..And seven months later, I at last figure out how to get this image of two conjoined Spongebob kiddie bath towels up on my blog. God, I really fold easily. But not as easily --or as satisfying-- as these towels fold. Here’s the big reveal, Flap nation: I feel like I’m finally starting to get on top of things (things=terrifying piles of laundry, sacks of junk I’ve painfully sorted and have destined for the dump, my friend’s kids, the thrift store, only to have my kids discover the contents and blow it all over the house AGAIN. Talk about recycling. OK, Let’s not.)
Anyway, this image is the poster child of my insanity about having a clean house. Every time I freak out and think I can’t handle my filthy house for another second I always start the road to a neater house by folding these two towels to make this goofy face complete. There. That’s better. The house will be organized in no time now!
That's how bad it is: I’m so awful at housecleaning that I actually feel like I’m well on my way once I get those towels folded. Yeah, go ahead, put me in your prayer chain, dedicate your next yoga practice to me, run it past your analyst and let me know what they think. It can’t hurt.
No wonder I can’t get this place clean, if my standard for turning this crap-barge around is beginning with matching up two novelty towels “Mad Magazine style”, was there ever any hope?
Ah, the eternal refrain. No, not hope, but my desolate, shit hole of a house. Will it ever end? Actually it will, at least at this current location. I can’t say it’s the main reason, but I’ve often joked this house is so disgusting that I would rather just start over and buy a new one. And that’s what we did. Our new pile started out as a chicken coop and used to belong to a New York Harbor Tug Boat Captain and it looks like the set of Wes Anderson movie that never got made. Gene Hackman would make a great ex-tug boat captain living in land-locked Vermont, right? The hall closet games include Columbo and The Godfather.
Who the hell would play a "The Godfather" board game? “You iced a member of a rival Family, move three spaces.” “If you draw this card, you can help move the Godfather from his hospital room at any time and earn 50 pts.” I requested that the seller leave those games EXACTLY WHERE THEY ARE. Gonna play me some Godfather and Columbo in m’new chicken coop house!
But we haven’t moved in yet, so let’s return to our sub-cellars of crazy tour at the current Flap locale. Now that you've seen the towel rack, let us move to exhibit B, which, if you are up on your anglophile detritus you will correctly ID as a toast rack.
A ratty little toast rack I acquired possibly at our registry, (how did that get past Flap dude, though?) possibly at that pretty big thrift store at 19th and Mission when we lived in The City. I have lugged this pathetic toast rack around for years and years. What kind of world did I think I would be living in where a toast rack would be required? Yet I still cling to all that I believe a toast rack can offer Or rather, the kind of life I suspect I will have for me and my family if I was of the toast racking utilizing sort.
What’s a toast rack for, you wonder. Well, bread gets toasted, cut in half, (diagonally) and the pieces go in the toast rack. Then your butler puts the toast-laden rack, the London Times Literary supplement, a pot of coffee and a fresh daffodil in a Wedgwood vase and brings it to you in your study. You eat the toast, drink the coffee, grab your bowler and bumpershoot
and scoot off to an afternoon at the Reading Room at the British Museum or the Bodleian,
depending.
You see, I have a theory that all this housework we are drowning in can be vanished away if we dial it back to the toast-rack using days. A time when a breakfast table was set the night before. And the children were tucked in bed with hot milk and a biscuit. After reading a chapter of
The Secret Garden to them. Just like you can reconstruct a skeleton with a chip of a femur bone, I suspect that if I just start with one thing--in this case the fucking toast rack--we will be on a road to security, sanity, and sanitary conditions.
And I know that I am referencing a world where maybe this pleasant life was only possible because the household ran on a set schedule. And it was enforced by a Head housekeeper, valet, butler, stable boy, and chauffeur. And I know that all those positions don’t exist anymore. Well, they do, but it’s all rolled into one.
And I know it’s me.
And now we know the feed-back loop is complete, and this rant will never, never end.
Happy New Year.
