Cleaning up inside and out

I've been battling the blahs this week. Unlike having the blues, which makes my heart ache and results in pathetic crying jags, the blahs make me want to clean. On some level, I think I believe if I can remove the cobwebs and grime from my environment, my spirits will be lighter too.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't, but it's a lot more productive than overeating or watching too much YouTube.

This week's combination of howling winds and cancelled excursions left me longing for clean toilets and sinks. I was determined to tackle the buildup of calc and lime in the bathrooms. It's hard to fathom just how hard the water is here until you live with it. Calc accumulates quickly on and in everything that is touched by water. I buy vinegar in gallon size bottles and have to clean my teakettle with it at least twice a week. I boil vinegar to clean the calc off the sinks and faucets, and yes, I pour hot vinegar into my toilets. I also use a Belgian product called Anti-Kalk and American "Lime Away." Even with that chemical arsenal, it still takes scraping to remove calc deposits from certain surfaces. After three days of the blahs and a lot of hard work, my toilets and sinks are very, very clean.

I've also continued to pare down our belongings, preparing for our move. As with any clutter-busting enterprise, I find going through storage spaces multiple times is most effective. While the first round of sorting moves a heck of a lot of stuff out of the house, it's just a warm up for the second and third rounds. The first round you tend to get rid of true junk, dated stuff, and the things you didn't really want in the first place. Subsequent rounds bring you to a place where you can part with perfectly good items just because you know you don't use or appreciate them enough.

The U.S. Army's support center in Brussels has set up a place to leave blankets and cold weather clothing for the homeless. I had already given trunk loads of clothes away earlier this fall, but seeing that collection bin sent me back into my closets looking for more. I wanted to help. We had piles of real baby blankets, comforters, and throws that E-Grrrl had outgrown and then used to play with her baby dolls. I washed them and took them to the center first. Then I started picking through our sweaters, jackets, and mittens, and got E to go through his as well.

After all we'd already given away, I was astounded we were able to fill two gigantic bags with LL Bean and Lands End sweaters, fleece pullovers, sweatshirts, hats and scarves, and kids ski pants.  I'm happy to share a bit of warmth with people whose lives are so cold, but the amount of excess we have is telling. While some people rarely purge their belongings, I do it REGULARLY, and the fact that I can still find so much to give away is a reminder of how much we can live without if we raise our consciousness a bit and challenge our ideas.

Tomorrow I'm going back into my closets again and digging through the storage boxes in the attic. I'm sure there's more to share and give away. There's ALWAYS more to share.

December 5, 2007

My get-up-and-go got up and went

All weekend I’ve slipped between episodes of normal energy and no energy at all. I’ve flopped on the sofa, in the recliners, on the floor in the sun, and in my bed. I cleaned off my desk because I could do that without moving. I tried to wash all the illness out of our sheets and pillowcases and aired out our rooms and put the comforters outside in the sun. I folded laundry. I curled up with Petey. I tried to work on art projects but couldn’t gain any momentum, so I browsed some books on painting techniques instead. I took a lot of naps.

I drank cup after cup of tea. I ate chili that I made Friday before I got sick. I didn’t have the energy or the ingredients for real chicken soup, so we had ramen noodles, the ugly stepchild of comfort foods. We ate all the Chex mix we’d set aside for A’s camping trip. The weather was absolutely flawless, and it was painful to think we were all stuck inside (except for E, who even with a fever and cough, went outside and trimmed all the hedges. The man has more stamina than most professional athletes.)

E and I watched two movies over the weekend. The Holiday, with Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, and Jack Black, was predictable but a lot of fun. I think Kate Winslet steals the show as Iris, and Jack Black upstages Jude Law as a romantic lead. Cameron Diaz is a great comedic actress, and she’s so gorgeous, that even if she couldn’t act, you’d still want to watch her.

The second movie we watched was Freedom Writers starring Hillary Swank as an idealistic teacher who takes on a classroom of inner city kids in LA and inspires them to improve their lives against all odds. Once again, not an original story (“Stand and Deliver,” “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “Music of the Heart,” “Dead Poet’s Society”) but one we never get tired of hearing or watching.

Oscar winner Hillary Swank, who was the film’s executive producer as well as its star, gives a carefully nuanced performance that shows Erin Gulwell’s transformation from idealistic but ineffective educator to a skilled and innovative teacher who seeks to reach her students where they are and cultivate their potential. It was believable and inspiring and made me think long and hard about race issues in the U.S. It is definitely worth two hours of your time and would be a wonderful movie for your favorite teens to see.

This afternoon (between naps) I unpacked winter clothes and put away the last of the summer ones. As I folded stacks of t-shirts and Capri pants into Rubbermaids, I realized that the next time I unpacked those clothes, I’d be living in Virginia. It shocked me because no matter how much I talk about the move, it still doesn’t seem real to me. I will be shaking the wrinkles out of those tops and bottoms as the azaleas and dogwoods bloom and we all adjust to a new life. Wow.

In the attic I came across a box of pants I’d set aside because my expat fat had made them impossible to wear. Since the kids went back to school, I’ve been exercising daily and watching what I eat, and I’m very proud to say that about 75 percent of the pants in that box fit me again. I’ve lost close to 15 pounds and my French black velvet, butt-flattering, leg-lengthening jeans fit me again. This is a major victory. I have a long way to go in regaining my fitness, but fitting into my best clothes has motivated me to continue moving forward to reclaim my pre-Belgium body. (My cardiologist in Richmond will be so proud of me.)

So all told, despite a sore throat, bouts of coughing, and episodes of malaise, I had a good weekend. How about you?

October 14, 2007

Friday funny

(Courtesy of Shirley)

My Living Will

Last night my sister and I were sitting in the living room watching a medical drama on TV, and I said, "I never want to live in a persistent vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle to stay functioning. If that ever happens to me, just pull the plug!"

She got up, unplugged my computer and threw out my wine.

She's such a b*tch.

September 21, 2007

Superheroes and supernatural wishes

Last Friday when I invited readers to submit questions, Currently Facing South asked me “If you could be a superhero, who would you be?” and “If you could speak to anyone living or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?”

If I were a superhero, I think I’d be Underdog. People would rub my back, give me treats, and let me sleep a lot. Hmmm, come to think about it, all of those things happen now. But if I were Underdog, I’d be able to fly and fight crime in my spare time. Sounds perfect!

As for the second question, the person I most long to speak with is my mom, who died in 1992, long before I had kids of my own.

I’d want to hear about my childhood from her perspective, tell her about my children, ask about parenting teenagers, and discuss marriage and menopause with her. I’ve dealt with episodes of depression most of my adult life, and I think she did too.

I wish we could discuss the things we never talked about: what her expectations were for her life when she was young, and whether it turned out the way she’d envisioned, whether on the whole she was happy, what she would have changed.

August 13, 2007

Such a good Grrrl

Regular readers know that I consider the endless pursuit of dust and dirt to be an obstacle to obtaining happiness, a one way ticket to frustration and despair. Often, the breakfast dishes sit on the table until I start preparing dinner. The dirty clothes get washed but may sit in fluffy heaps for a day or two before getting folded and put away. I'm fastidious about toilets and sinks but the shower? Well, sometimes I grow a little mildew in there before breaking out the Tilex and Doing the Right Thing. Once in a while I get my Righteousness up and yell at the kids to line up shoes, put up backpacks, and gather up their junk from the living room, but most days I roll with it.

Part of the problem is that this is a BIG house, much bigger than my house in the U.S. and there are many, many surfaces to clean. It's a beautiful home, rich in architectural detail but it's huge by my standards. Three stories and a basement. FIVE bedrooms (admittedly small ones, but still FIVE bedrooms.). THREE bathrooms. TWO toilet rooms. Ceramic tile floors throughout most of the house, hardwood in the bedrooms.

Unlike my house in the U.S., I can't thoroughly clean this house in a day or two. I'm not sure I could deep clean this house in a week. It overwhelms me. But this week, y'all, i've made a vow. This week me and my house are being born again! I am repenting of my dirty life by deep cleaning one room at a time from top to bottom. Just one room a day until I get it all done. Baby steps, people, baby steps. This is my own 12-step recovery program from a life of grime. Be impressed. Be very impressed.

Yesterday I did the foyer and downstairs toilet room. Sound easy? Ha! My foyer is the size of a small bedroom. This is the place everything gets dropped, including all the mud off our shoes. I had to go through the miscellaneous piles of school  papers and gather up random markers, crayons, Barbies, and candy wrappers which were all buried under book bags and shoe pyramids. No lie, I got rid of half the shoes in the pile because my children outgrow their shoes every few months.

I took the big basket of winter hats and mittens and filled it instead with visors and ball caps. I swept AND vacuumed and scrubbed the ceramic tile floor, going over it TWICE until the scrub brush and mop begged for mercy.

In the bathroom, I cleaned the toilet bowl inside and out, did the mirrors, dusted the toilet tissue holder, polished the windowsills and de-calced the sink. For some reason, there's a lot of soot and/or dirt in Belgium. I'm astounded that when I wipe down the tile walls, the rag is seriously DIRTY, not just dusty. Maybe our house didn't get like this in the U.S. because our heating and cooling system incorporated several air filters. Here we heat with radiators and live nine months out of the year with our windows thrown open. E says most Belgian cars run on diesel fuel and this sends a lot of particulates into the air.

Whatever the reason for the grime, I chased it all down yesterday. The foyer walls and switch plates were full of finger and handprints, and I got out the Murphy's Oil soap and removed every last mark. The stairwell was the worst and required the most attention. We have a long curving bannister with multiple shaped spindles, and I cleaned every part of it with Murphy's Oil soap and water. I used my Pampered Chef pot scraper to extract gunk from crevices and creases in and around the spindles. I left no speck of muck behind.

Today I'm tackling the dining room, a.k.a. my craft and stamping studio, tomorrow, the living room. By the time Rock Grrrl arrives at the end of the month, I will have redeemed myself and my dirty ways. My mother, who spent every day of her life cleaning with a vengeance, is undoubtedly smiling down from heaven and saying, "That's my Grrrl!"

June 12, 2007

Conversation with my Keyboard

V-Grrrl: Well Keyboard, E wasn't happy that I aired dirty family secrets on my blog last night. After I cleaned up the toilet, I had to come back and clean up my original entry because he said I'd gone too far. He gave me that "I hate potty mouth" look.  

Keyboard: Well, V-Grrrl, you should be proud for standing up for hygiene and decency even if you did BETRAY YOUR OWN CHILDREN'S PRIVACY.

V-Grrrl:  Well, if you don't want your toilet habits made public, you should clean up after YOURSELF in private. What I don't know about, I can't write about--see my logic? 

Keyboard: I guess. You're not going to tell everyone how many grams of sandwich crumbs I'm hiding down here are you?

V-Grrrl: No way! Then they'd think I was an Internet addict, always eating at my desk, and we know that I AM NOT A COMPUTER ADDICT, right, Keyboard?

Keyboard: Of course, you're not, V. You just can't get enough of ME and all the stuff I help you write.

V-Grrrl: True! Every day you bring my words to life.

Keyboard: Even the nasty ones.

V-Grrrl: Even the nasty ones. Thanks Keyboard.  Where would I be without your loyalty--and the delete key?

May 23, 2007

While my keyboard silently weeps...

Hey Y'all,

I'm tired of writing serious posts about the sad state of the world and crazy people and guns and politiicians and mental health funding and social problems and all that. I'm not cut out for carrying the world on my shoulders. People, I have a bad back!

I just want to return to my happy place in the enchanted forest. Check out my photo album and you'll see how happy a place my happy place is. It is THE happiest place ever, y'all. Look at this photo and imagine being there.

Peaceful. peaceful. peaceful.

Happy, happy, happy.

But I'm not happy.

I'm not happy cause E, in  a fit of virtual housekeeping, deleted Microsoft Word by accident.

I know, I know. How do you delete Microsoft Word by accident?!!! How? How? HOW?

Well it had something to do with the date on the program file and him thinking this was an OLD version of Microsoft Word not our ONLY FREAKIN COPY OF MICROSOFT WORD.

I'm struggling to remain calm, even though I'm a WRITER and how am I supposed to live without Word recording my words?

I was all forgiving and sweet this morning when he confessed to the results of his dirty digital cleanup because I thought it would not be a problem to undo and restore the files.

I was wrong. All that niceness was wasted.

I go to Microsoft.com thinking, "I've been wanting to get Office 2007 anyway. No problem, I'll just get it right here, right now."

But oh no, I was WRONG. I can't order straight from Microsoft and download it immediately. No, I have to make a purchase from a Microsoft retailer.

Hello! Bill Gates! I'd just like to tell you that dropping in at CompUSA, Best Buy, or Staples is not a freakin option for me. Not, not, NOT!

(Stamps foot for emphasis.)

FINE. I will order it online and have it shipped.

FINE. I will try to live and breathe and carry on without word processing software for at least a week while waiting for a package from the U.S.

(Pauses briefly to breathe into a paper bag and stem finger-tingling hyperventilation symptoms).

There now--all I have left is anxiety.

(Debates popping an extra Zoloft while wishing for a Xanax. )

SIGH.

OK, I'm back. Where was I?

Oh yeah, I was at the part where I was going to order Microsoft Office from Best Buy. And it wouldn't let me put my APO address into the order fields. So I get online Help, follow the directions exactly, and it rejects my address over and over and over again until I want to thrust a fist through the monitor and grab a real person in Cyberland and tell them to send me the software NOW. I need the software!!!!

I'm just not up for this crap because, people. I'm now in hour two of life without word processing, and I'm not feelin so good. I mean for a writer this is like breathing thin air. This is like having my ventilator switched off. This is like a kink in my IV. This is like an office visit from Dr. Kevorkian.  I'm not handling this well!!!

(Pauses to breathe into paper bag again. Wonders whether a copy of Microsoft Office purchased in Belgium will run on American PC. Hyperventilates again.)

Did y'all know Europe has its own digital format to prevent digital piracy? Yeah. Their CDs and DVDs can't be read by my computer, TV, boombox, or DVD player. What about their software? I don't know.

(Pauses to weep softly over FREAKIN INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL PIRACY LAWS.)

Don't worry. I'll be fine. I still have a pen and a legal pad.

(Wipes snotty nose on sleeve).

E is leaving for the Netherlands in an hour and will be safe from my wrath and mental instability.

(Note to self: Do not insert flip remark here about how it's a good thing I don't own a gun. That would be in very, very poor taste. The fact that you're even thinking about it shows how far you've fallen. Remember the cardinal rule of Southern Ladies, "Shut up and be gracious!")

Sigh.

Til later.

Yours til the pen runs dry--while my keyboard silently weeps,

V-Grrrl

April 24, 2007

Trash talk

There are three children’s car booster seats sitting out by the curb waiting for the trash guy to come.

They are Century booster seats in perfect condition. Someone could use them, but I have no idea who.

I keep wanting to go outside and rescue them. Drag them inside and try to sell them or donate them or do SOMETHING other than just throw them away.

But the truth is I don’t know WHAT to do. My husband is tired of waiting for me to come up with a plan. He wants the obsolete booster seats out of the garage.

The booster seats are just the beginning. There’s the curio shelf that hung for a time in our house in the U.S., was taken down when we rearranged things, moved to Belgium, and then left languishing in the storage room. It's time to get rid of it.

There’s an old computer, monitor, and printer up in the attic that we don’t use but haven’t managed to give away. I think there are still files on the hard drive that I want to save but haven't sorted through.

My kids took piano lessons for three years and then abandoned them and never once looked back. What to do with our electronic piano/keyboard, case, and stand?

And what about the extra TV we inherited from E’s mom? Works fine, but like the computer and electric piano/keyboard, it has an American plug. What to do with that?

Then there’s the three boxes of cassette tapes that helped us survive many a car trip with the kiddos. Children's tapes. Classical music. Jazz. Christmas songs.  Does anyone listen to cassette tapes anymore? Can I part with my favorites?

I have BBC recordings of classic books on tape. Can I really trash Winnie the Pooh read by Alan Bennett? The All-of-a-Kind family series? Understood Betsy? The original Dr. Doolittle? The Wind Boy? Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon?

And yes, I have two boxes of VHS children’s tapes that I'm ready to part with.

In the U.S., I had so many outlets for shedding belongings. The church and the school both had annual garage sales. There was a thrift shop just down the road that accepted donations. I consigned our better quality clothes to a shop downtown and  sold items through the free classified ads in the local paper, generating a few hundred dollars a year. I passed toys and clothes onto family members and friends. I donated books to the library sale.

Here it’s so much harder. Sure there are organizations that take items but with the language barrier, contacting someone and coordinating for drop off or pick up is a bit daunting. I don't know who to support or who to trust. Plus, when I see an address or postal code for an organization, I have no idea how close it is to my home, whether we can get there without going crazy, or even how we can transport all the stuff that won’t fit into the car easily.

I need to just deal with it and quit waffling, get rid of my piles and my indecision or drag it all out to the curb and hope somehow, some way, it gets recycled.

April 16, 2007

Copyright Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

Spring cleaning

OK, the title’s not accurate. I’m not exactly engaged in spring cleaning yet; I’m immersed in organizing at this point. As every domestic goddess knows, you can’t really clean until you declutter. Step by step.

I’ve gone through the kids clothes, discarded or passed on what they don’t need, and have gotten them outfitted for summer. This week I’m going through my own clothes and packing up everything that doesn’t fit me right now. Sigh. I’m trying to look on the bright side: I now have lots of room in my closet and the motivation to walk a bit more and eat a bit less.

Today I tackled the attic storage room, packing up the winter clothes into Rubbermaid containers, and pulling out spring fare. I still have to go through the stacks of children’s artwork that I’ve been piling in there. I’ll also be reacquainting myself with our stash of spare toiletries and office supplies so I don’t keep buying the same things over and over again. And I’ll be peering into the mysterious cardboard boxes, seeing if what’s out of sight and out of mind is worth keeping I already discovered a box of cassette tapes. I don’t even own a cassette player anymore!

My biggest nerdy accomplishment? Over the weekend, I caught up putting photos in photo albums. I even took the time to pull out my travel guide books to make sure I was correctly remembering and spelling the names of places we had visited. Oh it felt good to slide the last photo into place and put the album on the bookshelf.

I still have to do the kids albums. I’m creating a set for each of them using copies of my best photos. I don’t scrapbook the photos, but it still takes time to label them. I find if I leave the albums out on the dining room table and work on them in short increments throughout the week, it seems less overwhelming. Of course that means the table is a mess. Hey, you can’t have everything.

Bit by bit. I may have tortoise-like tendencies but remember: “Slow and steady wins the race.” With a little luck, I’ll get to the spring cleaning by summer. ; )

April 2, 2007

© 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

Friday night again

After rain and clouds and damp, the sun came out just in time to light up the living room and lure Petey the Black Kitten to the window sill. From his perch, he can check out the tadpoles and wonder, "Do they taste like chicken or tuna?"

E and the kiddos are out the door to go bowling with the church youth group. I am not a bowler. Plus driving to Waterloo on the Friday night of a holiday weekend makes me sure I'm gonna die in the car before we get there. If the aggressive drivers don't kill you, the cortisol will trigger a heart attack and finish you off. Go ahead, tell me I'm a baby. Won't. Go. To. Waterloo.

I'm home with the Gin Blossoms' New Miserable Experience and roots that have a date with L'Oreal Preference tonight. I ate jalapeno pretzels for lunch and Doritos for dinner. Y'all , when I wake up tomorrow morning retaining 10 pounds of water and lookin like a slit-eyed pig, don't lecture me about the salt, cause you know it's Friday and the Nutrition Nazis have the day off.

Plus Saturday morning is all about quality time in my bathrobe and my new PJs, which are ALL THAT. The outrageous price tag was worth it just because, my gosh, I feel so CUTE in these PJs. You know, when you're 45, you don't get to use the word cute to describe yourself very often. Carpe diem! Seize the pretty pastel moment!

I have two Netflix flicks waitin on top of the fridge: An Inconvenient Truth and Reality Bites. You know, those film titles could be interchangeable; they're both sayin the same thing even if the movies have very different messages. Maybe I should go for a trifecta and see if there's a movie called "Life's a Bitch and Then You Die."

But you know, life is good, and I'm thinkin when the haircolor is done, maybe I'll get out that pink nail polish and seize another pastel moment.

Have a good weekend!

March 30, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.