{"id":14948,"date":"2018-09-29T17:55:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-30T00:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=14948"},"modified":"2018-10-04T20:01:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T03:01:21","slug":"cleaning-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=14948","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning house."},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m gonna start at the ending and work my way back to the beginning.\u00a0 Which is against the rules, I know.\u00a0 But the rules are kind of fast and loose around here lately.\u00a0 If you wondered where I was for almost the past year, I was cleaning house.\u00a0 That seems like a lot of cleaning.\u00a0 And it was.\u00a0 Oh, it was.<\/p>\n

I’m writing to you from my 32′ RV.\u00a0 Where I stay now.\u00a0 Overlooking the pond and garden on a raised gravel lane with my own power pole and water line and, of course, wifi.\u00a0 I have 2 indoor\/outdoor cattens (1\/2 kitten and 1\/2 cat. You missed their full-on kitten stage) from the animal shelter that hang out on the couch when I’m in here and underneath the rig when I’m not.\u00a0 They are pleased to join me when I open the door and start passing out cat treats but just as quick to dump me if they see anything interesting going on outside.\u00a0 They are, after all, cattens.\u00a0 Capable of dispensing love and indifference in equal quantities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This weekend I am cleaning out the summer garden.\u00a0 But I am only putting in a couple of rows of winter greens.\u00a0 The rest of the garden is going back to grass, minus some areas where I’m transplanting perennials or leaving open for wildflower seeds in the spring.\u00a0 I’m going to let the fruit trees expand to shade large areas along the fenceline.\u00a0 I don’t need row after row of vegetables now that my kids are rarely here for mealtimes.\u00a0 And we all know how much I dreaded canning.\u00a0 Now I’m gonna spend winter planning a habitat garden <\/a>for pollinators with just a bit of veggies and herbs tucked in between swaths of blooms.<\/p>\n

Of course, I will have to have my compost delivered because all of the barn animals are gone.\u00a0 The last of them left in January.\u00a0 A young family just starting with dairy goats left with a horse trailer full of my 4 sheep, 1 goat buck, 1 Angora rabbit, a couple dozen chickens and ducks, and the 2 Great Pyrenees.\u00a0 They mainly wanted the Great Pyrenees as they had a coyote problem but also 2 young children running around the barnyard.\u00a0 So they needed a livestock guardian that was bad for coyotes but good for kids and Bruno and Bella were just the solution.\u00a0 I managed to convince them to take everything.\u00a0 Once the barn was cleaned out and the last critter was gone I waited to feel sad.\u00a0 Or regretful.\u00a0 Or bored. Each morning I woke up, sipped my coffee, and thought…..Don’t have to go out to the barn anymore.\u00a0 Then I thought….whew.<\/p>\n

I was even happy when I got pics from the family of how well everything was going at their place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although I admit buying eggs from the grocery store stings a bit.\u00a0 Luckily I am still surrounded by chicken owners and healthy free range eggs aren’t had to come by.\u00a0 \u00a0Neither are stories of foxes in the henhouse or chickens having to be hand delivered into the coop each night from their roosts in the bushes or an entire brood of chicks being lost to a black snake.\u00a0 Those stories make me cringe in sympathy and then give my cattens an extra ear scratch.\u00a0 Because cattens may not give eggs but they also do not have these problems.<\/p>\n

Once the animals were gone I had plenty of time for writing.<\/p>\n

Did you notice lots of writing between January 2018 and now?<\/p>\n

No, you didn’t.<\/p>\n

Because once the barn animals were gone, it was time to clean house.\u00a0 Which is a euphemism for lots of thing, but also means, you know,\u00a0 cleaning house.\u00a0 And cleaning house can be an ugly process.\u00a0 Not just because no matter how much you clean house, nobody notices.\u00a0 Which is a euphemism but a real thing, too.\u00a0 Not just because as soon as you mop the floor someone walks across it with muddy shoes.\u00a0 Which is a euphemism but a real thing, too.\u00a0 Not just because asking and begging and screaming at people to help clean house is exhausting.\u00a0 Which is a euphemism but a real thing, too.<\/p>\n

All of that together was too much to write about but too much to hold in and so I hit the trails.\u00a0 I hiked 2 and 3 and 4 hours at a time.\u00a0 I went to the gym and put miles on the treadmill.\u00a0 I tried to walk out my anger and frustration and exhaustion until I gave myself injuries and was still angry and frustrated and exhausted.\u00a0 Which was when I realized you can’t outrun cleaning house.\u00a0 (Well, really there was no running.\u00a0 My breasts don’t run.\u00a0 No matter how frustrated or angry I get.\u00a0 They draw the line at running.)\u00a0 Because after all those miles I was still stuck with me.<\/p>\n

Also, I was stuck with my hips and thighs.\u00a0 Because a hike in the morning AND an hour in the gym at night did not make me skinny.<\/p>\n

I know.\u00a0 What the f**k, right?!<\/p>\n

In the end the solution was my own little house.\u00a0 A house that I could keep clean in only 15 minutes a week.\u00a0 A house without anyone else’s baggage except for mine.\u00a0 A safe house only a short ways down the driveway where the older kids can stop on their way to and from work and class to check in.\u00a0 Where the younger ones come for scrambled eggs for breakfast and packed lunches before I drive them to school.\u00a0 With an outside grill where I make family dinners after sports games and practice.\u00a0 With a TV in the front room for the boys to watch NBA games and a TV in the bedroom for me and Pretty to binge watch Netflix on rainy days.<\/p>\n

It’s not perfect and it’s certainly not orthodox.\u00a0 The family has struggled with fruit flies and fleas and mice since I stopped cleaning their house.\u00a0 Which left me struggling with my conscience, my guilt, and my overwhelming relief.<\/p>\n

Because even though the air steward tells us to put our masks on on first.\u00a0 Even though the therapists keep telling us that we have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of anyone else.\u00a0 And even though we know, oh, we know, that if we crash and burn we take the whole family down with us, when it comes to marriage and parenthood, do we really believe in taking care of ourselves?\u00a0 Do we?<\/p>\n

I don’t know.\u00a0 All I know is that going to sleep in my RV, with the windows open to the frog chorus in the pond, and the cattens curled at the foot of the bed, is sometimes the only way I can face all my other responsibilities.\u00a0 And it was the only way back to my writing.<\/p>\n

A friend was sitting at the patio table outside the RV not too long after it arrived.\u00a0 She had finished the grand tour (which doesn’t take long in a 32′ RV) and was sipping a cool drink with a kitten (they were still kittens then) on her lap.<\/p>\n

“What do you think?”\u00a0 I asked.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s a very impressive mid-life crisis,” she replied.<\/p>\n

“You really think it’s a mid-life crisis?\u00a0 Really?” I asked.\u00a0 Because my friends are real friends.\u00a0 The kind that tell you the truth.<\/p>\n

She smiled.<\/p>\n

“Hard to say,” she answered.\u00a0 “I’ve never known a woman with enough balls to have a mid-life crisis.”<\/p>\n

Which is a euphemism. But a real thing, too.<\/p>\n

I was proud, horrified,\u00a0 and a bit disappointed in myself.\u00a0 Am I really the only one—the only woman ever who couldn’t take it anymore?\u00a0 And has a woman really gone off the rails when she refuses to clean the toilets anymore?\u00a0 Or wash the dishes and wipe the counters?\u00a0 Will my family have to write painful memoirs because they were forced to clean up after themselves or live in their own filth?\u00a0 I’m not sure if that counts as abandonment or just the loss of a live-in maid.\u00a0 And what kind of woman having a midlife crisis settles for a 10 year old RV with bald tires?\u00a0 Shouldn’t I have gotten a 2018 unit with auto-leveling and dual air conditioning units??<\/p>\n

It’s a confusing time, people.\u00a0 But we have lots to catch up on.\u00a0 I believe I left off somewhere in the middle of the summer 2017 trip.\u00a0 And I have traveled since then.\u00a0 And one of the kids grew up and moved out.\u00a0 And I took a second job.\u00a0 And I have to figure out how to winterize an old RV before the cold temperatures arrive.\u00a0 I expect to skip around a bit.\u00a0 Because we’ve kind of thrown out the rule book around here.<\/p>\n

Except everyone takes their shoes off before entering the RV.\u00a0 This house is clean and it’s stayin’ that way!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m gonna start at the ending and work my way back to the beginning.\u00a0 Which is against the rules, I know.\u00a0 But the rules are kind of fast and loose around here lately.\u00a0 If you wondered where I was for almost the past year, I was cleaning house.\u00a0 That seems like a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14948"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15039,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14948\/revisions\/15039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}