This is the point where we ask ourselves: why must we have ice skates AND a sun hat?
This is the point where we start to think: all possessions are evil. Let's divest ourselves of everything and live a simpler life. (Who needs dishes, anyway?)
It's been exhausting around here lately and we are far, far from done.
The problem is that there are several jobs underway at once. For Ben, he has to move and also do all his normal work. For me, I have to move and do all my normal work too. That means… 1) take care of an infant, which is in itself a 24-hour-a-day job, even when we're talking about one of the sweetest most patient infants ever; 2) take care of a very high intensity four-year-old, and drive same all over the place, to and from school, etc.; 3) pack up an entire family, including gear from many different stages of life, and nine years of clutter to contend with; 4) prepare a house to museum quality of perfection to show it to potential buyers in a horrible market.
Okay, so last week, about Wednesday, my friend Martha came over in response to my distress call. When she arrived I burst into tears and handed her the baby and said I wanted to put my head in the oven. This of course a reference to Sylvia Plath, the ur-suicidal housewife. What sent her over the brink is still the stuff of scholarly debate. For me it was the sheer impossibility, the relentless hopelessness, of trying to manage all these jobs at once. Room upon room of endless work, the baby constantly interrupting me and any progress I made undone by Isaac the wild.
Example 1) I took off all the slipcovers, exposing the nice pristine upholstery below. Then I found Isaac lying on his back, on the very pristine upholstery. He had his face, indeed his whole head, buried in half a honeydew melon that he had purloined from the kitchen without my knowledge. Juice! Eegads! The juice!
Example 2) he called me from the bathroom: "Mom! I peed my pants!" So I came in and here's what I found… a) he had filled the sink with soapy water to the very brim; b) he had climbed into the sink and was standing in it up to his ankles with his pants on, and c) at that point he had peed his pants (the power of suggestion). Trying to give him the benefit of doubt, I said, "Were you climbing into the sink to wash your pants after you had peed in them, or something like that?" and he shrugged and and said, "No, I peed in my pants once I got here."
Example 3) also bathroom related… I got a nice new bathmat from Crate and Barrel. SOmething of a splurge actually, but reasoning that it would make the house look nicer and then we could move it to the new house once this one sells… anyway, for some ungodly reason I put it on the bathroom floor. Then I heard the dreaded cry, "Mom, I need help!" And so I rushed in and found Isaac, half naked, covered in poop from the waist down. In his hands a poop-tainted snarl of toilet paper about the size of a basket ball. Standing on the very lovely pristine bath mat!!(which came through unscathed somehow!)
The pressure was on, too, because this weekend (today) is the big Ohio City home tour in our neighborhood. It means that several thousand people who are interested in our neighborhood walk by the house on this day, and really it's only once a year and not something you can miss by a week. So we simply had to have the front of the house looking wonderful (and that at least we did accomplish… I got the porch washed and painted, and the fence painted, and I planted some flowers, etc.) and our for sale sign up. This means that at any point from today forward someone could and should call to see the inside of the house also!
After I had my nervous breakdown midweek, Ben agreed to rent a truck this weekend and get as much as possible out of here. ANd I declared it totally impossible to live here while also trying to show the house. I declared that I simply can't handle the struggle of having yesterday's work undone today, over and over again. On paper I thought we could do it for a couple weeks between the home tour and the end of Isaac's school year, but after trying it for only half an hour I learned that I would be driven insane by it much sooner than that.
So yesterday Ben and a friend did haul out a lot. Enough so that we manage to camp down at the new house last night. We can exist there, no problem, but today by force of habit we are home again, messing things up again. Cooking, eating, living. We must stop! We're sleeping here tonight because we all have to be in Cleveland for various reasons in the morning, but really this can't go on!
I calculate that if I can clean and pack and order one room per day we can have it pretty together by the end of the week. We can leave this house as a museum and bring all the mess of existence to the new house. After a few weeks of this, whether it has sold or not, we can hire movers to bring all the stuff down there, and then begin a new level of sprucing up things here. Like all the paint is the most sorry ass mess you ever saw. We really should paint the entire interior. And there's the battered stained old carpet in two rooms upstairs. And, and, and.
Meanwhile at the new house we did get the lethal electrical issues fixed, and the siding gutter people are coming this week. But do we have a washer and dryer? Do we have internet hook-up? No. ….
IN other news Elias had his nightmarish, alien abduction experience at the hospital at some point along the way. you know, just a nice normal day and then some people pin you down as if stretched on a rack, then insert something into your penis, while a huge machine looms over you. Your mother, who is distraught, is hampered from nursing you because of the chin to knee lead apron she sports. Meanwhile some other fiend keeps running over and dousing your private parts with cups of warm water, to make you pee, so they can snap a photo of your urethra in use. Then it's all duckies and bunnies again and life goes on as normal.
what the—?
As least his anatomy is okay! He is normal and fine, and does not have the defect they were looking for. Our good fortune was underscored later that day at Isaac's school. The new girl in his class is big sister to these romanian conjoined twins who are in cleveland for separation surgery. the twins were at school that afternoon! joined at the head! okay, god, i get it. my idea of a bad/scary medical day is nothing!
Elias's word of the week: hedt. Hedt is such a useful all-purpose reply to everything. and so fun to say. hedt. hedt. hedt.