I am many things. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a photographer. I am a blogger. I am a gardener.
And I am a housewife.
Or as I like to term it
NINASHINDA NYUMBA!
Which is Swahili for “I conquer the home”.
Many a year ago, when I still actually had progeny at home and underfoot, I had another woman, who should have known better but evidently didn’t, ask me what I did all day at home. I believe her words went something like,
I don’t know how you can stand to be home all day. What do you do? I would be so bored.
I looked at her. Just looked. And then I consigned her to the same “category” as the grocery store clerk who, when I was filling out a form to get a rewards card said,
Oh, you are a house wife. So you don’t have a job.
Lord have mercy the Smack Fairy needed to make a quick trip to visit that girl.
But I digress.
There is never a dull and down time moment here at Chez Knit. Even with no progeny at home. I actually have to “schedule” at least one firm day at home every week otherwise things just go to heck in a hand basket.
This is what my day was like today. Cuz I KNOW you wanted to know.
1. Up at 5:40a. I overslept. Well really I fell back to sleep after my alarm went off at 5a and I listened to the first ten minutes of NPR
2. Coffee. Feed the dog. Let the dog out. Let the dog in. Let the dog out. Let the dog in. Make my breakfast, two eggs sunny side up and two pieces of rye toast.
3. Write the daily “Elixir of Life” post. It gets the brain going that is for sure. A cranium, having to produce a minimum of a two line poem every morning will wake up quickly.
4. Clean off desk.
5. Take shop vac to the basement to vacuum the Christmas decorations area before stacking all the boxes.
6. Before I can do that I need to vacuum and rearrange the pathway to the decorations area, restacking some boxes and just neatening.
7. Then I needed to vacuum another area over by the workout equipment so that I could move the bikes that are stored in the basement so that I would have a clean and clear path to move the Christmas decoration boxes.
8. After vacuuming that area I moved all the boxes and restacked them.
9. Then I realized that I wanted to rearrange another area in the basement. HHBL and I are going through a number of boxes of “papers”, shredding old bank statements etc. And so then I spent time shredding some of my old bank statements.
I felt like the assistant to a dictator, in the basement of the government building, frantically shredding important documents before the opposition got there.
Or not.
10. Then I had to re-vacuum that area because I made a mess. And I had to move a small table into the finished area of the basement but I also had to move the couches so that the small table would look right.
11. Then I had to make some lunch. And watch a PBS program that I had recorded, which cut off 10 minutes before the end so I had to go to the computer to research how everything turned out. Francesca Woodman-photographer-killed herself.
12. Back to the basement to put away the Christmas wrapping station that is scattered all over. And spend time going through all the stuff and pulling out old gift bags that have seen better days as well as some wrapping paper that I think is older than the progeny.
13. Go through a basket of stuff that Shoe Queen had eliminated from her “stuff” that we have stored in the basement. Find that one of the things that she was discarding is her old ipod, 30G, classic. A bit scratched and scuffed and….I dropped it on the concrete floor in my excitement.
14. Spend time figuring out if it still works. Yes it does, but it’s battery was totally depleted so had to charge it up.
15. Spend time wiping ipod memory and re-installing all my music. It isn’t like I don’t have “Dahling” my ipod touch, who goes everywhere with me. It is just that the music player in the kitchen is suited for an ipod classic and this is going to be SO great to have it work like it is supposed to.
16. Fiddle with ipod to make sure that just music downloads.
17. Somewhere in there I also put two chickens in a pot to cook, let carcasses cool, picked the meat, put the bones and stock back on the stove to cook down a bit.
18. Wrote blog posts for two different blogs.
19. Caught up on my journaling.
20. Cleaned up the kitchen. Ran a load of dishes. Did some dishes by hand.
No job my every lovin’ ass!
I apologize. I used the word ass. I will try not to do it again.
I just finished deveining shrimp with a sharp knife. Too bad that woman wasn't around then. There's a French slang phrase that would have fit her; "Tête à claque." It pretty much means head to slap. Use that next time because it's French so it doesn't sound rude. :)
ReplyDeleteI will remember this.
DeleteI am known around these parts as a Domestic Goddess. When we went to H&R Block to get our taxes done, I told her that's what I was and she actually put it down! They remember me every year!
ReplyDelete