Cleaning House

Alas literally, although figuratively would be better

Last night I stayed up too late watching the Super Bowl. As a die-hard Miami Dolphins fan, all I cared about was that the Chiefs didn’t get a threepeat (which is apparently a term trademarked by Pat Riley (wait, do I need to pay a royalty now?)). As my daughter—also a die-hard Fish fan—texted me after the game, “I’m getting a sweet treat not to celebrate the win but to celebrate the loss.” Amen.

The past week, the husband and I have been on something of a tear. We had an unruly understairs closet, which he thought he could tame. He set up a lovely shelf system and it is indeed now tamed. Which of course led to us emptying and rearranging our pantry; going through an entire storage closet and getting.rid.of.everything; reorganizing all bathroom cabinets and closets; finding a place for our liquor overflow storage (if you know the husband, you know this is significant); and generally making the house a HUGE mess in service of making it clean. Because of course cleaning one area shows you how gross all the other areas are.

Just one of the 20 projects we started. We still have piles EVERYWHERE!

My favorite part was taking the ginormous pile of energy bars my daughter had bought over the summer that she would DEFINITELY eat before she left for school, along with her stashes of candy, and random food items she brought into the house, and putting it all in a box and sending it to her to deal with. You’re welcome, Pie.¹

I’ll think of something…

about January

Unpopular opinion. I like January. I don’t feel like it’s 365 days long. And, yes, I made it the entire month without alcohol. I like the calm after the holidays, I like the chance to hole up without anyone telling me I should be getting out, I like the quiet. It’s pure winter, which I love (a story for another day). I enjoy snow shoveling (really!). I don’t mind bundling up to take the dog out. And there’s nothing better than a book by the fireplace. So, yes, it’s February, and I’m the only one out there who is not happy about it. February means spring is coming, which is rain and mud in this part of the world. February means we are well into 2025, and I’m expected to leave my house again. February means things need to actually be done.

Go away, February. I’m doing just fine here by myself in January.

about the end of the world

Reading a novel about a the world’s first category 6 hurricane, Luna, that knocks out all of Miami and most of Houston, sending thousands of people to FEMA megashelters throughout the country may not have been my best decision in this day and age, especially as the Orange-in-Chief is trying to dismantle FEMA. But Bruce Holsinger’s The Displacements was worth the stress and insomnia it gave me. An affluent Miami woman and her two children and stepson end up broke in a tent city in Oklahoma.

The novel puts into words something I often think about, how we can all be focused on a single tragedy/nightmare/disaster and then it’s knocked off the front page by the next tragedy/nightmare/disaster. Ukraine’s war disappeared from conversation when the horrors of the October 7 and the subsequent war took over the 24-hour news cycle. The damage of Hurricane Helene was diminished by the wreckage of Hurricane Milton, which has been forgotten by the devastation of the L.A. wildfires. Each new crisis one ups the previous. So many of the world’s dire situations (civilians in Sudan suffering in the civil war; 13.8 million people displaced in Syria; hunger and disease everywhere) are abandoned by the media when the next dire situation comes along.² It’s impossible to stay intent on any one thing. Holsinger captures that sentiment perfectly:

She feels something of that bafflement now, scanning over the front page of USA Today, the catastrophe already hazing into the past. She can see it, how all this plays out. The displaced less pioneers than parasites, too many new mouths to feed and needs to accommodate as a fracturing nation absorbs their numbers. Look at COVID. A million Americans die and things just move on. Same with the Lunas. Soon enough their shared displacement will be swallowed by indifference, as her home has been swallowed by the sea.

Yet it concludes with a more optimistic note, one I’m going to try and embrace:

With the world as it is, all of this, we have to be kind, and even when we’re too exhausted or broken to care we have to act like we do.

That’s something I need to keep in mind: I can be burnt crisp to the point of being immune to next crisis, but that doesn’t mean I can just stand by. Things need to be done, whether we want to or not. Not the cheeriest of thoughts, but something to remember on those days when the news cycle is more of a news bomb.

And yes, I recommend The Displacements. But maybe read it on a happier news day.

about my dog

I will not end on a downer, so here’s the ultimate upper: Bailey. Bailey’s not a fan of snow.

And she’s not a fan of dressing for the weather either. It’s a dog’s life being…well, a dog.

Until next time, make good choices!

jennifer

P.S. Are you local to the Boston area? If so, I’ll be doing a Galentine’s Day event Randy Susan Meyers, Crystal King, Dawn Tripp, and Whitney Scharer at Wellesley Books this Thursday. Come join us!

🗓 Feb 13 | 7PM | Wellesley Books 🎟 $5 Admission (or FREE with book purchase!) 📖 Chat, snacks, games & signings!

1. I started blogging in 2001 (so early that my first post called it a “weblog”), so the world was along the ride for miserable touching journey of pregnancy and early childhood. To protect their privacy, I called the boy “Doodles” and the girl “Pie.” Might as well resurface those names here.

2. Looking back at those early entries on my “weblog,” I wrote about the victims of 9/11, anthrax scares, and the plane crash in Queens (in which 260 people were killed, but it was hard to tell if folks were more upset about the human loss or terrified it was another terrorist attack). Again, each one overshadowing the one before it.