my half-finished kitchen

I’ve wanted to post some pictures of my newly remodeled kitchen for a long time. The only problem is that I haven’t actually finished remodeling the kitchen. I haven’t finished for a long, long time, and I was waiting to have it all done before I went and slapped pictures up on the Internet. After reading your post, Maria, about hobbies and motherhood, I decided to go ahead and slap.

Interior design is, perhaps, one of my hobbies. I am by no means trained. I am probably not even very good, by most people’s standards. I like reading design blogs and figuring out how to DIY things for little to no money. I am completely attracted to the dreaming part, the transformation part, which is why it is so fun to see an ugly, old space and imagine what it could become. When we were house hunting, I was drawn to the old, pieces-of-crap sort of houses with shag carpeting left over from the 1970s and walls needing to be torn out. Scott and I hardly ever agreed because he was drawn to the, you know, functional houses with cherry cabinets and granite countertops and new beige carpeting.

When we decided last summer to redo the kitchen, I got giddy. I got so bold that I even called actual people on the actual telephone to ask for quotes, which is one of those weird fears of mine that makes me procrastinate like nobody’s business. I read even more design blogs. I took field trips to Home Depot. I painted cabinets into the wee hours of the night (that is, after 10:30, when we usually go to bed).

And then, after the kitchen was in working order again, and after the designy part was over, I stopped.

Here’s the issue: I felt, and maybe feel, some sort of embarrassment that the kitchen isn’t finished. It feels like a metaphor for my life, and maybe it is. I go from one thing to the next, leaving unfinished activities in my wake. I pull out a pile of laundry to fold, get half of it done, am interrupted, and go on to take care of whatever new thing interrupted me. It drives my husband a little batty. He wonders why I can’t just finish what I started. It drives me batty, too.

I heard recently that the greatest enemy to creativity is interruption. That hit a nerve with me because motherhood seems to be one giant exercise in interruption. The kids interrupt my sleep, my thought processes, my sentences, my huge remodeling projects. Since I’ve come to believe that much of my identity is wrapped up in being a creative, my frustration with unfinished projects began to make more sense. It’s difficult to execute creative projects—either new kitchens or new essays and blog posts and books—when you’re being interrupted by people who need things.

Am I blaming my half-finished kitchen remodel on my children? Absolutely I am. Those kids are little joy-sucking amoebas that have turned me into a half-asser.

But then again.

I think this frustration comes back to the “balance myth,” as you have called it. That term doesn’t feel right to me because I believe that balance is achievable—not in each individual moment, as your point gets to, but in an overall sort of scheme of things. Rather, I’d call it the “You Can Have It All Myth.” I don’t believe you can have it all—not on a large scale and not on a small scale. That’s the nature of life, I think: that you make choices. You figure out what is important to you and when, and you give your life over to those things. If you didn’t have to choose, and if there was some way that you could have it all, I’d argue that life would start to seem… flat.

Sometimes, a kitchen remodel is important. It is important because it helps me to be creative. It helps me to remember my strengths and what it feels like to throw myself into a project. It’s fun. It gives me a happy space. It gives me much, much better countertops.

And then sometimes, a kitchen remodel isn’t the important thing anymore. It gets pushed aside for playing hide-and-seek or peekaboo. For eating too many cookies with my husband. For catching my breath on the sofa during naptime.

And I am pretty proud of my half-finished kitchen.

Before

Before

Before

Before

New open shelving. Counter-height bar area.

Pay no attention to the exposed, unpainted drywall. Pay attention instead to the sparkly over-sink chandelier and the fancy vent.

Again: green painter’s tape: not part of the design. Cool microwave shelf? Part of the design.

Ceiling is unfinished. Floors are unmopped. But don’t you love the stainless steel countertops? And the cool white Corian?

You can just see the giant pantry we added. It is a slightly different color than the dark green cabinets. It’s called “Extra Virgin Olive Oil.”

Old, thrifted filing cabinets. They’re like old card catalogs except more functional.

The stove. Not updated. I wanted to make use of our white appliances.

Another shot of the microwave shelf.

I had all that fruit in the fruit bowl already. Like a boss.

Chalkboard meal planner was a Christmas gift.

Craigslisted those bar stools. In love with them.

 

 

other people’s lives

Aw, Katie. I’m sorry your friend is moving. I know you guys are close. I’m sorry, too, that you don’t feel settled. Feeling settled seems like the apex of grown-up-hood to me. I feel like an adult, sure. I have these kids, see, and this minivan, and even a 401k, whatever that is, but I don’t feel like a grown-up because I don’t feel settled, either.

I don’t know if it was your last post that did it, or just a rough patch I’m struggling through, mood-wise, but I’ve been missing our old town in Kansas very much lately. Like, it’s sort of painful in my chest when I think about the good stuff we drove away from. I mean, we literally drove away, waving goodbye to our neighbors and crying, everyone in the minivan except the baby. And it sounds ridiculous to anyone, probably, that I’m sitting in the land of opportunity with the most perfect weather, missing a state that just got hit by a major snowstorm and a with a governor as reprehensible as Sam Brownback.

Go West, young man.

I’ve been thinking about how, as social creatures with so much cognitive ability, we relentlessly compare ourselves to others, against false interpretations and impossible standards. I think about it all the time, really, which is why I blog and write and read non-fiction. To set things straight, at least on my end.

Take, for example, the trip we just got back from just a few days ago. We went to Kauai, the island in Hawaii I’ve been wanted to visit for years. Living in California makes it easy to score cheap plane tickets to Hawaii. I was so excited about going that I ran through a quick blog post in my head about how to travel with kids and on a budget. I dubbed it, “traveling with kids on a budget”.

From the outside, it sounds like stuff to envy: we had the time, and were able to afford, to take our family of five to Hawaii on a bit of a whim. It was the trip of a lifetime to my younger self, a child who grew up hovering around poverty, an adolescent who had never traveled been beyond Arkansas.

Our children are great on planes. We know how to pack light. We stop at roadside stands to taste new fruit like rambutan and we’ll lay our heads to sleep wherever we’re told. We are adventurous. We snorkel. We are fortunate souls. I bet others looked on admirably.

But, still.

I’m ashamed to say it was difficult or that I didn’t have the Greatest Time Ever. But, Katie, it was difficult and I didn’t have the greatest time ever. It turns out that I’m no expert at traveling with kids, on a budget.

What does this have to do with your friend moving? I don’t really know, exactly. I guess what I’m trying to say is that everyone struggles. EV. RY. ONE. Even the ones who look like they’re having a fantastic new adventure.

(Well, maybe some people don’t struggle? But I don’t know anyone like that because I would dismiss them rather quickly.)

What I’m not sure about is that we have an inherent need for stability. Most of my friends seem to think we do. One friend in particular, the neighbor I moved away from, loves trees. Says we need to establish roots.

But another good friend told me, when I was debating our move: “Ships are safest in the harbor. But that’s not what they’re made for.”

I don’t know if we’re trees or ships, but my experience growing up was of moving to a new town at least every two years. This is what I know. It wasn’t until I graduated college that I lived in the same town for more than a couple years. You told me it was hard to make good friends as an adult, when you move somewhere new.  I wasn’t sure; I’d had practice as a child. How hard could it be? But the house Chris and I lived in with our children in Kansas, for five years, was the longest I’d lived anywhere. I took the friendships and family nearby for granted, despite my best efforts not to.

What matters most? Setting out for new horizons as a tight family on its own, to struggle and grow together? Or growing deeply-rooted traditions and relationships that wash up and down in your psyche, like the tide? Who can keep track of the years that go by?

Will I never feel settled because I never learned to in my formative years? Do I not feel settled because I haven’t found “the place,” like someone who’s fallen in love?  Am I actually settled wherever I am, as long as I have my husband and children near me?

I don’t know. At least not yet.

But you were right about the many complaints you voiced when I announced our move to California:

1. Costco is always crowded.
2. Traffic is always bad.
3. The palm trees aren’t native.
4. There are too many mountain ranges to bother remembering names.
5. It’s hard to find new friends.

And, Katie, it’s even harder to be away from old ones.

Home-Burglary Prevention Tips, or, When A**holes Steal Your Sh*t

We’ve had our home broken into twice now, once in Kansas and once in California, so I feel like kind of an expert at getting burglarized. For the record: Seriously? It sucks. The first time was in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. We were home, sleeping, with twin babies in the next bedroom. It was a much worse feeling that time, being home when it happened and thinking “what if” when we woke the next morning to an open back door, footprints outside the kids’ window, and mud sludged across our living room rug. The second time was recently, on a bright, sunny morning, after I took my youngest to her first day of pre-school and went to a yoga class to celebrate my new freedom. I was literally taking a moment of silence, asking that all beings everywhere know peace and compassion, while some stranger was ransacking my home.

Each time it happened, the perp came in through the back door. I’ve found that there are two ways people react to this information: those who ask “Was the door locked?” and those who realize this is the last fucking question you want to answer right now. We used to believe that not locking the door made some sort of vague statements about how we don’t live in fear, and trust in the goodness of mankind, and weren’t attached to our possessions. But after being robbed TWICE, now when I get home, I patiently unlock the locked door, wonder if anyone has been there, confirm that the TV is still in front of the couch and openly admit that 1) I live in fear, 2) I don’t trust anyone, and 3) I like my shit.

If you happen to know anyone who has a habit of burglarizing houses in order to make ends meet, will you kindly pass the word that some of us would prefer skipping over the trauma and just writing a check? If given the choice, I would rather just pay the monetary value of my new laptop that had 10,000 words of a novel on it (no, I didn’t back it up), more than what my husband paid for my wedding ring eight years ago, and even add a bonus not to have the contents of my recently-organized closet thrown all over the floor.

So, here is a list I’ve come up with to better prepare myself and our home for the next time it happens:

1) Ninjas.

We can’t afford real ninjas right now, but I think these guys will do the trick. Just look what one of them did to the little mermaids who tried to sneak in:

2) Organization. It really saves intruders from having to go through all your wedding memorabilia and family pictures if you keep your cash on the counter in an envelope clearly labeled “CASH.”

3) Guard Cat.

We had an 80-pound dog that was bred for hunting who slept through the entire first burglary, so this time, we immediately went out and got a cat. She may look sweet, but she’s never without her plastic arrows and eats BEES for breakfast without flinching. (Well, she flinches a little, but, I mean, they’re bees. Have you even been stung by a bee? That shit hurts.)

4) Legal Drugs. Keep anti-anxiety meds in an old Flintstone Vitamin container. Thieves looking for pharmaceuticals will leave your Xanax, which you will need promptly after you realize you’ve been robbed. Just make sure your kids know you’ve switched them to Trader Joe’s brand.

5) Message. Nothing says “you’re not welcome here” like fresh flowers, soft lighting, and even a bottle of wine, should a criminal need to take the edge off his mission.

6) Community. Because it’s really embarrassing to meet new neighbors in the following circumstances: 1) Having one of them find you hysterical in the driveway, trying to decided if burglary counts as an emergency or if you are going to be bothering the 911-people, should you call, or 2) Accusing another, who just moved in down the street and happened to be unloading his electronics that morning, of stealing your stuff.

7) Trickery. To really throw off intruders, leave booby-traps like tap shoes filled with cherry tomatoes all over the house. They won’t know whether they’re coming or going. Get the kids involved in this one. After all, they don’t want to lose another Wii.

All sarcasm aside, after I’d had a Xanax and a margarita, it occurred to me that as long as people like me lived with the luxuries and comfort we take for granted, there will probably be others living in need and desperation. The world is filled with the haves and have-nots. It is never okay to violate someone’s privacy like this, but I’ve come to a place of forgiveness and letting go. The compassion I was seeking in yoga that morning left me for a while, but it’s working its way back. And, yes, I’m re-writing the damn novel AND backing it up.

P.S. Sorry about the extra cursing this time. If you think it’s bad, you should see the password on my replacement laptop.

it takes the whole damn tri-county area

When the twins were born, on Easter Sunday seven years ago, we lived next door to my mom. She lived in a tiny house and we lived in a bigger tiny house. They were both one-bedrooms, but ours had an extra little room that was big enough to be a grow room. We know this because when we moved in, the landlord’s only stipulation (no lease, no deposit, no last month’s rent) was that, if we grow pot, don’t do it in the upstairs room because “there’s a drainage problem up there.”

Anyway, no pot, but two babies. I would go over to my mom’s house in the middle of the night, after Chris and I had used up all we had of ourselves. (And that was even more than I would’ve ever estimated.) I’d be crying, delirious, and holding bottles of expressed milk. My mom would have already been over several times that day, but I begged her: “Please. Need. Sleep.”

She would grab her robe, slip on sandals, and come over to take a shift. She had recently quit her job, as a beloved teacher’s assistant at a juvenile detention center, in order to go back to grad school and write. She had the summer off that year, thank God, because I don’t know what we would have done otherwise. Chris’s parents lived 6 hours away and they drove up at least one weekend a month, but those middle-of-the-night breastmilk exchanges week after week may be a key reason I have enough mental capacity now to remember and write.

None of our friends had children yet, and though they showed up for us the best they knew how, there’s no way they could have known how desperate we were. We couldn’t afford help. I quit my job because it cost more to have two babies in childcare than I made in a day. Chris increased the hours he worked to pay for medical expenses (hospitals do not give “two for the price of one” discounts) and to save for a bigger place. Neighbors brought food. Family members sent money for diapers, cribs, strollers. A state agency donated car seats. We had love, support, resources. But it was so hard. We were scared and sad and confused because we weren’t supposed to be scared and sad and confused.

(Did I mention this pregnancy wasn’t planned?)

We have a different life now. I survived 18 months of debilitating depression, got help and began to recover. We learned that parenting is a slow, learned experience. We steadily squared away our finances and found a bigger house. I realized I wanted to focus on writing, went back to grad school myself, and after a few years of feeling like a failure as a mother, learned I’m not so bad, after all. Chris and I realized we had partners in one another that were worth fighting for. We had two little boys who blew our minds.

Our family of four healed together. We blossomed. We had another baby without the accompanying lifestyle transition. (I am here to say, going from 2 to 3 is NOTHING like going from 0 to 2.)

But then we moved across the country. Hello!

It’s been about a year since we gave up the luxury of having an established support system. Luckily, we live in a place where many of the families are in the same boat and become families to one another. But my mom just got here for the summer (she is back to teaching and has summers off) and the minute she walked through the door, a deep breath I realized I’d been holding for a year escaped my lungs. My shoulders relaxed by an inch. My stomach let go of knots I didn’t realize were there.

We always hear “it takes a village to raise a child,” but I’m not sure we really understand what that means. Young parents often feel isolated and lonely. This is why my generation writes so much about it: blogs, articles, books. We think the village must only consist of other people in the same stage as us: mothers of young children looking to each other for help and companionship. Young fathers doing the same. We make deals with one another: “I’ll pick up your Johnny from school if you can watch Suzy during my doctor’s appointment.”

But as much as I want to help my friends and siblings with young children and need the help reciprocated, I want to cry out at the constant negotiations. “WE ARE ALL SO TIRED! WE ALL NEED MORE!”

But the rest of the village doesn’t seem to want to hear it. (As an update in response to a comment below: sometimes it’s our own fault they don’t want to hear it…vicious cycles.)

I began a book by John Bowlby on attachment theory. (Not to be confused with William Sears, “attachment parenting,” and having a 3-year-old hanging off of his hot mom’s boob while they stare down the camera.)

In 1980 he said,

I want also to emphasize that, despite voices to the contrary, looking after babies and young children is no job for a single person. If the job is to be well done and the child’s principal caregiver is not to be too exhausted, the caregiver herself (or himself) needs a great deal of assistance…In most societies throughout the world these facts have been, and still are, taken for granted and the society organized accordingly. Paradoxically it has taken the world’s richest societies to ignore these basic facts. Man and woman power devoted to the production of material goods counts a plus in all our economic indices. Man and woman power devoted to the production of happy, healthy, and self-reliant children in their own homes does not count at all. We have created a topsy-turvy world.

I want to thank my village. You are helping our humble little family thrive and fully realize our existence. I am a better mother, as an individual and part of a unit, able to devote myself to the production of happy, healthy, and self-reliant children because of you. I promise to return the favor when I can.

To those of you still looking for your village: find it. Create one for yourselves, if you have to. There’s a chance they won’t come knocking down your door, but my hope for you is that they are out there. You need a great deal of assistance.

With love and compassion,

Maria