What I Wrote Down When I Woke Up

      Shockingly enough, I've written a poem.  I don't consider myself a poet, and although I tried, I never really liked poetry.  Not until I read my cousin Sam's poems (she's something of a literary genius) and realized poetry doesn't have to be nonsensical emo confusingness.  Anyway, yesterday I randomly woke up from a nap that I didn't mean to take, and got my Dr. Seuss on.  It is a little absurd, but it amuses me, so, for your enjoyment, my blog poem debut: 

The Place Where Dreamers Go

I curled up with a book and snack to get some reading in

When suddenly a drowsiness welled up from deep within.

I told myself “I must not nap, or I’ll not sleep tonite.”

But comfort is a smooth-tongued friend that whispers sweet delights.

So mind and body took up arms; half-heartedly they fought

And both slid toward a restless sleep, for half my mind still thought

“I must get up, I must not tarry, but do I have the will?  No.

I’m on my way in a wooden shoe to the place where dreamers go.”

The deepest sleeps are slept at the bottom of the deepest ocean

Too dark and still for dreams to go, even if they had the notion.

But dreams live in the shallows, just underneath the waves

In the coral reefs and gardens is where dreams come out to play.

Its not a fixed location, the place where dreamers go,

Our dreams can take us anywhere, though where we’ll never know.

I never wonder why in dreams days swiftly turn to night,

Or why the loved one long deceased is back and quite alright.

The canopy of octopi above my garden party

Is proof in dreams the laws of nature deem the norm ‘malarky’.

In the places where dreamers go I like to have a mission,

But with hordes of zombies in pursuit I need lots of ammunition.

Sometimes gravity behaves itself and I find that I am falling

(A situation in real life that I would find appalling).

But I don’t mind because in dreams so beautiful is the scenery;

Stormy seas, high waterfalls, oceans and lush greenery.

To my dismay I once fell long enough to land, and to be truthful

When I awoke I had sunk further in my mattress than was usual.

The place where dreamers go can be a lovely place to visit,

To run and fly and ride and fight, one wouldn’t want to miss it.

So much to do and yet one thing I’ll always want, I know:

To never stay forever in the place where dreamers go. 

Housekeeping!

     I like my housekeeping style.  I really do and believe me I’ve been around lots of houses that were kept all sorts of ways, and my style of keeping is my favorite.  I like to call myself a Relaxed Housekeeper.  Right in the middle of the spectrum, as it were.  I’ve been in houses and lived with roomates that were…not to put too fine a point on it…obsessive and anal (you guys know who you are, and please don’t take offense or lose hope, I’ve enjoyed other qualities that you possess.  Just not that one).  I’ve also lived in houses and stayed with roomates that were messy.  I have to say I felt more comfortable around the messy folk, but we must take this moment to acknowledge that there is pleasant messy and unpleasant messy.  I once spent a short while in a house that was almost hostile in its filth: crusted microwave, ocassional animal excrement, a grimy black bathtub that had originally been pink.  So you see, I do draw the line somewhere; messiness does reach the point of unacceptability.  An example of pleasant messy was the bedroom I shared with one of my college roomates.  One couldn’t see the floor, but rotating piles of stuff is entirely different than filth, and we enjoyed our time together thoroughly and I still recall her and her family as some of the jolliest people I’ve known. 

   Back to the anal people for a quick moment.  The reason they often made me feel uncomfortable is that aside from the confrontations they would often choose moments when I had earned a moment’s relaxation to start banging and clanging around the house with their cleaning supplies, effectively heaping guilt on top of the unease.  No one likes walking on eggshells, and enthusiastically-cleanly individuals often have that effect on those less alert to messes, in addition to imposing a general feeling of inhospitality on others.  Maybe that’s a little harsh.  It’s a matter of priority I suppose.  If everyone had the same priorities then the world would run like a well-oiled machine, and that would be boring. 

   Now that I’ve clarified the housekeeping spectrum and given examples of each end and the middle, I would like to take this time to clear the good names of my moms (the original and the in-law), both of whom are also relaxed housekeepers.  By loose definition; their homes are as tidy as can be while still ensuring the comfort of their happy guests.  So I guess I inherited my housekeeping preference from my mom, who’s home has been known to be relatively uncluttered, comfortable, cozy in the winter, breezy in the summer, and altogether pleasant in every way.  I do clean my house, for those of you who are genuinely curious, and with a renewed vigor since recognizing my duties as a wife.  I like doing it, especially since it is abudantly clear to my poor (but polite) husband who still gives the impression of being unfazed by the fact that I can cook nothing but the most basic pastas.  I don’t see messes as soon as regular people do, but once I do they get a thorough cleaning, usually on days when Frank is out of the house (so I don’t make him uncomfortable with my scrubbing and sweeping and general fussing). 

   Interestingly enough, despite my relaxed approach to housekeeping, and my relatively relaxed upbringing (this is not including my mother’s technique of waiting until we children were settled in front of the tv to ask us to get up and vaccum and put things away), I do possess a handful of childhood obsessions, apparently.  For example, I cannot not clean under the wastebasket in the bathroom.  It is the subject of one of my more earnest mental debates.  One voice says, “Don’t bother cleaning all the way under the wastebasket this time, it doesn’t get very dirty back there.  Just clean that spot every other time.”  That voice is then squelched by my mother’s voice asking, “Did you clean behind the wastebasket?”  (As a child I would then be forced to go back and clean that area if the answer was no).  To this day I can’t not clean behind the wastebasket, if I am cleaning in the first place.  Its interesting how the things my parents pestered me about as a child are now critical in my own home.  

    One of the greatest crimes my husband can commit is to hold the fridge door open too long.  As a child in my parent’s home, I was to get a general idea of what I wanted from the fridge before I opened the door in the first place.  “Don’t hold the fridge door open!” was a common (and loud) utterance.  This all took place back east where (I recently joked with my brother) it didn’t matter if the fridge door was held open because it was just as cold outside the refrigerator as it was on the inside.  The lights were also a big deal.  My dad would go marching through the house from room to room swatting the light switches off and declaring loudly, “Unecessary lights!  Unecessary lights!”  Or I would be reading a book and suddenly hear a click and find myself in a pitch black room and almost panic before Dad’s voice reached me through the darkness, “Do you really need four bulbs to read by…?”  I usually picked up on his hint before he finished his sentence and I would reach over and turn on the tiny lamp by the couch, only to look over and see him standing by the livingroom light switch, drumming his fingers together and tilting his head imploringly.  

    Frank is learning that it is essential that he turn off lights when he leaves rooms.  What started as, “Hey hon, is there a reason the kitchen light is still on? …no no, I’ll get it, I’m closer.”  has been shortened to the attemptedly-cheery bellow as I watch him leave the room, “Kitchen light!” …and I assume if the direness of the situation doesn’t sink in, will turn into a simple hostile growl that he will be forced to interpret on his own.  Despite these quirks of mine, I think I make a decent housekeeper, and if I ever learn to cook I may turn out to be a pretty good wife overall. 

Hair

     Hair.  Its something most of us have, and, speaking as a woman with a lot of it, I know it can be difficult to manage.  Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not one of those women with perfect hair that complains about it.  Those women need to be drug out into the street and shaved.  We’ve all come across that woman, the one pouting non-commitally into the ladies’ room mirror, who tosses the golden cloud of glossy perfection that’s attached to her head over her shoulder while saying something dumb like, “I wish my hair would curl, I can’t do a thing with it.”  In that instance I give a response like “Mmm, yes, well.”  And I let her go on thinking that curls are wonderful and unattainable, when in my head I’m going over the privileges that she doesn’t seem to be aware that she, with her “straight” hair has.  Things like tendrils.  If pieces of hair fall out of my ponytail, they don’t sweep gracefully across my cheeks in a light breeze, giving me the opportunity to brush them cutely away again.  No, for me “tendrils” stand out from my head at odd angles, giving me an unfortunate Alfalfa-meets-Pippi-Longstocking sort of appearance.  My mom has always affectionately referred to tendrils with a mind of their own as “Whippy-dings”.   

    Speaking of wind in the hair, those straight-haired women who want you to feel sorry for them get to rock it.  Straight-haired women get to drive with the windows down, or ride in a speed boat, or get caught in a gale, and within moments afterward (and with minimal toussling with the fingers) the hair is right back in place.  If a curly-haired woman finds herself in any of these scenarios she ends up looking like she put her finger in an electrical outlet, and no amout of tousseling will revive her hair to its original state.  Yes, straight-haired women are able to enjoy the great outdoors and not have to worry about what their hair is doing because its always just blowing perfectly in the breeze like Pochahontas’ hair in the Disney version (a movie noted not only for its creative and epic soundtrack, but also for its remarkable historical innacuracy).  

    While I do hope women of other hairtypes appreciate theirs, I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m complaining about mine.  Ever since the day I read an article written by a woman with hair like mine who described it as “mermaid-y” I have been happy with my hair type.  It has been a long and difficult road though, learning to work with my hair.  I went through a phase with long hair, and a phase with really really short hair.  I went through a phase (along with my cousin Sam) where I kept a bobby pin in my hair at all times, just in case I got kidnapped and needed to pick a lock to escape.  My first memory of my hair is of my mother crying over it because my brother took a pair of scissors to it in what I assume was a rather unprofessional manner (I was too young to be upset). 

    My second memory of my hair was of an event that I refer to rather shamefully as The Great Mashed Potato Fiasco.  When I was very young (these were the days before I discovered that mashed potatos are incredibly tasty when they’re hot and slathered in lots of melty butter) I had delayed eating my mashed potatos until they were cold and I was the last one sitting at the table.  In a flash of brilliance and desperation I lifted a section of my hair from the top of my head and stashed my uneaten potatos underneath in an effort to conceal them.  I don’t remember my family’s reaction at the time, but to this day hardly a familial gathering goes by without some mention of the incident. 

    As the years went on I learned what my hair did and did not prefer.  For example: No brushing except right before a shower.  Otherwise I could start skipping and singing Follow the Yellow Brick Road and anyone watching could rule out Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tinman as people I was doing an impression of.  My hair does do some pretty cool things though.  It stays in a french braid without the need of hairspray.  It stays curly if I let it be curly…again, without the use of hairspray.  I don’t need to wash it very often, it just stays fresh and fluffy for days on end.  As long as I stay away from a stiff wind, with a little imagination it can look quite mermaid-y.  And there’s enough of it so that I know, should I ever again need to conceal any sort of edible substance, I do have that option.