“Holymessaphobia” and other homemaker disorders.

Since you have last heard from me my to do list grew, exponentially, voluntarily, and frankly exhausting!  I have also added a non voluntary to do called “dealing with the worst spring allergies I have ever experienced” which takes up way more time than I can spare.  Grant it the voluntary to dos are a lot of fun: the community theater play, wearable art show, and a walk/run for cancer in memory of a dear member of our community!  My house is suffering the consequences!  So why can’t I take my own advice and weed my to do list?

I believe it is “todomanicism”, a understudied disorder of the chronic volunteer and underemployed mothers that also suffer from “domusphobisplasia” (the avoidance disorder that causes women to volunteer to be away from the reminder that they need to do the dishes from yesterday still because they have perpetuated a cycle of to little time in the day) a very difficult disorder to dig out of.

On top of all this, it has been unseasonably nice out and I have been easily sidetracked in the ‘spare’ time I have to play outside, fish, and garden. Build a ‘greenhouse’, install address signs for the volunteer fire department… You get the picture.  I am getting buried by the home I am supposed to be cultivating, yet again!  Am I alone?  My dearest friends also suffer from the same disorders, one of them somehow manages to get her home neated up daily but she claims that is made possible by ‘holymessaphobia’.  Something else I find that we also suffer from is the procrastinated shower which makes us fresh and nice smelling in the afternoon and evening, having to ‘wash the mom off’ before our evening adult contacts, giving the illusion that we are fresh and rested when in fact we are frackin exhausted!

Add on to this the list of concerns and worries with no solution in sight pingponging back and forth in my overwhelmed brain and voila!  I have “brainfartstotia”, the side affect of all above disorders. So my dear contacts in the world around me, I apologize for forgetting about the details of your lives as I can’t seem to keep track of mine. That being said I am very proud of the fact that I have not forgotten my csa fruit/veggie box pickup for 4 weeks straight!  So proud of myself! Not to mention my potatoes are planted and I have that one haven in the yard that is winter waste free.

On top of my ‘brainfartstotia’ my daughter also suffers and told me an hour before her school music program that she needed a white shirt (never to be found in my house as the quickly become destroyed since I am just not a white shirt capable person) a black skirt and black tights, also not in the home as my daughter is a bit rough and tumble with the outdoors.  Solution?  The shopping options are limited here to basic mercantile supplies so the white shirt and black tights were a quick fix.  The skirt?  Well I happened to have a lace and satin tutu type skirt with an elastic waist that came with another, uh, item that I purchased for myself, eh hmm.  Worked like a charm and appeared totally appropriate on my ten year old sweety pie whom I will tell her at her bridal shower someday what that skirt was supposed to be for.  I can hear the laughter now.

Thinking outside the box at the last moment seems to work for me, I just wish I didn’t have so many of those moments in my life! I also wish I could take my own advice!  Every time I make a resolution and I am just starting to really get going with it some disaster derails me and sends me off course and finding my way back through the piles of to dos is daunting at best.  It seems so easy to walk outside and play in the dirt, a gardeners way of putting her head in the sand that eventually bears edible fruit.  If only the laundry and dishes weren’t the most productive growers around here!

If a garden isn’t just in your yard, but your home…

It might be that the world is your garden too!  We had put some crab pots out almost two weeks ago and I was really hankering to pull ’em before… well before it was pointless.  So my stubborn self picked up the kids at 3:30 from school (I was going to go before they got out of school but you can bring more crab home with more people in the boat) ran us all home, hooked up the boat trailer to the Jeep… which died.  I swear I asked the mechanic to change the oil when he fixed my brakes… Put some oil in the Jeep and had the boat with children inserted in the water by 4:00!  Feeling proud of myself.

I have never pulled one of these pots before.  These particular pots are commercial pots, ie: intended to be hauled with mechanized device, not bare hands.  No problem!  My daughter takes the till and off we go, wind in our face happy smiles, excitement mounting, and guesses to how many Tanner crab are in the pots.

I am optimistic, I have a girl trick a girlfriend set me up with yesterday, I got this.  The trick is not slick, not sure it’s a trick. First pot is not in good shape, was that me or some other force?  I am going with other force, my boyfriend assures me it was ‘other force’.  Nonetheless, messed up pot = no crab, well and that took 30 minutes, yay.   The second pot I decided to lift with pure girl power, no tricks, no gimmicks. Okay I used my brain a little since it was clear that pure brawn was not an option for me.  An hour later and I have re-baited the pot and have 4 Tanner crab on board. Disappointing? Nope.  Perfect. I left the third pot where it was, we can deal with that on Saturday.

Tanner Crab harvested on our last outing... I was too tired to take pictures of the ones we got today.

Point?  We had fresh from the sea crab 20 minutes after it left the water steaming on the deck in the crab cooker.  Fresh, sweet and nutrient rich.  A product of my suburban farm that happens to be on the edge of a rich wilderness full of harvests for my table.  More effort than I would have liked? Maybe, but worth it today. Tomorrow I am going to shop for lighter crab pots, or a davit, or both.