The Urbane Homestead

A match made in Bedlam

Some years ago, right around this time of year, Henry and I received a visit from a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. It was a learning experience. We consider ourselves to be reasonably savvy consumers, leaning more toward the suspicious than the gullible, and, moreover, frugal. And yet. In the course of the demonstration of the Kirby vacuum cleaner's virtues, we were enthralled by its high-tech Lexan parts, its versatile attachments, its sheer power. We were appalled by the exercise that proved beyond doubt the filthiness of our home. We were, in short, completely sucked in.

So did we sign on the dotted line? Indeed, we did. Did we write a check for a $1200 vacuum cleaner?  Yes, we did that, too. Did we sorely regret it not two minutes after the salesman left? Why, yes, how did you know?

In the end, we were able to return the vacuum cleaner, and got all our money back. What we learned from the experience was this:

1. We are not as smart as we think we are. We are just as likely to get caught up into the moment and to make bad purchasing decisions as your average consumer. As a result, we now make these decisions only with careful, private consultation with each other, with a sufficient time lag, so that starry-eyed feeling has been obscured somewhat.

2. We really needed a new vacuum cleaner. We ended up going out on Henry's birthday to buy a high-end Miele model from a local retailer, which pays its salespeople on salary rather than commission. We've been very happy with this vacuum cleaner; it picks up pet hair and all the minute detritus a home on a busy street collects.

The new vacuum cleaner is now six years old. So why do I bring all this up now? Because of the little warm dog that is snuggled up against me here on the sofa, and who is going back to her foster home this morning. Another lesson learned: do not go to an animal adoption event alone.

Bullwinkle

Oh, come on, what could be cuter than a puppy?

The dignity of the ancient world

Vicki has some lovely pictures today of Greek vases. The last two pictures are of a shallow, two-handled bowl, called a kylix and used for drinking wine. These were used at symposia—dinner parties, such as the one made famous by Plato—where participants would often get very drunk indeed, which is why many kylixes are decorated with pictures of grapes, wine gods, and people throwing up. A popular game was to set up a target in the dining room and guests would sling the dregs of their wine at it from their drinking cups, and as you might imagine many cups were smashed to smithereens by accidentally getting slung too.

That was one of my favorite things I learned as an undergraduate classics major. I could relate! Not about smashing the cups, of course, because for our Friday night "Keg Club" parties we usually used those red plastic cups which one still sees strewn about student housing neighborhoods on football Saturdays. But certainly the heavy drinking accompanied by hours and hours of twaddling on about deep and important issues regarding life. Are we born merely to suffer and die? That sort of thing.

I read recently about an entrepreneur who found herself dissatisfied with small talk at parties—all about weather, work, and children. She missed, she said, those in-depth discussions of her college days. So she created a conversation crutch—a set of cards, displayed in a fancy plastic box suitable for the living room, which contain a selection of "conversation starters" such as "What historical sporting event would you most like to witness?" Okay, first of all, she must have gone to a different college than I did, because we sure didn't talk about that kind of thing at Earlham, home of the Hustlin' Quakers. But secondly, get this—her conversation card business projects $5 million in sales for this year! That's a lot of money to replicate drunken post-adolescent blathering.

Maybe the conversation is better when the beer cost more than $5 a case.

It figures

I like pictures. I like blogs that are mostly pictures, like Vicki's. I like pictures that illustrate text—for example, I think they can add a lot to those tedious blogs where people just go on and on about how busy their boring lives are. (Ahem.) My own photography tends to suffer from entropy, so I have lots of pictures of the first day or two of most of my travels, and none thereafter. But sometimes I get an idea that is best expressed through photography, and then I'm willing to keep at it; Window on the Day is just such an idea. I've been thinking about doing that project for several years now, and when I happened to think of it first thing on New Year's morning, well, it was clearly kismet.

And now kismet is biting back. My shiny little camera, which has spent most of its time since arriving here at the house a year and a half ago relaxing in its special cushioned bag with the Indonesian embroidery, put up with daily use for exactly one week and then broke. Doesn't it just figure? Sheesh.

I will plod on with an older camera, an early digital model that could usefully double as a doorstop. But somehow the tiny new camera made me feel like I was stealing a quick bite of the morning light, while this one feels like when you take a bite of something that turns out to be much, much chewier than you expected, and just when you're realizing that it's going to take you several minutes to chew it up into something you can actually swallow, someone asks you a question and the entire table turns toward you with expectant faces, waiting for your answer.

How we suffer for our art.

It fills up those empty hours....

I've added another blog, Window on the Day. Here's the description:

Our house is tall and old. The third floor, which was once the attic, is now a bedroom, and framed in the two large windows to the west are the top branches of a maple tree, with nothing but sky beyond. This is the first thing I see when I wake up every morning. Every morning is different - the color, the textures, the light - and here I'm going to share a year of mornings with you.

Changes

Here's the nutshell: by September, my job at the Depression Center had become almost unbearably frustrating.  I was unable to accomplish anything, due to a total lack of organizational strategy, their refusal to give me a budget (I mean $0), and my own downward spiral of depression. Ironic, yes, I know. In October, my mother had heart valve surgery and my supervisor was reluctant to let me take vacation time to be at the hospital. The surgery was a success—when the surgeon came into the consultation room afterward, he said: "I did a great job!"—and the soaring relief I felt made me realize something. There are very stressful things I can't control, like the outcome of major surgery on a loved one, or the culture of an organization I work for. And there are stressful things I have some control over, like whether or not I get another job. And then there are stressful things I have total control over, like myself and my own behavior. So I quit.

Of course, if it were that simple, I would have quit a long time ago. I'm lucky, though—very lucky—because I'm married to someone who has also had many, many rotten jobs, and has now, for the first time, a job he likes everything about. And I'm also close enough to the end of this MBA program that I have the skills to create my own job, if I want, and make it pay. I could, of course, have created my own job in the past, but there isn't a lot of demand for Hittite translation services.

I love being on my own. I like the flexibility, and the variety, and the challenge. I like being at home when I want to and being the art class parent at Joe's school and I like going to networking events and talking to people. I like thinking about all the different things I can make happen and then choosing which one to do. And I like sitting here at our old dining room table in the basement next to the washer and dryer and the bicycles about a million times more than sitting in an Aeron chair in front of a Steelcase executive office configuration and being miserable. For one thing, it's a lot easier to keep up with the laundry.

Here I am

I know, I've been gone forever. The irony of it is, that I have an absolute ton of things to blog about. Let's just think of this little post as a toe in the water, with total immersion to come.

When in Rome

My nephew Sam caught a salmon with his bare hands while we were in Skagway, Alaska! Pictures at The Plot Thickens, my sister's blog.

Second grade!

The sidewalks in our neighborhood were crowded this morning with kids in brand new backpacks and parents in tow (or parents with kids in tow, in the case of the kindergarteners). Last Friday, the air felt heavy and languid, the streets were hot and still—today's weather is exactly the same, and yet the air was buzzing with anticipation, and the whole neighborhood seemed fresh and new. Kids were bouncing with excitement, despite the fact that every single child I've talked to in the last two weeks has said they were NOT looking forward to school.

Henry and Bruce and I walked Joe to his first day of second grade. He held our hands all the way there, and didn't object to my coming into the class with him to meet his teacher and see which of his friends are his classmates this year. Every time I hold his hand now, I hang on tight, knowing that these days are numbered; it can't be more than a matter of months until he refuses to let us walk around in public like that. And when I left his class, I gave him a big hug and many kisses, just in case he decides tomorrow that he's too old for that sort of thing.

Ahoy, mateys!

For years, my parents have planned to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary by taking the entire family, however many there were of us by then, on an Alaska cruise. That particular anniversary has not yet arrived, but all thirteen of us plus one will be leaving next Sunday. My parents were worried that disaster might strike before the actual fiftieth, so we're seizing the day and striking while the iron is hot.

(Family inventory: older adults (parents); self, adult siblings, and spouses for each (total: 6); girls aged 10, 5, and 1; boys ages 9 and 7; and young German woman, former au pair now part of family.)

Coincidentally, Vicki over at I Love Orange and her entire extended family have just gone on nearly the same cruise, on the occasion of her mother's 80th birthday. She's doing a very wonderful job of documenting the whole trip right now. It's been helpful for me, because I can show Joe a little of what to expect. This is good because we discovered some time ago that the boys were very concerned about the safety of the cruise. A little library research proved that nearly all media—books, films, video games—with any kind of nautical theme (all of which seem aimed at boys) are all about disaster: pirates, terrorists, shipwreck. Yikes! No wonder they were worried. We tried to reassure them that the ship was very large and not likely to sink. "The Titanic was a big ship," they said, stony-faced. I think they still don't quite believe our claims that the trip will be more about buffets and shuffleboard than cutlasses, pieces of eight, and being stranded on a desert island.

Speaking of the Titanic, there will be two formal nights that we will be required to dress for. This is not really a problem for Henry and me, since we do go to the opera regularly and  we have decent-looking sparkly clothes. (I did consider seeing if I could find matching powder blue outfits; a tuxedo with a ruffly shirt and patent leather shoes for him, a bride's maid nightmare for me.... but this seemed not sufficiently appreciative or respectful to the givers of the gift of the trip.) My sister, however, was anxious, so yesterday some of us did some Rodeo-Drive-style boutique shopping at Value World (formerly Value Village, but they expanded. Why think small? Think Napoleonic!) I went into thrift-shop mode, scanning each rack quickly for high-end fabrics  and cuts and pulling out everything that might be worth a second look. Emma, who's 10, greeted everything with, "That's sooo cute! I love it! Can I get it?" Nadin, who's six feet tall and slim, and would look fabulous in just about anything but would rather wear jeans and a t-shirt, looked through a few racks in a desultory way and rejected everything I suggested (including, sadly, a deep purple silk shirt with pin tucks and flowing sleeves). Karen found a velvet shirt and some embroidered silk pants almost immediately, and spent the rest of the time we were there saying "I'm done shopping! Let's go now!"

I left Value World empty-handed, but that's okay. I've already got my tiara all packed.