Saw a neighbor hosing down her metal lawn chairs from my front room armchair. You know (looking at the dust that has become mollecularlly bound to the hardwood) I’m trying to imagine being done with all my inside cleaning and thinking hmmm, what can I clean now? Nothing. I can do if I can dream but I don’t even get the mind pictures to help me along. I will think about this as I make another cup of tea.
I love Martha Beck (Steering by Starlight, Finding Your Own North Star). She transforms the idea of “life coach” from waste-of-space greedy middleman-midwife to spiritual mentor and co-traveler on this long confusing journey. She’s often darkly sardonic and always startlingly insightful. Her ancedotes to illustrate more abstract points are unexpected, too, often taken from her own life and not homogenized like most of the “when Bernice* came home to find her husband in bed with a monkey” women’s magazine composites (*name has been changed).
Well, now Martha is tackling the creamy center of the What Mess world with her “How to Clean Up Your Whole Life” teleconference. Thank god it’s not a video conference. Oh yes, the less-than-pristine places in my house are certainly tangling with my mind and energy. My mind is screaming: what do I do with all this crap? while my psyche is sinking into an armchair with a tall ice tea and a novel. We shall see what happens. Meanwhile, I just might look into this.
The pile of papers in your office, the long-unworn clothes clogging your closet, the tiny frozen quiches that have been in your freezer since the Carter administration…they’re all cluttering your outer life, but they’re also hogging a portion of your inner life. Back in 1994, psychologist Thomas Moore wrote that your living space is a three-dimensional self-portrait. Its less-than-pristine places mirror tangles in your mind and energy, and you can’t clean up one without cleaning up the other.
In this teleclass, Martha will help listeners bring order and openness to their minds and homes. Once you learn the techniques for de-cluttering your mental landscape, the clutter in your home tends to evaporate-for good.
Just saw yet more cable TV footage of the MJ tragedy–could any videotape be left unturned?–and I noticed in the hyperfrenetic editing the sign for the L.A. coroner’s office. It was set over a huge wrought iron gate with lush grounds beyond. Like a fancy country club or golf course or something. Even death isn’t allowed to be unattractive in L.A.
Still learning to embed. Grrrr.
I love Gwyneth Paltrow. I love her intelligence, her acting and her much-maligned Goop e-newsletter, which pushed the humble brussels sprout to hit status on my Thanksgiving 08 table thanks to her wonderful carmelized sprout recipe. Until then, I didn’t know she loved to cook, or had a great eye for clothing designers or cool little hotels in European cities. I appreciate these insider tips even if, like the Paris To Go app on my iPhone, they remain a dream at this moment in life.
I loved her in Spain…On the Road Again, too, and she’s doing more food/cooking demonstration in her latest Goop newsletter “Make” edition. Never thought to butterfly a whole chicken to turn roast chicken into a weeknight dish. What I especially loved was how she crammed a huge forkful of salad in her mouth at the end. I’ll bet she laughed her ass off while looking at the raw footage and thought: aw, hell. It’s real life. Cause you know those starlets can do as many takes as they want. This is exactly how I would be caught on camera during a food segment — that or wiping drool off the lapel of my crisp suit jacket. Why not be hungry, salivating, eager and enjoy?
Reminds me of how the toothpicky yet gorgeous Giada (make her easy baklava, you will lurv) opens her mouth in a letter-slot shape and takes a big ol’ bite of what she’s just made. Delicate but eager, like she’s really going to swallow and digest. Never trust a thin TV chef without an apron who doesn’t taste.
As if my crazy uncontrollable mini food obsessions weren’t enough, now we have a bag o’ Sweet White Food-Crack-y Carb Goodness admonishing me to “Save some for later!” on the little tab that helps keep chips fresh. Go to hell, evil delicious Ritz Toasted Chips in “Sweet Home Sour Cream & Onion” flavor (WT?) It even has a Southern rocking chair on a porch in tint on the front of the bag, which can be recycled using Terracycle, it snottily adds on the side panel. This doesn’t turn it into saint food, sadly, nor does the leetle line on the bottom of the bag claiming “40% less fat than the leading regular fried potato chips” (WT? to the second power) and still with ALA omega-3 fatty acids from all that soybean oil. Like someone tried to arm-wrestle the guy in the lab coat on the factory floor and he won.
I’m mad at all wildly delicious but bad-for-you-despite-what-the-recyclable-packaging-tells-you snack foods. You too — yes, you! Because you all jump in my mouth without me having any say. And then stay there, then go down the gullet to wreak havoc. Repeat and repeat, aaaah somebody stop the madness, I am powerless!
In other news, I was distressingly happy to find out that NabiscoWorld was still producing Better Cheddars which seem to have disappeared from all supermarkets in my city. This can only help me.
I will be interviewing Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, very soon and I intend to take this challenge up with him personally.
Still trying to decide about my kitchen floor — guess the real indecision is spending almost $800 on high-end vinyl tile during a rece
ssion. At least it still is in my house. It was unrequited love until I saw a Traffic Master vinyl floor in “country pine” style that has deep grain and is so..real. Or am I just tired of thinking about it? I fell on this $1.79 per s.f. cheap date like I’d been without romance for a long long time. It’s put down like laminate, in planks, so easy and glue-free and floating. It looks real even next to my red-oak hardwoods. This is it — as soon as I turn in my book review roundup and get that check.
Pretty soon everything will be made of PVC, even babies, and I will not be the least surprised. So lifelike!
Now, if only I could look like Sarah Richardson of Design Inc. when she’s returning samples all over Toronto like a leggy Canadian colt clad in Chanel and pricey denim. Samples that wouldn’t ever need to be scrubbed in the car with a baby wipe after getting sploched with pizza sauce after resting on the kitchen floor for just 3 minutes and 36 seconds. Honestly, how does this crap happen.
Sophie Dahl is the grandaughter of one of my favorite childhood writers, Roald Dahl. She’s also adorable looking–who doesn’t love a gal who clutches a tea cup as if it were a life raft? (my Tetley’s is for me).
She’s a novelist as well, and apparently, a whiz with a whisk and broom as she will be publishing a book channeling Mrs. Beeton:
The title will be published in September 2010 and is inspired by Mrs Beeton; it will be a “modern woman’s guide to creative household management. A stack of fresh new recipes, woven through with anecdotes and lifestyle tips will offer up the perfect guide for any woman looking to combine professional success with a household full of contented friends and family,” according to the publisher.
The British have an eccentric way with a feather duster and pudding basin, so this paragraph about her upcoming book tickled me. She’s a former model known for her “voluptuous” figure so we may be getting an egg-headed Nigella. One who isn’t afraid of the Pledge. Beauty, brains and the cleaning gene–so unfair.
I once helped a friend who was a film stylist. She bought props for film sets and she had a marvelous eye. She shopped all day, then returned stuff the next. Along the way she found some gorgeous little things for her own house, including a teeny tray. I think it was black–and did I say small–and in memory’s eye looked like something you might score on a bargain endcap at Pier I. Because what would you do with such a small thing? Beautiful and simple as it was. Howevah, I’m sure it cost a whole lot more than that.
So I asked: what are you going to do with that? Put my keys on it, she answered. And I’m thinking what’s wrong with the surface of a desk, counter or shelf? The keys must be raised a quarter inch above the surface, so they’ll be found that much easier than if they were lying down lower? And then you have to dust both the teeny tray, then move it and dust the surface underneath.
Why fetishize what should be simple? Oh, and yesterday, I was cleaning the gunk stuck to the bottle of Dawn (while daydreaming at the kitchen window – might as well). There is something seriously wrong with that scenario, too.
At the vet picking up a prescription for my poor arthritic dogga, and another woman rushes in breathlessly 10 minutes to closing. The vet tech jokes that we’ve all waited until the last minute and the woman says, “I’ve been cleaning my house and I waited until I got to a stopping point.” I pipe in about Flylady and cleaning your house 15 minutes at a time and how that’s more my speed, and the customer says: Then it’s never done! as the vet tech exclaims: Then it’s never clean!
I have never in all my life worried that my house wouldn’t be totally, completely, inarguably clean. Ever. I have worried that I’ll never be done, however, which is my excuse for putting off nearly everything for as long as possible. Possible did come for the gunky mold ring around my Southern toilet bowl today. Thank you for working so silently and well, Mr. Bleach.
If only my shower mold looked so good (via Earthlink newsletter).