things, together things and separate things. So far, we have “try special sundae at local ice creamery” and “make ice cream” on the list. (My in-laws got us a Ninja Creami for our anniversary, and we want to break it in.) We should probably have some non-ice-cream to-dos as well, and I would like to exercise and write every day, have at least one family game night, clean my kid’s craft room, and put up a gallery wall. (Yes, I am still trying to get my gallery wall after all these years.) It would be nice to do something outside and to do something with my parents and possibly something with friends or neighbors, but it may be overly ambitious to include other people in our winter break plans. I also have this vague idea that I want to organize some of the drawers and cupboards that have gotten a little out of control, but… that’s not urgent.

I got a delightful surprise in the mail yesterday. It’s an ornament from my childhood best friend, featuring quotes from one of our shared favorite movies. We used to drive around listening to the Clueless soundtrack together and we have watched the movie, together and separately, about a million times. It was SUCH a fun treat to open and then hang on the tree.

Okay, I’ve said all the things. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that any and all ongoing holiday prep goes smoothly.

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Weigh In Wednesday: Take One, Leave One

I find myself in need of advice on little silly things that are nonetheless driving me crazy. In exchange, I thought I’d share a few little tips that have been helping me out lately. 

If you have any hot tips to share, please do so; if you are in need of any advice, ask away. I will chime in if I have something to offer, and I hope your fellow readers will do so as well. 

Tiny Tips That Are Making Life Better

  • Low-Effort Houseplant Watering: I love houseplants – looking at them, owning them, watching for new growth or flowers. And I am also terrible about keeping on top of their watering needs. After several died or nearly died, I finally broke down and bought a pack of plastic watering bulbs so that I could put one in every single plant I own. It’s not foolproof – they do need to be refilled every week or so, depending on the plant. But it is making my plants SO MUCH HAPPIER and my days are no longer punctuated by random stabs of guilt when I realize it’s been several weeks since I last watered my plants.
  • Morning Time (and Madness) Saver: Mornings have always been tough in my household. They continue to be tough, especially since we have added Primping to our daily routine. And also, school starts earlier this year than it ever has before so we need to be out the door fifteen minutes sooner than we did last year. One thing that has made getting out the door slightly better is to keep a hairbrush, hair ties, and a small makeup kit in my car. That way, Carla can do her hair and makeup while I am driving her to school. Secondary tip: One common frustration around here is that no one can ever find a hairbrush when she needs it. I bought a bunch of small hairbrushes so that Carla can keep one in her backpack, one in her sports bag, and one in her locker.

  • Easy Sheet Pan Meal Clean Up: I love sheet pan dinners, and I love using a barrier between the food and my cookie sheets so I don’t have to deep clean the cookie sheets every night. (They don’t fit in the dishwasher.) I own reusable silicone sheets, and use them for certain things, but they are too difficult to clean for me to use them every time I make a sheet pan meal. For the longest time, I’ve been using aluminum foil. But I am continually frustrated by food sticking to the damn foil. I tried parchment paper, but found it super annoying because it’s so insubstantial it doesn’t stay in place and it’s difficult to crease. I’d seen tips before for putting a little sprinkle of water or cooking spray on the cookie sheet to hold the parchment in place, but it doesn’t always work and/or it requires me to wash the cookie sheet, which I was trying to avoid by using parchment in the first place. Then I saw someone on Instagram crumple up the sheet of parchment paper before smoothing it out onto the cookie sheet. GAME CHANGER. 
  • Connection Points When Talking Is Hard: The credit for this genius idea belongs with my friend G. She told me that she and her daughter have a special notebook in which they write each other secret notes. “Secret” in that no one else can read their exchanges. I have tried this technique with Carla, who can be quite reticent about sharing her feelings and talking about her worries. It works so well. She is willing to share all sorts of things in writing that she refuses to discuss out loud. Because of this silly little journal we pass back and forth, I feel much more connected to her and what’s going on in her inner world. It’s not even something we write in regularly. Sometimes we’ll go back and forth for a few days, sometimes the journal will sit untouched for months. But so far it’s been the perfect bridge when I sense she’s something is troubling her but she’s reluctant, for whatever reason, to share it, or just when we haven’t had a chance to chat in a while. Oh look – there’s a whole line of journals specific to this purpose. We just use one of the many old journals I have lying around.
  • Instant Mood Improver: Get a cat. Please note: mood improvement requires close proximity to cat and may disappear once cat is out of sight, which could be quite often, depending on the cat. 

Please Advise: Here’s Where You Tell Me What To Do

  • Do you have any tips for making it simpler to put laundry away? Especially if those tips apply to getting other people in your household to put laundry away? Our current “system” involves me doing laundry, folding or sorting Carla’s clothing, and then asking Carla to put it away. Which results in Carla using my bedroom as a dressing room, because that’s where I fold the laundry. I have started putting the clean/folded laundry in a basket and putting that basket in my bedroom on the landing outside Carla’s room in Carla’s room, but still – the basket remains there, full of clean clothing, growing less folded by the day, until I Make A Fuss. And honestly, the Making A Fuss only results in the laundry ending up on the floor, which makes me incandescent. I have not opened the door to Carla’s closet lately, and do not want to, lest my head implode like a firecracker. I am willing to do Drastic Things. Should I get rid of 75% of her clothing? (I did ask her to go through her wardrobe this summer and remove everything she doesn’t or won’t wear.) Should I buy her another dresser?  The child has AMPLE storage, seriously, so much storage, but what we are doing is clearly not working for her and she doesn’t have any ideas (besides I like having all my clothing in a laundry basket / on my floor) for how to make the situation more user friendly for herself. The only thing I am unwilling to do is put her laundry away myself. She’s twelve. She can put her own laundry away. Oh, okay – there is another thing I am unwilling to do: ignore the mess. I have tried that tack and it is not workable for me or for our family. 
  • What are your favorite low-effort houseplants? Especially if they require low light? As I mentioned above, I LOVE plants and would love more. But a) our house has very little direct light and b) the cat will seriously eat any plant, or at least give it a little taste test, so any plants I buy need to be non-toxic. I have moved all the currently toxic plants I own to out-of-cat-reach spaces, but they aren’t necessarily low-light plants and they aren’t doing very well. For instance, the Christmas cactus and the kalanchoe I owned pre-cat have been relocated to the top of my bookshelves, and they are no longer dying of thirst but they are clearly not loving their lighting conditions. I have also purchased a few plants that require “bright, indirect light,” and even those seem a little light-starved. I think I need plants that thrive in less light. But not no light. All the plants have access to natural light. Just not bright light.

  • How do you keep your fingernails tidy? Okay, confession time: I am a nail picker. I will pick at my nails and the skin around my nails, sometimes until my fingers bleed. I think I developed this gruesome habit as an alternative to nail biting (although I still do that at times, too, ugh ugh ugh), and I am ready to stop. But… I don’t know HOW. It’s a nervous habit, for sure, and I don’t think you can help me get over my social anxiety. But part of the reason it’s such an addictive habit is that my cuticles (is that the right term for the skin on the sides of my nails???) are often dry or peeling or otherwise pick-able. Right now, my pinky finger is all painful and inflamed because of this habit and I Don’t Like It. My questions for you are: a) If you or someone you know has gotten over this gross habit, HOW? And/or b) Is there something I should be doing to enhance my overall nail skin / fingernail / cuticle health? I do tend towards dry skin, and use Working Hands cream like it’s my job. But I get overwhelmed by the abundance of cuticle oils and creams and have no idea which ones WORK. Or if buying a “cuticle remover kit” would do anything at all to help me.

I do not want to end this post on weird giant photos of my fingernails, so here’s where I turn things over to you. What hot tips do you have to share today? Or, at least, the little things that are making your day-to-day easier/better/more enjoyable? And in which areas are you in need of advice?

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Six for Saturday: Panicky and Exclamation Pointy

Wow! It has been… a week. Nothing bad! Just – so much driving, so many commitments. I have once again been A Terrible Blogger Slash Blog Friend, and all I have to offer you today are some bullets.

Cookie Swap Extension: THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in photos and links for the cookie swap! I am so excited! I wish we could all be traveling to a central location to share the scrumptious cookies in person! If you want to participate in the cookie swap but missed the original deadline, well, you are in good company as I also missed the deadline. I am hoping that I will get to make SOME COOKIES today or tomorrow, but it’s not looking great. I am looking down the barrel of at least two hours in the car both today and tomorrow and while that doesn’t seem like a whole lot when a day is twenty-four hours long, I find it Very Difficult to get anything meaningful done in and around so much driving. If I get an extension, so do you. I will aim to have the cookie swap post up on Monday evening or Christmas Eve at the latest. And, in part because I feel guilty about how flaky I have become, I have a little cookie-related giveaway planned for those who are interested. 

Christmas Cactus: Ever since I read Nicole’s post about Noelle, her Christmas cactus, I have been enchanted by the idea of owning one myself. When lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear in the floral section of my grocery store, but a Christmas cactus in full bloom! I bought it, brought it home, put it in the one spot in my house that gets semi-direct sunlight, and gazed adoringly at it every time I passed through the kitchen. It seems to be actively rejecting my love and hospitality, though. The blooms have begun to crumple and this morning I found that one of the teeny pink buds had fallen onto the table. What am I doing wrong?! Perhaps it is simply horrified by the state of the kitchen table. 

Housekeeping Standards, or Lack Thereof: My Christmas cactus is not the only one who is appalled. Not only is my kitchen table full of Random Crap, it is also covered in crumbs. But that’s not the half of it. My normally mediocre housekeeping activities have apparently taken as big a hit as my blogging this week. When all you do in your home is eat and sleep and follow the child around urging her to hurry! we are late!, the crumbs tend to pile up. I have an enormous kitchen island in my kitchen, and normally it is PRISTINE. That is my preferred state. I do not like to pile things on the island; we have other counters for piles. I like the island to be a clean and welcoming expanse of granite awaiting the preparation of delicious and nutritious meals and/or cookies. NOT THIS WEEK. Mail has piled up on the counter, I have a row of holiday cards waiting for me to hang them on the wall, there’s some leftover cedar fronds from the cedar garland I bought to go above the mantle, crumbs everywhere. Let’s not even contemplate the state of the floor. How we are not overrun by mice and/or ants is a miracle. I cannot wait for my family to be done eating in the kitchen so I can restore order by way of cleaning fluid, Swedish dishcloths, and my zooper.

Favorite Flower: I may have gone a little overboard in terms of holiday flora this year. I bought a poinsettia. But then. I went to my mother’s house, where she had the most enormous, beautiful poinsettia I have ever seen. She got it at Costco, she said. So I braved Costco the week before Christmas to get my own giant poinsettia. For $15.99. It’s hard to see in the photo, but this thing is at least three feet tall. I am sure it will die any moment now. 

Last Minute Stocking Stuffers: As per usual, I have been panic-buying last minute stocking stuffers like it’s my job. You may remember I said I was going to buy a cooling towel for my husband? Well, then I didn’t get one because I was hemming and hawing about whether he would really use it, and then I couldn’t find him any other interesting stocking stuffers, so I returned to get the cooling towel and it was sold out so I ended up getting him this three-pack. So if he doesn’t end up using it, now it will be three times as wasteful! This is the power of procrastination, folks. It is supposed to arrive Monday, which is cutting it quite close. I also panic-ordered my dad this magnetic pickup light tool, which looks useful but may be something I already bought him for a previous gift occasion? Not sure. And while I was ordering things, I added this book to the cart because I felt guilty Carla only has one book under the tree. And then, because my husband mentioned that he may not have any stocking stuffers for me, I ordered myself a nice little stocking stuffer. Why yes, I do have a problem.

How Are We Doing This?! I am mainly howling into the parenting void, but honestly: how is anyone doing anything? It has taken me SEVEN HOURS to complete this blog post.  (I did take a pause to clean the kitchen and floors and take a shower.) This is my life lately. Yes, yes, there is Extra Holiday Stuff, but also this is just… how things seem to be? Everything takes seven times as long as it should. Interruptions abound. (Today’s interruption was having to take a 45-minute detour to the shoe store to buy snow boots for my child whose perfectly good snow boots are suddenly too small.) Minor but essential activities (cleaning the counters, doing my thrice-daily zoop, cutting my toenails, showering) are being shelved in favor of… something??? (Being in the car, probably.) Of course I am not getting enough sleep – my sleep is plagued with weird-ass nightmares that linger days after – and I’m tired all the time which I recognize is not helping. (But what is this stage of life if not Tired All the Time?) I am clenching my teeth. Somehow I am ten minutes late to everything. I am in the car all the time. Listen, I get that moving to this new house with the new, much longer commute was a big change to my routine. But it has been more than a year now, and I should be getting used to it, and GETTING IT TOGETHER. But I am not! Nothing is together! I only have the one child and the one husband! All the things are good! I have no real stress to speak of! AND YET. I continue flailing around, spluttering and splashing and dog paddling my way from tiny sinking island to tiny sinking island and NOTHING IS BEING ACCOMPLISHED. How are YOU doing this???? What am I doing wrong???? And how do I fix it?!?!?!?!

Okay. I am going to finally post this and go dry my hair and then pack my child for a night at her grandparents and try to get into a Staycation With My Hubby frame of mind instead of my current state of AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!