LifePundit

Domestic Rule #9: Buy Yourself Flowers

Do you like flowers? Is anyone giving them to you?

Have you tried dropping hints? Yes, never mind. I know you have. Somehow dropped hints seem to hit the floor rather than the intended hearer's ears. I've been expecting to receive flowers for a very long time now. And guess what. I finally figured out how to get them!

I buy them for myself. Here are the lilies I got for $3.50 at the grocery store. They weren't open when I got them, so it's been a real treat to watch them bloom. They smell good, too.

I didn't buy myself flowers for the longest time because it seemed to me like a certain party who will remain nameless should KNOW I want flowers. This would not be a hard thing to know, since I believe I've mentioned it a time or 400. He thinks it would be wonderful for me to have flowers. It just seldom occurs to him (though I have received flowers on seven occasions over the past  23 years).  He doesn't think like that. In fact, I had to point out the pictured flowers to him as he was standing beside them. Flowers are not on his radar in any sense. He did admit that they were pretty once I slapped him with them.

It's a shame, but I felt I needed justification for buying them for myself. That justification came when I quit buying wine. Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, so I have nothing against wine. It just quit agreeing with me. If I drink wine, my heart pounds. It's scary. A cardiologist I saw said, "That happens to some people." He didn't seem concerned, and the solution is very easy: don't drink wine.

As much as I love wine and how witty and beautiful it makes me, I had to give it up. What it does to my heart now is No Fun, so I don't drink. I'm no longer witty and beautiful, and sad to say, neither is anyone else.

But if I could buy wine, which was bad for my heart, then why not choose instead to buy flowers, which are good for my heart?

I've even found a store where I can get a dozen gorgeous roses for $6.99. I am never without flowers, even if no one sees them but me. And Lily. She helps me pick them out if she's with me.

Because I still have some kind of guilt thing going with the flowers, I always buy Paul some nice ale at the same time. Flowers and ale. Domestic bliss.

Domestic Rule #8: If You Hear Somebody Received Bad News, Don't Leave a Voicemail Because You'll Only Booger it Up

You can profit from my experience. I learned that someone I really care about has received some bad news concerning a family member's health. In my distress, I called her. She wasn't home but her answering machine picked up.

Note to self: Next time, HANG UP.

Or maybe have this script ready: Hey, this is Anne. I just heard your news and wanted you to know I'm thinking about you and praying for you. Call me if it suits you or if I can do anything. You're not in this by yourself.

Did I have that script ready? NO. In my distress, I waxed poetic, or not so poetically, about who knows what but I don't think it was very comforting because I believe some of the words that came spilling out of my mouth were "there are miracles, not that you need one."

So well intentioned. So poorly executed. Maybe by divine intervention she'll hear what I was trying to say, because I sure wish there was a way to erase the tangled web I did leave.

Maybe one of her kids will listen to it and forget to tell anyone they've got a message. Yet another thing kids are good for.  Erase, erase, erase.

Domestic Rule #7: Use Home Improvement Projects to Procrastinate on Worse Jobs

There might be no worse job than sewing valences, but when you're looking for a reason to procrastinate, getting around to a project you've already procrastinated on for a few months or years will do just the trick.

Say if you have company coming and need to do a crisis cleaning of your house, it's probably a good time to defrost your freezer or catch up on your correspondence.

Or, if you have a big project  due at work, it's probably a good time to make the valences you've been meaning to make for the past 12 years. You know that the deadline pressure you'll get from this procrastination will make your work on the big project the most outstanding thing you've ever done.

At least since the last time you did some major improvisational procrastination and finished making the pillows for your bedroom.

There's no other way I'd ever get projects done around here except for as procrastination material for much worse chores. (Actually, they don't have to be worse chores. They simply have to be DUE.)

Christmas Resolutions

I feel the dread of Christmas future. Christmas 2007. If I'm going to survive, I need to make some Christmas Resolutions.

We all know about New Year's Resolutions. We don't think about Christmas Resolutions. I think if we made Christmas Resolutions, we'd have a lot easier time come New Year's.

For one thing, we'd have fewer pounds to lose and fewer money troubles.

I realized the other night that I wish that I could just skip Christmas. It used to be my most joyous time of the year. Now I fake it for Lily's sake. I need to rediscover the joy of Christmas, because the celebration of my Savior's birth ought not to be something I dread.

This isn't going to be an essay about what's gone wrong with Christmas. There are things that can't be helped -- such as my parents' sad state of health or the pain of my mother-in-law's demands and manipulations (Boundaries, boundaries). But there are things that can be helped -- such as my attitude and my ability to say "yes" or "no."

I'm sure you have your own list of how you'd like Christmas to be different. Guess what! It can be. It's a decision you're allowed to make.

So I'm going to write down my Christmas Resolutions and carry them with me. I'm going to re-read them before I go into a store or any other stressful situation. (Yes, I find Christmas shopping stressful.) Why don't you do the same?

Here's my start:

1. Hallelujah! Jesus is born. You don't need to buy a thing.
2. Who are you trying to please? Remember that while Martha was busy cooking and fussing over the meal, Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet, enjoying the presence of her Lord. Be Mary, not Martha.
3. Food is available all year round. You can probably go to a Christmas party and have about three special things and be just as happy as if you ate the whole round of melted Brie with yummy stuff on top. Eat something healthy before you go to parties so that you won't be hungry and out of control. Find ways to celebrate other than food and drink. Like smiling and listening to carols and catching up with friends.
4. Cook everybody's favorite food for Christmas dinner. If it doesn't look like Martha Stewart's table, that's fine. Spaghetti goes fine with lobster and lobster goes fine with sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Honest.
5. Give what you can to the people who need it. I think I'll find an angel tree and buy some gifts for children of prisoners.
6. Don't spend more than you can, but don't be a scrooge. Have fun picking out toys for the children in your life. If you get lost and realize you're veering into buying some junky toy because you don't know what to do, get a gift certificate. Personal gifts are better but not worth going crazy over.
7. Send cards to friends you seldom see. It's a good time to stay in touch. If I see you on a semi-regular basis, don't look for a card from me.
8. Lower your expectations for yourself and everybody else.
9. Put on Christmas carols, get out the hot chocolate and have a fun time with your family decorating the house. This is not a contest. Do as much or as little as you want. Take pictures and look at old albums.
10. Go to church every Sunday. Keep focused on the reason.
11. Do something special for people who are alone or have suffered a loss in the past year.
    
12. Catch your child's cheer and spread it to your spouse.
13. If you have difficult people forced on you, welcome them but don't let them disturb your peace and joy. Deflect, set boundaries and take a walk if you need to. In fact, it is a possibility that extremely difficult people can celebrate elsewhere. If you're not going to make them happy and they contribute nothing (or worse) to the household's joy, what's the point? Remember that that is always an option. Being a Christian does not mean you are a doormat. Especially if you've been a doormat for a long, long, long time and you are still not pleasing them and they are still not contributing joy.

I'm sorry about that last one. I'm going to think and pray on that some more, and if Paul really wants to have these people, we'll have them. Playing Christmas carols really loudly ought to solve a lot of the problems. The dog may need a lot of walking, too. That really is okay. It's not up to me to make unhappy people happy. In fact, I don't have the ability. I may just leave and go to the nursing home and be with people I really can make happy. Truly, deeply happy. Just by showing up with a smile.

This list is off the top of my head. What's on your list? I'll bet you have ideas I can use.

Reasons to Like Halloween

Reasons to Like Halloween:

1. When people come to your house, they're not coming inside (no crisis cleaning needed).
2. Nobody is expecting you to cook a meal.
3. If your in-laws insist on coming over, you can give them a bowl of candy and leave them in the house while you go somewhere, anywhere. Perhaps a goblin will get your MIL.
4. If you have to a wear a costume, you can choose a baggy one and wear a mask if you don't feel like putting it all together. If you've just lost weight and look great, you can dress trashily to show it off and nobody but me will say nasty things about you. I'll talk bad about you from under my Halloween Burqua, but people in burquas are invisible so nobody will pay any attention to me.
5. You can be stupid and buy good chocolate candy, which will call your name all week long and you'll end up having to buy more if you give into temptation (plus you'll have to Trick or Treat in your Burqua), or you can buy non-chocolate candy and wonder why you're eating it when you really don't even like Sour Patch Kids candy all that much. I should've bought candy corn. I will not touch that stuff.
6. Your cobwebs will look like Martha Stewart Halloween decor.
7. Anything broken or needing repair on your porch or house will seem like part of your Halloween scenery.
8. You don't have to watch your husband wrestle the pumpkin into a stand, then realize it is too tall and scrapes the paint off of the ceiling. There's no reason to curse over a pumpkin. (Why I caved in and we have an artificial Christmas tree.)
9. You don't have to send Halloween cards, and if you did, please don't do it again.
10. You don't have to buy anyone presents.
11. The only thing you need to feel guilty over is whatever you ate.
12. Maybe a goblin really will take your MIL.

Coming Tuesday or Wednesday:  The Maco Light.  A real ghost story, and I have seen the lights. Scared me to my tingly toes.

Domestic Rule #6: How to Get Sent on a Cruise

You and your child can get sent on a cruise, but it will require some scheming. I accomplished this by accident, and we had a fabulous time on a week-long cruise through the Caribbean.

First, you have to get your husband to take a business trip that sounds like a vacation during a normal vacation season. One summer Paul went to Hawaii and swears it was Not for Fun. (He did go surfing, however.) Poor Lily and I stayed home and went to Folly Beach, S.C., where a dear and fun friend lives. We were all hunkey dorey with this until....

The "What I Did Last Summer" essay. Imagine Paul's shame when he was standing in the hall at school on Open House night alongside the other parents reading the essays posted on the wall. Here's how Lily's started:

What I did last summer. Last summer Daddy went to Hawaii and Mom and I went to Folly Beach....

Now, Folly Beach is a great place and I would love to live there. This is where DuBose Heyward wrote the book Porgy and Bess and I think that George Gershwin spent some time there writing the opera.To find out more, (which I doubt you want to), read: Folly Beach: A Brief History However, Folly Beach has a checkered past.

From the book: Ask anyone from Charleston or the surrounding areas, What do you remember about Folly Beach? and you will get a remarkable array of answers. For some, Folly Beach is a memory of youthful days of freedom; for others it is where the avant-garde, bohemian types lived. Having hosted plague victims, playwrights and maybe a pirate or two, Folly has had a checkered past.

I have probably six friends who have gone to Folly Beach to live out various follies. The name fits. And folks around here know that....

So, standing in the hallway reading the essays, shoulder to shoulder with Paul, they're thinking: what's going on with Lily's Dad? He goes to Hawaii -- and the poor child and her mom go to Folly Beach? There's something up with this family, and it's not good.

When Spring Break rolled around Paul needed to travel to Switzerland. We almost went with him, but it got very complicated. So, he booked us on a cruise.

What I did on Spring Break: Daddy went to Switzerland, and Mom and I had the time of our lives cruising the Caribbean.

To make this plan a success, you may have to tinker with the school calendar as well as your husband's travel schedule. It is well worth the trouble.

Domestic Rule #5: Complain to the manufacturer

I try not to complain, but I'm so very good at complaining that it seems a shame not to keep doing something at which I so obviously excel.

However, most complaints merely make you a weary companion for your soon-to-be-former friends. A little complaining goes a long way.

So, complain wisely. Complain about legitimate things to the people who can do something about it.

I'm talking about contacting the manufacturer if you have a problem with their product. For example (and this is not a paid advertisement), after my 18-year-old Mr. Coffee broke, I bought another one. However, Mr. Coffee #2 was very persnickety about how you loaded the basket into him, and if you did not hold your mouth right and say several voodoo incantations, the hot coffee would go, not into the coffee pot, but all over the counter, into your drawers and run onto the floor. Which would be fine if you were the sort who liked to lick your coffee up off of a flat surface every morning.

Worse, since I bought the fancy one that brews your coffee while you are sleeping (and the aroma wakes you up -- I think I'll be excited about this feature for the rest of my life), it was a particularly bad surprise to walk groggily into the kitchen expecting to pour a great cup of coffee and instead getting to mop the whole place up.

So, I found Mr. Coffee's web site and sent them a polite complaint. In no time at all I had a reply that apologized to me, asked for the model number and then asked for my address so they could send me a new one!

Just like that. And they did, and the new one is perfect. One little e-mail and Mr. Coffee made me happy. And that makes me very, very happy. I like them even better than before.

When Paul put down ceramic tile in the kitchen (see Domestic Rule #4: Threaten to do it yourself), the grout color in no way resembled the grout color on the color selection chart. It was in the same color family, just about forty shades too light. Instead of noticing the beautiful new tile, you noticed the bright colored grout lines. Now, I've been in advertising long enough to know that the problem was probably with the company that printed the color selection chart. It's really difficult to get the colors to be true. However, sympathetic though I may be, that is not my problem. So I went on the Internet and found the grout manufacturer's web site and sent in a polite but complaining e-mail. I received an immediate reply and a request for my address. They sent me four bottles of grout colorant in four different shades for me to try. I found the one that was exactly the color I was hoping for, sent them another e-mail, and they sent enough colorant to finish the job. They were apologetic, helpful and solved my problem very quickly.

Now, it would have been better no doubt if the grout had been the expected color the first time around. And I have some concern that over time the colorant will wear off. And I am here to tell you that applying grout colorant with a toothbrush all over your floor is not a recreational use of time. Still, I am very happy with the service that we received. The world is not perfect, and if I can just get somebody who will help me make things close enough to right for me, that's all I'm asking for.

(And not at all what I've gotten with the ION USB Turntable folks.)

So, the moral of the story is that if something isn't right, complain. There just might be somebody out there whose job is to make you happy.

Domestic Rule #5: Buy yourself flowers

If you're like me, you love flowers. If you're also like me, nobody brings you flowers. And I have given up on trying to grow them.

So, after quite some time in this otherwise happy marriage, I have come to the conclusion that since I am supposed to have flowers, the best thing for me to do is go get them. Do you think they're in the grocery store for your husband or boyfriend to buy them and bring them to you? No. They are there because of this dirty little secret: if you want flowers, you're going to have to get them yourself.

There are flowers for every budget. My rule of thumb is to buy my husband a six-pack of some exotic ale on Thursday or Friday. That same day, I spend the same amount or less on a bouquet for me. My flowers outlast his ale.

You really will thank me for this one.

Domestic Rule #4: Threaten to do it yourself

If you want something done right, threaten to do it yourself. Now, I'm as much of a feminist as anyone out there, but there's something to be said for letting somebody else do all the hard work. Somebody else is defined as "your husband."

And there are times when the only way to do it right IS to do it yourself. In fact, maybe even all the time. But we can all accept a less-than-perfect-job if we didn't have to do it.

We needed a new kitchen floor. Badly. I dropped hints. I pushed Paul into the flooring section of Lowe's and Home Depot and oohed and aahed. He mainly oohed over the prices.

So I went out and bought those little sticky vinyl tiles you just put right down over the old floor. I had about six of them and was trying to figure out what colors I was going to do.

"You. Are. Not. Putting. Those. Down. In. This. House." he said. But I kept moving forward with the project. The next thing I know, I have a date to go to all the DIY stores and pick out porcelain tile.

It's gorgeous. And though I probably would not have used the sponge dedicated to bathing horses to apply the sealer, he did an excellent job. (There are so many horsehairs in it that it almost qualifies for carpet.)

I could have done it. But why?

Domestic Rule #3: Use your guest room for storage

Having company can be a great pleasure. For a while there it was clear that we were too good at being hosts because it felt like we were running a bed and breakfast. (At least for certain family members.) They kept coming and we kept putting them up, then putting up with them. Then not feeling like putting up with them. (Then not even answering the phone when it was them.)

Now, a good counselor would tell you, if you find yourself in the position of a not very enthusiastic host, that it is time to have The Conversation and Set Boundaries. We tried this, and it did not go exactly as we had hoped.

E-mails were sent to other family members about how awful we were that we wouldn't let them come every other weekend to stay at our little bed-and-breakfast-and-lunch-and-dinner-and-entertainment home. (Note: For the confused, we do not operate a bed-and-breakfast. We simply live in our house.)

So, we found a better solution. You know all that clutter FlyLady is telling you to deal with? Don't deal with it. Put it in your guest room. Once you use your guest room for storage, you have an excuse for why those certain family members can't come every other weekend. It's sort of a blockade on your guest room -- and your sanity.

If you have friends who are actually a pleasure who want to come for a visit (or you want to invite for a visit), just move the stuff. Don't get rid of it. You'll need to move it back in.

Use your guest room for storage and you'll be in control of your time, your household and your peace of mind.