Suburban Island

Betting on Blue

Who doesn’t like blue? It’s the color of the sky on a summer’s day. It’s the color of a perfect little nest of robin’s eggs in the spring. It’s the color of the ocean in a lovely daydream. It’s the color of a little Tiffany’s box on particularly fortunate days. It’s the color of…

What’s this?

Here’s something I didn’t notice before.

It seems that blue is also the color of the toilet that my neighbor has decided to rip out of one of their bathrooms and lay half in and half out of a big black garbage bag and place along the side of their house that faces ours. This is not a pretty picture. Not at all.

I guess that blue is also the color of a common toilet bowl. Toilet bowl blue resting placidly in a suburban green yard. That just stinks.

Don’t you just love neighbors?

No matter. I got on a plane to Atlanta for business this week. Up into the big blue sky and back down again. Things would get better with the color blue once in Atlanta.

I will not let the blue toilet that is almost in my yard ruin my love of blue. No, not I. I still like the color blue. I do. I like it very much. Even if there is a big blue toilet suddenly perched right on the edge of my Suburban Island like a misplaced half bath.

Transplanted for a few days to the great city of Atlanta, I decided to give blue another chance. I went to the Atlanta office in one of my best suits – Tiffany blue - and I wore the prettiest blue and cream spectator pumps you have probably every seen. I know you would tell me so if you saw them. I am sure you would say that I was a vision in blue if only you spied me walking around Atlanta trying to find a Starbucks or Caribou. I was feeling pretty good about myself and the color blue (after I found my coffee). I knew blue wouldn’t let me down in the end. That toilet bowl thing was just a fluke.

Upon arriving at the office, a colleague eyed me up and down in my blue suit and gleefully told me she had one just like it. Imagine that. She said – Yes, I think it’s the exact same suit.

Super.

I had a feeling that this conversation was going to go downhill fast. I am already getting annoyed and she has barely even begun to embellish her saga of the same suit. Let me tell you that this is a woman that has quite different taste in attire than I and just about everything else in life as well. I find it improbable that she has the exact same suit but I would be willing to accept her thesis if only she would stop talking about the blue suits. Yet, she goes on.

Yes, I’m really sure I have that suit. I got it on sale. I got it for $45 on sale. Yeah, $45 on sale.

Don’t you just love co-workers?

I assured her that I did not get my suit on sale for $45. She looked at me in my blue suit and said – oh, yeah, well the buttons are different on mine. Maybe it’s not the same.

You bet your damn buttons it’s not the same suit, babe. Blue didn't feel the same for the rest of the day.

Today, was another chance for the color blue to prevail. I am finally done with work and took a day off to hang around with my best pal who lives outside Atlanta. We decide to go to the new Aquarium. When we arrive, we park on the blue level - Level 3 – and we both note that the posts are painted Tiffany blue. Inside we see a glorious array of fish and plenty of blue water. It is true that a large Beluga Whale we were admiring did take a major dump in his perfect blue tank - talk about a big blue toilet - while were were just standing there minding our own business. Aside from that, however, so far, so good. We walk outside and the sky is bright blue and full of Atlanta sunshine. The color blue made it though the day without further incident.

Looks like three times is the charm. Blue is back in my good graces. I knew things were going to be okay again between me and the color blue.

And the toilet bowl? Well, I understand that it's still there but, on the bright side, at least it is a particularly lovely shade of blue.

The Chore-Maker

Is there a kind of helpfulness that is really just a way to get us to do stuff that other people think we should do?

I am beginning to suspect that perhaps there is.

Today my son and I went to see a movie and when we came home my husband had taken all my shoes and put them out in a bin in the garage. Now, I ask you - what woman wants her shoes in an open bin in the garage? There are sure to be a few silverfish in the garage. There are most likely crickets in the garage. There are probably a few spiders in the garage. There may be other yet unaccounted for things too - things that might scamper unbidden into our garage as the weather cools - like mice - that I'd rather not know about. I mean it's a garage and a woman's shoes - even if they are stinky and all tossed under the kitchen table - should not be removed to a place that she is not going to willing proceed each morning in bare feet in her quest for the appropriate footware in which she will march forth to meet her day. Furthermore, the idea of something jumping out of that bin at me as I paw through my shoe selection some random a.m. is enough to give me nightmares for weeks.

From his angle, he is just taking care of something that needed doing. He doesn't like shoes piled up under the dining room table. He thinks it is unsanitary and an unsightly mess. He's right - I'm sure - but if he knew how much some of these shoes cost I am confident he wouldn't be tossing them in the garage in an uncovered bin. I think I'll leave him in the dark about that part. I did explain to him about the general garage concerns, however. The result isn't really that satisfactory from my perspective.

He brought the bin inside.

Great.

It's down in my family room now. Just what I need. One more box of stuff in my family room that needs to organized somehow. That's why the damn shoes were under the kitchen table where at least they were out of sight yet still handy in the mornings. I know it's not ideal but our house isn't huge and storage space is at a minimum. And...I really do like shoes. Maybe a little too much.

I know I should be appreciative that my man is helping out around the house but it seems to me that what he is really doing is cutting into line with his list of chores for me - chores that really were much lower down on my own list - and forcing me to put these pre-started chores at the top of my list so that I have to do them ahead of what I really wanted to get done. Hey buddy - that's a form of line jumping.

For instance, last week - on Tuesday - he decided to help me out by scraping off the gem gel panorama that I had put on one of the set of big family room windows a couple years ago. They had slowly begun to look a bit the worse for wear - it's true. Essentially, some of them had started to melt due to the intense heat of the sun beating on those front windows. It didn't look very attractive anymore and I was working on getting the windows gem gel free again. I had already done the other set of windows last weekend. It took me hours. He did not help. Frankly, I was not ready to tackle the others for a while. It was not on my list this weekend.

Or so I thought.

I was wrong.

My husband decided to help me out by starting the other windows without asking me how that would work out from my side. Now there are no gem gels but it looks worse than with the gem gels in place. He did the simple part of the scraping (peeling off the big gem gels with a paint scraper) that I actually kind of like doing but not the real hard scraping (taking all the insets out of the window so that you can actually scrape off the really melted goo and then scrub down the glass inside and out) that I really hate doing. So now the project is started but I don't have time (or desire) to finish it. I guess he is being helpful but I didn't ask him to help because I really wasn't going to do that project for awhile. Now I have to do the project. I told him I would not be able to work on it for awhile and asked him if he could finish the effort he began. He told me - no.

Why do I feel like I have just been scammed? Now I am saddled with a chore I was trying to elude. Not being able to duck a chore really makes me grouchy and also reluctant to cooperate with the chore-maker.

I did not do the chores he whipped up for me this weekend. That will teach him. Tomorrow morning when I am looking out of that sticky window trying to find my shoes in a big plastic bin without any hope of success I will realize that neither one of us has won the battle. That'll teach me too.

The Driveway

When I was a kid, there was a neighbor who used to sit, every evening in the summer, on his driveway watching the world go by and smoking his cigarettes. They were menthol cigarettes. He did this every night. He sat there in a white metal chair at a white metal table – quiet by himself - smoking his cigarettes and perhaps pondering life. I think he drank coffee out there too. Maybe it was a beer but I don’t think so – I think it was mugs of coffee. As a kid I am sure that I thought this was all a bit strange because my parents seemed to think this behavior was a bit out of place – not creepy weird but kind of trailer park. If it was trailer park then trailer park definitely got it right but I didn't realize that yet. You really didn’t see anyone else sitting on their driveway smoking cigarettes at the time. It was in the day before decks were everywhere. Maybe there were patios here and there. There were tiny front porches – not made for chairs or lounging. The top end of the driveway was all the man had. At the time I couldn’t understand it but now I do.

That’s because I find myself regularly sitting at the top of my own driveway watching the world go by - and maybe sometimes pondering life. I have taken a certain pleasure in this summer evening activity for the last few summers. I must say that sitting at the top of the driveway listening to the last birdsong for the day, the humming of the insects, and the small activities of the neighborhood is one of the best things I do in the summer to wind down in the evening. I think my parents would be slightly appalled. Somehow I find that much more amusing than a grown up woman should.

So far tonight, the neighborhood has been hopping - two dog-walkers have passed by, one neighbor has been out grilling, the family next door has been doing a massive cleaning out of all their cars, a soccer match has taken place between dad and son across the street, and some bike riding has occurred. All around the birds are chirping and soaring across the sky, a train whistle sounds in the dusk, the insect noises are starting to ramp up, there’s a nice breeze, all the crepe myrtles are in bloom, and although I am not smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee, I am burning a big candle to drive away pesky bugs and swigging down a big iced tea. The grill is cooling down beside me. I feel relaxed and in this moment I realize very clearly that we don’t have to be fancy to be happy.

I like sitting on the driveway just like that neighbor of old did. I don’t care what people think just like he probably didn't. It’s just convenient, kind of peaceful, and appeals to my longing for simplicity. Of course, I’m saying this as I listen to my new At The Beach playlist I just put together on iTunes while I sit in front of my handy-dandy laptop composing this post. Maybe this is the new simple life – a laptop, a little music, a grill, a bug candle, a nice cold drink, and a table and chair at the top of the driveway.

I don't know for sure but it works for me.

CD Chaos Contained

Back at home this past weekend after my trip to St. Louis, I embarked on a project of mammoth proportions. The task was inspired by my 20 year-old daughter’s statement that she was going to organize her CDs. This has been one of those overwhelming tasks that has been cluttering up my personal To Do list for years now as well. How was she going to do it? I was intrigued.

She presented the concept to me cautiously – assuming I would find her solution a bit shocking. She knows her mother pretty well. I get distressed by something as simple as people putting soda cans on magazines in our house – kids, mama don’t like no rings on her usually yet-to-be-read magazines, covers of books that get bent from careless handling also disturb me, as do DVDs not in their cases on top of dressers and bookcase shelves.

She explained to me that she was taking all her CDs out of those plastic cases and putting them in nice compact CD storage binders. She waited for my reaction but I was thinking. Thinking a revolutionary thought… Could I do this too? It was a little daring. A little cutting edge. And it required that I let go of my compulsion to retain all media as close to their original state as possible. Could I toss away my tradition stance towards media and their containers? Could I actually bring myself to take all the CDs in the house and put them into a couple nice compact CD cases? Could I really throw away all those stacks of plastic cases without feeling the compulsion to fish them out of the trash and reassemble them in a fit of CD plastic case remorse?

Yes. I could. I had to. It was them or continued crystalline chaos – the shiny plastic cases had to go.

A year ago, I would have been resistant to this idea. I would have wanted to retain these disks in their original state come hell or high water. However, enough is enough. I had too many CDs floating around this house of ours – living room, bedrooms, office, family room, and cars. They turned up everywhere. There was no central repository of the CD in my household and there was not enough consecutive space to order them logically even if we could gather them all together. Looking for a particular CD was often just not worth the bother.

Worse than their uncontrolled proliferation was the fact that the cases and CDs sometimes parted ways never to join up again. I have uploaded many of my CDs to iTunes but there were many more that still remained adrift in our home – just longing to be played and yet denied the simple dignity of residence on my iTunes library. Now they will have hope again.

As will I.

By the end of the weekend it was done. My husband was a little surprised but happy too that we finally had created order out of chaos somewhere within our home.

Let the music play. Now that I can find it.

The Tidy Battle

I am trying to slowly clean up around here. I want to get organized. Clear out. Create a peaceful, orderly, and tidy home. Unfortunately, everyone is conspiring again me in this effort. Sadly, I believe that I might be part of the gang of conspirators as well. I can disorder the orderly home just as well as the next person – maybe better. Here’s the order buster line-up in my home:

Son – at 16 he can make a mess but never look behind him to see what he hath wrought. Soda cans, socks, juice boxes, dishes crying for the dishwasher, and assorted teen son effluvia seems to trail behind him like one of those jet trails that stretch out for miles behind a fighter plane.

Daughter – at 19 she needs to put the things she is setting aside for her eventual flight from the nest somewhere. A portion of our living room seems to be a handy location for her to “store” such treasures. There sits the suitcase she took to LA several weeks ago as well – half unpacked but not yet gone. She may as well just clog up the whole area with her personal possessions. She is not the sort of person to do anything by halves.

Husband – he’s no cheerleader. He doesn't see the point in being cheerful when he can have so much more fun basking in the grey rays of the pessimistic. His approach in this situation is two-fold and satisfies his need to focus on the negative no matter what the outcome. If things aren’t in order he will revel in it and pointing out the sorry state of the household. If you attempt to put them in order he will deem it a hopeless attempt never to be met with even a fleeting success. It is another twist on his famous patented eternal loop of indecision and I find just as exhausting and defeating as the eternal loop. I call this move The Well of Dire Predictions. I believe its patented as well. It's a sort of business method.

Me – I am innately inclined to a certain level of disorder. I like to call it creative chaos. You don't need to tell me that I'm kidding myself - I already know that.

Today I was working on cleaning the dining room table off so I can showcase my Mother’s Day present. It is this beautiful STICKS lazy susan.

I have been tossing things off the table all week long. It’s the baby steps method. It takes a while but it works. This afternoon I struggled with another baby step - how to convince my husband to find a new home for the stuff he takes in and out of the house with him everyday. I can't believe how much stuff this guy can carry around in his pockets. His place of choice to load and unload his paraphernalia – the dining room table. Phones, pagers, and so much more of his stuff is scattered across the front of the table. It's not very decorative. I try the brainstorming approach with him – why don’t we come up with a cool idea together of how we can stash your things so that we can clear this table off. At first he comes up with some ideas – a bowl for instance. Okay.

Then it happens – he sits down on the sofa and says – What about all that stuff at the back of the table? I say – I’m getting to it (it’s camouflaged behind a big flower arrangement and a set of large candlesticks). He says – What about downstairs in the family room, when are you going to get that cleaned out? I say – I’ve been working on that. He says – You’ll never get it done.

We're in The Well of Dire Predictions. Now, he’s happy. Now, I’m not. That's the thing about The Well of Dire Predictions - no one seems to enjoy it except the patent-holder of the Well.

Will I succeed in overcoming all and create a tidy household at last and pull myself and our household up out of The Well of Dire Predictions?

Only time will tell.

But I'm hopeful since I hold the patent for the Suburban Strategy method.