February 4th 2018
There are no alarms set on Sundays. It is the one day of the week that I let the sun rise alone, and this one is happily no exception. I drift in and out of sleep for sometime…and each time I stir I relish the quiet that blankets the room, the house and even the neighborhood outside. It’s the kind of quiet brought on by snowy mornings. My wake up call on the weekends is typically courtesy of one 6 year old. I will wake midstream in a science question/conversation/monologue/game review/song immediately followed by a report of the time. He will then hand me my glasses, and then my phone. But this morning there is no wake up call…a minor miracle had occurred…he is still asleep!
Before I get up out of bed, one of our two dogs takes notice that I am awake and comes to the bedside expectantly. He is our gentle giant, a greyhound lab mix that looks like and has the temperament of a small deer. He politely receives a gentle petting, until our other dog, a boxer pit mix, shoves his big, square head in between us. He will hardly hold still to receive the same attention. They are two very different creatures…a straight man and his dopey sidekick.
I sit up, put on my glasses, and pick up my phone from the nightstand. I am astounded to see that it is 9:30. I take a quick look in the dresser mirror, amused by my crazy hair. I give myself a quick smile. I always do this…every time I look in the mirror. It’s not for vanities sake, and may sound silly, but I’ve been doing this a long time…since junior high. It’s a way of setting the tone with yourself. An act of inward kindness. Charity starts at home, right?
The dogs’ tails frantically slap everything we pass as they lead me out into the hall. Their tails flag me toward my son’s bedroom, presumably to check on him. They do this first thing every morning unless they’ve slept the night in his room. He is sound asleep diagonally across the bed. Once they have confirmation that he is in fact where he is supposed to be, they exit the room.
While I step into the bathroom to brush my teeth and tame the hair, etc. both dogs wait on the stairs. I then pop into the home office to grab a note pad and sketchbook before heading downstairs.
I let the dogs out and they scamper across the snow dusted deck. I turn on the radio in the kitchen, hear the President’s voice, and promptly turn it off again. No need to sully an otherwise perfectly good morning. I make coffee, fix myself two whole grain blueberry waffles with maple syrup and sit down at the dining room table. I have about 30 minutes that is all mine. Soon, I hear F’s tiny little voice, and so I go up to the first landing of the stairwell to investigate. He’s up now…in the bathroom humming the Super Mario Brothers theme to himself, which somehow morphs into the Star Wars Imperial March. It’s a talent.
I avoid disrupting the bathroom concert and decide to take a look at Facebook via my phone, figuring that I should do this early to avoid Super Bowl chatter. The visit lasts about 2 minutes. It’s a disappointing mix of “Seriously?!” (fur-trim nail tip trend) to “Well, yeah, seriously!” (a meme claiming children who are made to do chores will grow up to be more successful), and the obligatory and equally annoying “Like and Share if you agree”s.
Everything changes, though, when I stumble upon “This Lady’s Haunted Toaster is the best thing on the internet”. Pure gold.
I spend the rest of the morning shifting between tasks like laundry and light housekeeping and things-I-actually-want-to-do. In the latter category, I sketch ideas for redoing the old butler’s pantry and leaf through Better Homes and Gardens. The pantry is something that I have been wanting to tackle—it has not been touched since we moved in. It just never happened and the ugly room is untidy and crammed with tools and cleaners and just anything we don’t know what to do with. It has ugly particle board shelves on stark metal brackets. The 13 foot walls are a dingy white. It’s a sad little space. The character of the room, if it ever had any, was long stripped before we ever took possession. There were likely built-ins at one time, but like the parlor fireplace mantle they were likely pillaged–the house sat empty and abandoned for many years. Said fireplace was removed and is right at home across the street in our friend’s house. We joke about it a lot. A few years ago on a holiday Victorian home tour, both houses were open, and I would send the tour guests over to ask her to see the stolen fireplace. Perhaps my pantry shelving is in there somewhere too….
My husband cannot say no to something free, and this time, likely after a few pints at Guardian with our neighbor, he has agreed to take their chest freezer off their hands (asking my forgiveness after the fact). I have to say that I was not pleased at first. Our house is about to capacity, and I had no idea where this thing was going to go. Our “basement” is a dirt floor cellar. (And the free kiln another neighbor gave us last summer is already taking up space down there on the small slab on cement). This is the fish tank scenario all over again.
I have not been able get myself or B motivated to tackle the pantry. But now, I have used his weakness to my advantage. I insisted that the pantry been done before the freezer is installed. So, I am working the plans out today. We will paint it, add new shelving, and maybe cabinets. And, best of all, get rid of most of the junk. Once I have a vison, I am now considering that freezer a welcome harbinger of change.
F has been entertaining himself all morning. He alternates between playing a video game called Little Big Planet 3, snacking, playing with action figures, snacking, and running around the house being a ninja. A VERY LOUD ninja. He is a master of sound effects…its like having an audio interpretation of a comic book battle blows.
I tidy up the dining table which had collected the remnants of yet another project: photos, scrap books, school papers, legos. Laundry and more laundry. Sweep and mop the floors. I send B out to evict two unwanted tenants….the two mice that we have caught in live traps. He takes them far out along the river and releases them. I feel a sense of relief that they will have each other out in the wild. I’d hate to break up a family, even one that is in the habit of chewing holes in my walls.
When B returns, I have him help me remove the pantry door off its hinges…the first step in the project. Next weekend I will strip the room of its contents, clean and paint it in bold black and white 5 inch wide vertical stripes.
By now it’s afternoon. No one seems to want lunch, so I fix myself a plate of cheese and crackers and sit down to sketch out another plan…this one for the home office upstairs (the next room in need of attention). As I am doing this, my six year old saddles up next to me and out of the blue announces “Hey mom! I know why dogs have really big pupils. Because it makes them look really cute to us”. Then he scampers off. I go back to the sketching. Thinking out how to use the room for office, art studio (I traded that space for a baby 6 years ago) and reading nook. It occurs to me that we never did rid ourselves of the old college futon frame. Perhaps it can have a second life up in the office. When I mention that to B he is pretty excited at the prospect.
One of the dogs comes in from a trip outside with a paw injury… he’s bleeding a bit. It looks as though he has cut it on something, probably jumping on the fence. I tend to the wound and pack it with cornstarch to stop the bleeding (something I learned from a friend who is a dog groomer).
I then take some time to join in a few levels of Little Big Planet 3 with the kiddo. He is ecstatic that I have asked to play. He designs a character for me. We play for about an hour and a half while B works on his computer in the office.
H, N and S, our long time friends, whom we call our Muncie family, come over shortly after F and I finish our game. They are here nearly every Sunday. S is exactly a year younger than F and they have grown up together. They are more like siblings than anything. They quickly run off to play. N and H are best friends, and S is H’s daughter.
While the kids play, the adults have decided to make good use of the leftover unopened champagne in the fridge (from our NYE party) and make mimosas. We talk about all sorts of things, and work on our characters for our Pathfinder role paying game that we will start playing again next Sunday or the Sunday after. It’s essentially just like Dungeons and Dragons and we have been playing it on and off for several years. The parlor is strewn with Pathfinder books.
For dinner we eat a ‘take and bake’ deluxe pizza from Our Pizza House in Winchester. We picked up the pie yesterday while there visiting relatives. This is a special treat not only because we do get to have it often and it is delicious, but because this little restaurant was founded by B’s grandparents in the 60s and was run by the family until a few years ago. While we wait for the pizza, N shops for roller skate wheels. She is in the Cornfed Derby dames, the local roller derby team. She explains that she needs specific wheels for different types of surfaces and the upcoming bout in Indianapolis is on a type of floor unlike that of Gibson’s (where she practices). H sits on the backstairs in the kitchen while I make up salad to go with the pizza. She talks about her costume for the Funcie Femmes show in a few weeks. We talk about work, her new beau, her ex, our children, clothes. You name it.
We all eat our pizza in front of the television and watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2. But mostly we talk over it. The kids go back to playing. They are low maintenance tonight and don’t have one fight, which means F’s room will look like a war zone.
After supper, F reads his AR reader to S and H. He brings a new one home nearly every day from school. He will then take a test on each one. The readers now have a table of contents and from an adult perspective are more interesting to sit through. He is a good little reader although he has a hard time sitting still long enough to get through them.
H and S leave a little while later. It is getting late and both kids are tired. F passes out on the sofa immediately. Looks like not bath tonight. N leaves shortly after.
I get things ready for the morning which is the nightly ritual of setting the coffee maker, laying out clothes, packing the bag for swim lessons, making sure the backpack is ready and the reader inside, and of course packing F’s lunch. It’s shamefully full of carbs, but I’d rather he eat than not. My child is a carbivore. He does not want to eat meat, but does not like veggies, so here we are. I have to sneak those in where I can. I should say that he will not eat meat if he knows what it is. It’s less about picky eating and more about the ethics of it. He is the most pragmatic, conscientious child I have ever met.
I flip off the porch light and lock the door. I let the dogs out once more and tidy up the parlor and the kitchen counter and then go nudge B who has now dozed off on the couch with F. He carries the little guy up to his room and we kiss him good night. We each take turns brushing teeth before bed and then turn in for the night with I love yous.