When my husband cleans the kitchen.

Husband number one, let’s call him H1, has a different relationship with time.  It just moves differently for him.  Time and things and space, they float, they gather, they build, they pile.  The sense of scale is obtuse and overlapping. Projects, timelines, deadlines, there is no line for these things to perch upon, it’s a wide-ranging orbit that hopefully connects back to itself, one day in the future.  

In the kitchen, all H1 had to do was make a piece of toast and it looked like the refrigerator exploded. Cabinet doors blown open, jars and lids and wrappers floating, him sitting in the happy midst of it all with buttered toast And he made excellent toast.  He had a natural skill that flavored and infused the simplest things,  even soup from a can was better in his hands.  He baked sticky buns and cookies worthy of any bakery, home made marshmallows, meringue, chocolate mousse, there was an abundance of skill surrounded by logistical chaos.   

But a meal, served for guests? Forget it.  Dinner did manage to come to the table most nights, unpredictable and delicious, but every bowl and skillet and pan was put in service of the meal. The refrigerator had five jars of opened salsa, one for each level and shelf, and all of them on the edge of mold.  There was no list for the grocery store, he’d return with ten bags packed to the brim,  all of it soon stuffed away to come avalanching out in great releases that threatened to bury the cat. 

The dishes multiplied and reproduced in the dark, bearing spawn that mounted.  One could be forgiven for thinking a dishwasher might be the solution, the magical box where you put them in dirty, push a button, and open the door to find them clean.  But no, even a magical machine couldn’t put a dent in the situation, couldn’t manage the living, morphing piles of utensils, pans, dishes, and cups — the machine may be magic but it couldn’t keep up in this circular multiplying culinary underworld.  

And where was my hand in the matter, shouldn’t I be doing the cleaning if he’s doing the cooking? I was there, chipping away, but one can’t have a goal in mind in this situation, it becomes demoralizing.  It’s like standing in flood and demanding a drought, after a while, you come to your senses and preserve your energy. I cleaned when I needed to, I tended to the edges while the creations brewed in the center, the counters would be clear but the cabinets were stuffed with 87 cereal boxes and four jars of opened peanut butter. And the recycling rose to the ceiling. 

Husband number two, H2, is a living ramrod in the service of time. Each morning at 5:30, he shoots out of bed like there are two springs in his ass, one for each butt cheek.  He lands across the room straight into his clothes, laid out the night before. His socks snap tight, the belt cinches in, he jogs downstairs to make his coffee in his own little espresso pot.  He spends an hour drawing the line of his time — lists, schedules, meal plans, shopping lists.  The next twelve months are mapped out, it’s a binary, black and white, zero or one kind of world — if it’s not on the calendar, its not happening. .

The grocery store list has a tidy ten items, there is nothing in the bags that is not on the list.  Exactly one jar of opened salsa is in the refrigerator, in its appointed spot, and it is in danger of getting thrown out on Sunday.  H2 makes wonderful meals, they come out on time and with precision,  the recipe is followed to a letter, every bowl and pan is cleaned before we sit to eat.

When H2 cleans the kitchen, the house shakes on its foundations. The banging and the rumbling and the slamming is remarkable.  It’s a dead serious matter.  There is no conversation, there is no interaction, this is a man fighting against the flow of disorder. And he will win. That counter will be spanking clean, that dish rack will be orderly, no shortcuts will be taken.  

It’s so intense and single-minded, I choose to leave the room.  Trying to help is like trying to stick your hand in a fan.  There’s nowhere to go to escape the clatter, even the sound of the faucet turning is amplified in his hands. Eventually, he will reach the point of satisfaction, put down the sponge, march into the living room, grab a fresh piece of wood and launch it in the woodstove with ferocity, as if the sanctity of the entire home and family hangs in the balance, dependent upon this dutiful action.  

And then, finally, he will fall onto the couch, loudly exhale, come back into his senses, and call “Honey! Where are you?”  Um, I’m right here, sitting next to the woodstove, where you almost took my nose off with that last piece of wood. And then he pats the couch and I join him, the kitchen gleams in the distance, the recycling piles are only two days old, I know just what we’re doing for the next twelve months, and there’s exactly one fresh jar of salsa in the fridge.  

Houseplant Love Day -- A note to the 'plant killers'

“I kill houseplants.” This is a common form of self-identification, as in “I can’t be trusted with a dog or baby because I can’t even keep a plant alive.”  This may feel true, but I can assure you that the difference between a green and brown thumb is not set at birth, it is not an inherent quality you are cursed or blessed with.  It’s about three things: attitude, mindfulness, and routine.  Turn the knob just a smidge on these qualities and any plants under your care will perk up and take notice in a positive loop. Or, the plant will continue to weaken a die simply because it is time and not even the most accomplished plant parent could save it. 

First, let go of the negative self talk. Everything has a life cycle.  Houseplants die.  They die in my house and they die in meticulous botanical gardens, too. Most houseplants are actually native plants of tropical lands, far from their natural environment. The houseplants we see for sale today have been selectively bred and altered,  grown in industrial greenhouses, jammed into plastic pots, trucked hundreds of miles and endured countless changes in humidity, light, and water.  If they die upon entering your home, don’t take it personally.  Lighten up about it and say “I’m figuring out this houseplant thing, I’m learning what they need, I’m going to find the ones that work in my house.” 

Don’t know how to get started? Convinced you have a brown thumb? Discouraged by the death of an expensive exotic?  Buy your plants from a grocery store.  These are hardy survivors that get refreshed often, they are forgiving, inexpensive, and plentiful. Build your houseplant rhythm and style slowly with this band of old faithfuls.  Spend time at the plant section of a grocery store, get to know the selection over a few weeks, read the labels, observe the leaves, then bring home something new and start again. 

Boring plants encourage failure — there’s nothing to watch, so why would you look?  Why would you remember to check the plant to see how it’s doing when it looks exactly the same week after week, month after month?  Succulents are great because they are hardy little things that look like living sculptures. Yet they behave like little sculptures too, just sitting there for long periods of time.  That’s not a great setup for care-taking. 

The best plants for the self-identified plant killer are plants that stretch and turn towards the sun, plants that send up tender new leaves that unfurl into fresh new shapes.  These plants are a joy to care for because they respond, they grow, they evolve in the shifting light. The joy of finding new growth is the dopamine hit that keeps us attentive and tuned in. When they're happy, you’ll know it, and you’ll feel it too.  Killer no more. 

Cooking For The Constitutionally Inept

Notes from a much longer piece on advice for the black-thumbed frustrated cook. . . . . .

This morning I stood like a vigilant sentry next to the toaster oven, determined to enjoy that just-right warmth and crispness on the artisan everything bagel.  Apparently, I was lost in thought a few moments too many and what I got was smoke and carbon — burnt past the point of enjoyment.  I cut off the blackest edges and ate it anyways, a penance for proving the point.  Heat is a mysterious power that can barely be controlled.  This morning it took advantage of my lapse and scorched that bagel like a madman. 

Consider your stove - you barely registered its presence within your home, it’s just this appliance-like thing that seems to be there all the time.   It’s time to get up close and personal with this tool, because it is literally the field of play — it’s where almost everything goes down, it makes or breaks all of the time and effort and money sunk into the meal so far.  The patterns of heat are everything.  

Court it, coax it, goose it, dampen it — to produce a successful meal, one must become a master of the flame. Electric coils, smooth glass tops, living, jumping flames that ignite and sputter — they all demand your curiosity and reverence, or they will ruin everything. Sure, the ignorant can often manage a successful experience without so much as a nod to the destructive power of heat - on, off, done.  But to learn how to cook, to turn that blackened thumb into something new, you must start with the heat.   

Get to know your heat source. Develop a relationship with the burner you can trust — the one who gets what you are trying to do here, who understands and supports you. The one who will give you some slack while also doing exactly what you ask of it.  The feeling of betrayal is real — you are genuinely trying so hard to get it right, and then fooomp — your shit is burnt and the smoke alarm is screaming.  

Whether a stove is gas or electric, fancy pants big bucks insta-twee or free from the side of the road, all cooking stoves have issues and personalities.  We have a name for one of the burners on our stove, fancy-ish glass top electric, and this burner is called The Rouge.   It pays little mind to the dial it is attached to.  It marches to its own drummer, pulsing heat waves in a pattern that only it can comprehend.  I use it only when feeling cocky and wild, like rolling the dice at Vegas.  Find your Rouge, and find your steady Eddie.

Stay with the stove.  For anyone with cooking ability, this is understood — but for us, the inept, it bears mentioning.  Do not step away from the thing being cooked.  The exception here is a soup, but even then, be wary every time you are outside a ten-foot radius of the stovetop.  Install a little buzzer in your mind to remind you to stay physically present and attentive, it gives a little pulse as your radius expands, reminding you that a ruined meal is only a few steps away.  

Get right down to the basics and understand what the heat is doing — it is breaking the cell walls, it is transforming and recombining carbon-based life with a swirl of alchemy.  The forces of heat are pre-digesting plants and animals so that our bodies can receive and use them.  

Cows have seven stomachs and a distillery of acids because raw, cold grass takes an enormous amount of effort to break down into something usable.   Birds have a craw filled with grit and pebbles to break down the raw grains and insects, they’ve built a second tooth-like chamber to masticate the food into something they can absorb.  Humans have fire.

For the energy stored in plants and animals to be transferred into our own life-stream, it must first be transformed, broken, made available.   This is what cooking is, it is holding the tension between powerful forces, allowing space for magic to occur between the textures and flavors commingling among the weakened cell walls.  The pot and the skillet are the vessels of alchemy and the knobs of the stove and oven are your keys to the kingdom.  Turn them with care. 

Housekeeping for the Natural Born Slob, an introduction

One evening when my daughter was four, we visited a new friend’s house for the first time.  The house was an old hippy-built cabin in the Vermont woods, lived in by many people over the years, and our friend had recently moved in and transformed the place.  That evening, the cabin was sparkling and magical and exquisite in every detail.  But over dinner, he told stories of the renovation and his tales of how he found the place were full of dramatic details. 

The stench of the carpets they hauled out.  The two hours it took to clean the toilet, just the toilet. The disintegrating dead flies in piles on the windowsills. The “body cheese” scraped off the walls behind the bed. The people who lived here before were slobs who had a bank of belongings along each wall, dishes piled in the bathtub, and also a litter of puppies with all the shit and piss that comes with them still present between the floorboards.  

We had a beautiful meal from his elegant, clean kitchen, used the spa-like bathroom, then headed home in the cold winter night.  As we were pulling out of the long driveway, my daughter asked from the backseat, with concern in her voice,  “Are they coming back?”  We said, huh?  Coming back?  Who’s coming back?  And she said, “The slobs, are the slobs coming back?”   She was genuinely troubled, frightened by their power, but we couldn’t help laughing.  Oh, the terrible scary slobs!!

Clean, good, slobs, bad. A dirty house is everything we need to know about someone. Genuinely bad people live in shit-pile houses — murderers, abusers. If your laundry pile is so large it is blocking the light from the sun, we don’t know what you are truly capable of and it scares us.  My daughter picked this up from our many cues that evening, we were having so much fun with the spectacle of it all.

The moral judgment and internal fear we carry around cleanliness makes sense. Sloth and slovenly habits are ancient no-nos, deadly sins, for good reasons — how is a culture supposed to survive if all people did was avoid the work that must be done? Lazy slobs must be judged and shamed, and even cast out — the weak and the lazy are a drain on the resources and must be left behind if the group is to survive.  This harsh evolutionary reality is at the root of our disdain for the slobs. 

But it’s not so simple. The old testament missed some of the nuance. Speaking as a life-long slob at heart, I can tell you that we may be sitting within our own mess, but it may not be the choice you think it is. It could actually be that we do not see it.

All that gunk and all those piles are effectively invisible to the natural-born slob. The eye may reflect the information into the brain, but the brain has no use for it.  Fails to register.  Does not compute.  The brain is amazing that way.  It is processing millions of bits of data every moment, and it is smart enough to filter out everything it does not need.  It’s the conservation of energy.  Efficiency.  Paying attention to useless things is wasteful, dangerous even, and natural-born slobs have excellent brain filters.  

You’ve heard the line about a messy desk being a sign of a genius mind.  That’s what I’m talking about. The genius mind is genius because it doesn’t waste resources on the mold forest towering out of the coffee mug — it is literally invisible to Einstein, because if his brain created space to see it, there’d be less room for the deeper cognitions of relativity.  

I’m an intellectual snob who came to regard my slovenly ways not as a sin but a virtue — proof, in fact, that I had better things to do.  That my hours watching dust motes swim through the sunbeam were essential to my superiority.  That I wasn’t driven to constantly be moving and wiping and putting away — that the absence of that agitation was a blessing and a gift. 

Oh those poor cleaning addicts, so virtuous, following all of the rules, such small little lives they lead. Just like a certain type of cheerleader has always been on my shit list, so have the neat freaks.  I try to steer clear, they make me nervous.  Whether you are aware of it or not, everyone you know is placed on a clean/tidy spectrum.  Their desk at work, the backseat of their car, the number of wrinkles in their clothes, it all adds up and you unconsciously place them in a “that kind of person” category, and you adjust your relationship accordingly.

Where do these habits of housekeeping come from?  It’s too easy just to blame your mother.  She is, of course, the source of much of it, but I think it’s deeper than that.  I think some of these orientations around clutter and mess and chores are deeper compulsions that get carried down in longer wisps of DNA.  I think we may be born with an internal orientation and interest in making things tidy, or not.  Some of us are born with brain filters calibrated towards other things.

Some of us got the trigger that shoots the dart in our ass that makes us leap into the air every time a pillow is out of place.  They can’t be still, they can’t focus on anything else until the dishes are done and the counter is clean.  I’ve got to say, I’m thankful that isn’t me.  Do I like piles of dirty dishes? Not so much, they actually bother me more than they used to, but I’m very thankful I’m free to do as I please and walk right past them without it affecting my heart rate.

Equanimity.  Do compulsive cleaners feel it only if their home is clean?  Can they open a crammed refrigerator with sticky condiments glued to the glass shelves, pull out the milk, shut the door, and go on their way?  Us slobs can do that, right? We did it just this morning and every morning for the past six months.  Really, I think we got the better deal — we have freedom, neat-freaks do not.  

To change a habit and a home, to move just a notch towards cleanliness and order, is less about will-power and sense of duty, and more about learning to see. Training both the brain and the mind to observe, to snag a bit of interest as the eye crosses over the ring of mold surrounding the sink drain in the bathroom. To take the image in fully and completely, with interest and curiosity. Getting the hand to move towards the sponge and cleaner is a whole other matter, first, the ring of shiny darkness must be seen.

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An excerpt from a book of tips and tricks called Housekeeping For the Natural Born Slob.