Housework

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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!!!!!!!!!

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A Small and Specific Product Recommendation

I am about to recommend a product to you that I now find indispensable. But I want to include a couple of caveats before I do so.

The first is this post’s unfortunate proximity to Mother’s Day. I can (sigh) imagine some people (not you, but I bet you can think of the type of someone I mean) reading this post and leaping up and shrieking, “That’s it! That’s the perfect gift for A Mother!” And while yes, I love it because it is extremely useful, and while I do in fact use it during the execution of tasks that are often left exclusively to mothers, I would argue vehemently that products which make it easier/simpler/more efficient/better for a mother to execute her duties should NOT be given at Mother’s Day gifts, but instead should be considered legitimate business expenses, and items required to do the work of a household, and should be categorized with things like cleansers and mops rather than lumped into the gift category. Just as an office would not consider an ergonomic chair or a wireless mouse to be GIFTS for the person using them, an air fryer or a new washing machine or a new zooper should be considered tools that make it easier or more efficient for a homemaker to complete the work of running a household. Not. Gifts.

I know – I KNOW – that sometimes a big extravagant purchase like a washing machine can put a strain on a household budget. And yet I would still argue that it should not be re-categorized as a gift. Unless and only if the washing machine is also counted as a gift for Father’s Day as well. 

So I am not recommending this as a gift. Maybe – maybe – I could see it as a stocking stuffer, IF multiple people of multiple sexes and familial roles received it all at the same time.

Okay. So that is the main caveat. 

The second caveat is that this is a single-use item. At least in my household. I see that the product manufacturers/marketers have tried valiantly to come up with alternate uses, but please note my Raised Eyebrow of Skepticism and Uh-Huh, Sure. I don’t usually like single-use products, but I like this one. It is so effective at its one job (and so small and easy to slip into a drawer) that when I somehow lost mine, I immediately ordered ten more. (To be fair, I ordered ten more only because it comes in a pack of ten.) 

Anyway. All caveats aside: the product is a pan scraper. It is made of a stiff plastic and it is about the size of a credit card. I use it to scrape the egg off of a pan when I have made scrambled eggs.

(image from amazon.com) I don’t know that I ever really noticed the different shaped corners? But sure, whatever.

I do not particularly LIKE eggs, but I eat them a lot. And the egg never fails to form a thin veneer across the top of the supposedly non-stick coating of my pan. A veneer that is so adhesive, it’s a wonder that the folks at Elmer’s haven’t patented it. 

I use a stiff-bristled scrubber to clean my dishes. But my scrubber does not work well on the egg veneer. Sometimes, after several soakings and applying lots of elbow grease, it will come off. But then the egg transfers to the bristles of the scrub brush and refuses to come off. REFUSES. It pains me to admit that I have thrown away more than one scrubber due to stubborn egg scraps.

Even the miracle that is Dawn Powerwash has little effect on the egg veneer. 

But the scraper clears the egg in a few seconds! It is magic! You just… scrape the egg off, rinse the pan, and you’re done. No soaking necessary. Because I like to hand wash things as infrequently as possible, I drop the scraper itself into the dishwasher and I am done. MAGIC. 

As I said before, this scraper is small enough that I tuck it inside the front face of my kitchen tool drawer. It is very unobtrusive and waits patiently until the next time I make eggs. 

(image from amazon.com) The pan scraper marketing team is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here for alternate uses. See what I did there?

The scrapers come in a pack of ten, and they are ten for $9.99 right now. NINETY-NINE CENTS FOR A RELIABLE AND USEFUL TOOL IS SUCH A DEAL. I have already gotten far more than my money’s worth out of this little product, and I measure that by number of stiff-bristled scrubbers I have NOT had to throw away, which are apparently $7.99 apiece, and also in minutes of grumpy scrubbing.

The first scraper I got was from a friend. I went over to her house to pick up Carla from a playdate, and she said, “Here, I have a pan scraper for you.” I was skeptical, and yet it has been one of the most useful products in my kitchen. I use it way more than I use my Instant Pot, that’s for sure. If you bought a ten pack, think of how you could casually hand a few out to friends, and BLOW THEIR MINDS with this tiny unassuming powerhouse?!

Okay, and now I want to know if YOU have any little heroes in your house that I have been overlooking.

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Blustery Tuesday Blah Blah

I am sitting in a dark house, staring out at a brooding sky and wind-tossed trees. It is deliciously quiet right now. Thanks to your powerful not-Covid thoughts, Carla is Covid negative and back at school. Hooray!

We were very productive yesterday: in addition to going to the doctor, I did four loads of laundry – INCLUDING folding – and have a last load waiting for me to put it in the washer (I have been trying to see a load through from hamper to folding before I start a new load; reduces the pile up). We also cleaned out Carla’s desk, which had an entire trash bag’s worth of junk in it, and we listened to Project Hail Mary (which I listened to based on Jaida’s excellent recommendation and loved so much that I explained it to Carla, and my enthusiasm made her want to listen to it also), and we watched a very long video of someone who gives makeovers to OMG dolls. Carla subsequently added “liquid latex” and “heat gun” to her list of must-have crafting items. It was nice to have a little extra time with my kid, but she has another day off coming up and I am very glad she is back at school.

After I dropped Carla off, I went to the grocery store and spent all our savings on food. I have not been noticing a huge number of shortages… things seem to have leveled off, a bit. (Although at Costco this weekend, there was no Kirkland-brand toilet paper, and both toilet paper and paper towels were one-per-customer.) Plenty of staples – beans, pasta, flour, sugar, pepperoni. Even Lunchables are available again. A thing that I do find concerning is that Target now has “only X left” on pretty much anything I try to order online. This is true whether I choose “pick-up” or “shipping” as my delivery option. It could simply be marketers playing to the scarcity strategy, but whatever it is, it definitely cues my panic response.

You know a thing that I find unnecessarily anxiety-provoking? When someone can’t hear what you’re saying. The checker at the grocery store had a hard time hearing me, and was really frustrated-acting about it. Which I get! It must be frustrating, to not hear someone! And I am sure that she has to deal with this same situation multiple times per day, what with people wearing masks, and her being stuck behind a plexiglass shield and all. But she did that thing where she shook her head and closed her eyes in an “I am counting to ten” kind of way, and, her tone said “this is entirely YOUR fault” and I felt helpless and defensive and equally frustrated that I couldn’t make myself heard and ugh. I just hate that. Makes me feel shaky and tearful when it should be a simple exchange of, “Oh, sorry! I will speak up!” and “Thank you! That’s better!” instead of disgusted dismissive shrugging like I am purposefully being a jerk.

She also seemed mad at me that I asked her to re-scan my apples. I bought Jonagold apples because a) I can’t remember the last time I ate a Jonagold apple, and cannot remember how they taste and b) because they looked so beautiful and shiny and red. I purposely avoided the Honeycrisp apples because a) they were $0.50 per pound more expensive and b) also looked pale and bloated. So I pointed out that they had rung up as the wrong apple – which she had me repeat twice – and then she said in an angry way, “Well, they come up as Honeycrisp when I type in the number on the tag.” Which. Okay. Either some Honeycrisp apples migrated into the Jonagold section or the tag was incorrect or the computer was reading them incorrectly or she typed the number into the computer incorrectly or I blacked out in the apple section and got Honeycrisp instead of Jonagold… I don’t know, but it didn’t seem to me that I had been BLAMING her for doing something WRONG when that is clearly how it came across. She is never as friendly as some of the checkers, but she sure drank some curdled milk this morning or something.

A package of M&Ms classic mix (M&Ms, peanut M&Ms, and peanut butter M&Ms all in a single bag) caught my eye at the checkout, but I neglected to act on my impulse and buy it. I wavered because I don’t really like plain M&Ms. But I am regretting my inaction now.

We got the bill for the exterminator, and it was MUCH higher than indicated in our previous infuriating and elliptical conversation. And I can’t decide whether I need to simply pay it and find a new exterminator service or if I should email him back and request an explanation. And I KNOW that prices are rising and costs are increasing, so there could be a reasonable explanation for the discrepancy. But I want to KNOW. I don’t want to just pay whatever he says the price is, willy nilly. We got a nice letter from our snowplow service saying – in advance – that they had a lot of increased costs and so our bill would go up, and I really appreciate that kind of up-front transparency. We will gladly pay the increase. Part of me wants to email the exterminator, just to see what he says. Although I am afraid he will then call me.

My root canal takes place next week. My husband took the day off from work and will drive me to and from the appointment and presumably ensure I don’t die afterward. I am not looking forward to it. But it will be nice to no longer have severe pain in my jaw. (Although I have heard plenty of stories about root canals not “taking” and needing to be repeated. Arrrrggghhhhh.)

This past Sunday, because Carla wasn’t going to school the following day, the three of us watched Cruella, with Emmas Stone and Thompson. There were some men in it, too, but the Emmas were the real stars. It was a decent movie, although it made Cruella a little too sympathetic, and I still am not quite sure I can make the narrative jump to her wanting to skin and wear a bunch of a Dalmatians as a coat. Also, the whole nature-vs-nurture theme of the movie could have done with a little more thinking through, but I suppose what do you want from a children’s storybook villain origin story. Carla was quite taken with her and has resumed speaking with a semi-British accent.

This is a bit of a delicate topic, maybe. But… do you shave your face? I had not done any sort of facial hair removal until a couple of months ago, aside from an occasional plucking of a stray eyebrow hair, or pulling out the hair that insists on sprouting witchily from the mole on my chin. But now I am completely obsessed with these Tinkle razors. I think I have used these enough times now to be able to recommend them with confidence. A little back story: an acquaintance mentioned these to me over the summer, and said she’d gotten a couple extra and she would give them to me. Note that she did not ask if I wanted them. Then the next couple of times we ran into each other, she’d slap her thigh and say, “Oh darn, I forgot to bring them for you!” As you might imagine, after each of these exchanges, I would spend long minutes with my face pressed up against the mirror, trying to determine whether my peach fuzz had graduated into full on facial shrubbery. Surely, my furry outer layer was so evident that this person felt COMPELLED to get me to take action. So when she finally pressed a couple into my hands, I was ready to give them a try. I had never tried any sort of facial hair removal options before because my mother had always given me stern and strenuous warnings about how the hair would grow back thicker and darker than before. A mother’s admonitions are a hard thing to get past, even when one is in her fifth decade of life. So far, I have not noticed this to be the case with the Tinkle razors. There is a period during which the face feels a teeny bit rougher than normal, but then the hair goes back to its normal downy state, and I haven’t noticed any change in color whatsoever. Anyway, these are very easy to use and I LOVE THEM and I am not going back and if you are looking for a facial hair solution I recommend you give these a go.

What are we supposed to be watching on TV these days? My husband and I watched Midnight Mass (interesting and thoughtful concept; Hamish Linklater; too many long-winded monologues) and Squid Game (VERY stressful but impossible to stop once we started) and are of course watching the latest season of Great British Baking Show. But we need something new. I want to watch that murder comedy with Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building) and my husband wants to watch Succession and neither of us is particularly excited about the other’s choice. What have you watched recently and loved?

I looked up the person who does the OMG doll makeovers and she apparently makes somewhere around $14,000 a month.