House(wife) Work

I'm doing my best to be a Good Housewife--by appearances, I may be accomplishing a lot on the Good Housewife Project front.  I've been cooking dinner a lot more frequently than I ever have in my life (and apparently Dan even brags about my cooking at work--seriously???  I never really thought I would say the phrase "my cooking," let alone have Dan bragging about it!), the kids are happy and healthy, and the house is decently clean on a daily basis thanks to my cleaning schedule.  I've been feeling good about my ability to maintain and juggle all the demands in my life...but appearances can be deceiving.  Even though I'm feeling good about what I've been doing around the house, I have found that my internal monologue is running on repeat...specifically, repeating the same song over and over again as I go about my chores:

Yeah, the chorus of this song runs through my head--sometimes I even hear myself benignly humming the "Take this job and shove it" part while I'm cleaning the toilets.  I don't even realize what I'm humming, but when it dawns on me, it makes me laugh--my subconscious is trying to tell me something, apparently.  I don't feel particularly burdened or even unhappy about my job as a housewife, but I guess there are only so many bathrooms I can clean with a smile on my face and a pleasant song in my heart.

sometimes I fantasize about a desk job...

I love that my cleaning schedule now gives me a daily task and helps me not get behind, but some days, I want to rip it off the fridge and tear it to pieces.  It all feels a little silly, since it's a calendar I made up for myself and obviously it's not binding--I'm not a hired maid getting paid for my work (although, hey, some money for my effort would be nice--ha ha!).  I could just blow it off, but I know if I do, I will pay for it in the long run...so I keep cleaning, and I keep humming that same song over and over again.

Yesterday, I checked the cleaning schedule and discovered (yet again) that bathrooms were on the docket.  It seems that happens about once a week...the way things usually work with a schedule.  Ugh.  Instead of accepting my anthem of "Take this Job and Shove It," I decided to harness a more positive message--whatever my iPod had playing on shuffle!  Normally I don't wear my iPod when cleaning during naptime, because I never know when a desperate cry of "I need to go potty!" will emanate from Jake's room, but he had already gone once, so I figured I was safe...  I put my earbuds in, my cleaning gloves on, and got to work--rocking some Dave Matthews, Outkast, The Bangles, Erasure, Britney Spears, and UVa a capella (I seriously scrolled back through my playlist to get a sampling of what played while I cleaned--don't judge my eclectic musical tastes!).  In between songs a few times, I thought I could hear Jake yelling from his room, but I just kept cleaning and singing...and occasionally smiling.  No undies were wet during my cleaning time, I got all three bathrooms done before I had to rally the boys to go pick Abby up from the bus stop, and I kept the drudgery at bay, if only for 45 minutes!

Loose Ends

I feel like I've thrown a lot of things out there the last few weeks, so I thought I would tie up some loose ends today, in case any of you were curious!

First of all, my best friend Kerry is doing much better, other than the fact that she tried to go back to work today when she should have stayed home recuperating...  She's feeling better, but she still doesn't have her strength back up, so she ended up fainting at work and back at the hospital this morning!  Ugh...at least she's home now, and it was just a case of doing too much too soon.  I still wish I could be there, but hopefully today was the last hospital visit for a while!  I'm trying to convince her to take it easy the rest of the week, but she's stubborn.  :)  She's a teacher, earning her doctorate, and heavily involved in her community as well as her friends--her schedule is usually jam-packed, so I'm selfishly happy that her forced time off has allowed us to talk more the last few weeks than usual.  If I can't be there in person, that's the next best thing!

anyone need a house?

Second, we have been waiting and waiting to hear if the person who expressed interest in purchasing our house in Ohio wanted to move forward with sale.  We just heard from him on Saturday, and he is not ready to purchase anything right now.  I am totally bummed--I kept hoping that since he had searched us out when our house wasn't even on the market, he was seriously interested and would decide to buy the house.  We weren't even thinking about selling the house, but once that idea was on the table and I did all the research, I really felt like it was the best possible outcome for us.  So without this buyer, it's back to the rental market we go...and our current tenants are moving out at the end of this month!  We don't have a lot of time to market and get new folks in, so that means we'll probably be carrying our entire mortgage payment along with our rent for this house for at least a month or two...a little stressful.  The interested buyer did indicate that he might be in a better position to buy something next year, so maybe we'll have another shot at this next year?  I won't hold my breath this time!

Third, my first week using my new cleaning schedule went well (and I've been almost 100% sticking to it...I didn't get the floors Swiffered on Friday...), although I already have some changes I think I need to make for next month.  I was up and down to the basement doing tons of laundry today, and I wasn't able to get it all put away or even folded--so I'm thinking that perhaps I should wash the loads on Sundays and spend Mondays folding and putting away?  I'm not sure, since my other laundry day right now is Thursday--and Thursday and Sunday are pretty close to each other.  I may have to shift laundry days entirely, or be more productive on Mondays--ha!  My in-laws came by the house on Saturday and my mother-in-law commented on how clean the house looked--which makes me think the cleaning schedule has been great, and also that apparently I didn't clean well enough for their previous visits...

my new scale--pretty, huh?

Fourth, I went back and revisited my Challenge #2 Outline post, because I've been failing some of those objectives a bit.  My midnight bedtime has crept back to 1am, which is not good--I love 8 hours of sleep!  And I think I need it, especially since I'm exercising and a lot busier during my days lately...and therefore, a lot more tired.  So I needed the reminder that midnight is my cut off time!  I've also been eating some after 8pm--Dan and I will eat fruit while we watch TV shows, and my new favorite nighttime treat is a banana dipped in melted chocolate!  So at least I'm not eating cupcakes and cookies on the couch, but I still need to make those late-night snacks fewer and farther between--every once in a while is okay, but not every night.  I also have been slacking a little bit on my water intake--I haven't been hitting my 64 ounces a day...and some days, not even close.  I know that's not helping me on the weight-loss front, so I need to be more cognizant of my water throughout the day.  And now that I'm doing these exercise classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I haven't felt the urgency to work out on other days--but I think exercising 4 days a week isn't too much to ask.  I need to do something on my own at least one day a week--either my treadmill, or some strength training...even the stairs!  I just need to suck it up and add another day of exercise to my routine.  I am doing a really great job with my WebMD food journal--everything I eat goes in that thing!  I also measure everything I eat at home, so I'm achieving that objective as well.  I just need to step up my game and keep myself on track.  I've been sucked into weighing myself more frequently as well, which is so bad for my self-esteem...that scale just seems to call out to me...  So I need to restrict myself to only stepping on the scale on Sundays again, if only for my sanity.

will I become a crock pot convert?

And finally, I have to give a shout out to my awesome friend Julie.  Julie and I have been friends since we both tried out for our middle school cheerleading squad--we made the team, and have been friends ever since!  She was one of my bridesmaids at our wedding, and we were so fortunate to live in Ohio in the same city with her while Dan was in law school--she and I had many ice cream dates, and she was at the hospital when Abby was born.  :)  She is now married with a beautiful little girl of her own, and she has been a huge supporter of me in this blog endeavor.  She surprised the heck out of me today when a package from her (by way of Amazon) showed up on my doorstep--inside is a crock pot!  She told me to consider it a contribution to my Good Housewife Project.  :)  So cool and thoughtful--now I need to figure out how to use it!  Thank you, Julie!

Lemon-Thyme Chicken

I decided last night was the night to tackle the new Lemon-Thyme Chicken recipe, since Tuesdays are the only weeknight that isn't rushed for us these days--I have my exercise classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Abby has gymnastics on Thursday evenings.  My new cleaning schedule called for me to wipe down the bathrooms, so I wanted to tackle that at the beginning of naptime, and then start some of the prep work for the new recipe.  I figured Dan would come home from work and we would work together in the kitchen to get the meal done, but I wanted to get the ball rolling and study the recipe a bit so that I would know what I was doing a little better than I did with the Miso Steak recipe!  I got the three bathrooms done in about 20 minutes--I wiped down the counters pretty quickly, but I did a fairly good clean of each toilet...since Jake uses the bathroom on his own, there's a lot of toilet touching, and it can't hurt to have those be clean!  Then I set to working on the dinner prep--it was about 2:45pm when I pulled up the recipe and started figuring out what I needed to do.

The recipe calls for sliced shallots.  I have never cooked with a shallot before (gee, are you surprised?), and I honestly didn't know what they were when I was looking for them at the commissary.  I pulled them out of my fridge yesterday (not even entirely sure they should have been in the fridge?), and had absolutely no clue what to do with them at that point.  Cue Google!  "How to slice a shallot" gave me a step-by-step how-to involving slicing the shallot in half length-wise, then cutting off the non-root end, and then peeling off the skin and slicing it.  I guess I didn't really realize that a shallot is part of the onion family (I read that it was somewhere between onion and garlic...which made me think it was not an onion), but oh man--was it like an onion!  I was tearing up and terribly uncomfortable while I was cutting--I kept thinking that I've seen a remedy for onions causing tears, but I couldn't think of it off hand, so I just cried.  I was talking to my mom on the phone, and I do believe I said, "Why on earth does anyone cook?!?" at some point during the crying episode.  It really was uncomfortable!  When I finally stopped crying, I moved on to the garlic--I bought a bunch of cloves at the commissary, not really knowing how much I would need.  I was trying to figure out how to cut garlic when my own mother, the Original Good Housewife herself, informed me that she had never cut garlic before--she said, "I took one look at garlic cloves when I was younger, said to myself, 'Well, that looks too complicated!' and bought garlic flakes in a jar instead.  Much easier!"  Huh--I didn't realize that my make-everything-from-scratch mother had her own short cuts!  Good to know...  I forged ahead with the garlic cutting--neither my mom nor I realized that each head of garlic contains something like 10 cloves, and it's the cloves you need to get to before you start cutting.  You also apparently have to smash the garlic before cutting it to make the skin fall off easier--that part was kind of fun!

cutting garlic, with a little help from Google

When I cut up enough garlic, I went to work on the zucchini--the recipe called for using my vegetable peeler to make long strings of zucchini, which I thought was kind of cool.  Dan isn't a fan of zucchini and didn't realize it was in this recipe (even though I told him before I bought everything...grrr), so I was hoping he had forgotten about the zucchini disagreement and the long strings would throw him off.  Then I prepped the meat--I don't own a meat tenderizer, so I got out some frustration by punching the chicken with my fists!  I guess I made a ton of noise, because Jake was upstairs in his room (not sleeping) yelling, "Mommy!  What's that sound?"  Somehow I didn't wake Alex up, and he was in the room right next to me--my dear third child who sleeps through everything.  I cleaned up my big mess, washed a few dirty pans that were in the sink, and was done with my pre-dinner prep right when Dan brought Abby in from the school bus at 4:45pm--2 hours after I started this project.  Clearly whoever wrote this recipe and said that the prep time would take 5 minutes forgot to include an important ingredient--namely, the extra 30 people needed to prep the food that quickly.

Dan is not feeling well, so when he came in the door, he wanted to just lie down on the couch...usually when cooking is involved, he doesn't want to give me the reigns, so I was surprised when he bowed out of any involvement.  I did want to cook it myself, since I had already devoted so much time and effort, but I was also kind of hoping for a little help...just to manage the time and the table and everything.  But I pushed forward, sauteing the edamame, shallots, and grape tomatoes:

I was pretty proud of myself--usually Dan handles the sauteing!

The finished veggie product included the zucchini, and I even served it out of Dan's favorite ridiculous bamboo bowl that he desperately (and randomly) wanted one year for Christmas:

looks good, but I still wasn't sure how it would taste

When the veggies were done, I moved on to the chicken, which I had cut into smaller pieces.  I had a lot of chicken to cook--probably more than the recipe called for, but I wanted to have some left over for dinner tonight (because my husband loves leftovers--NOT!).  It took longer to cook the chicken in the pan because I had so many pieces of chicken, but eventually it was all done, and Dan got up in time to help me get plates out and get everything ready.  Here's my plate before I dug in!

Lemon-Thyme Chicken

I thought the thyme flavor was a bit strong for my taste, but Dan seemed to really like the meal (minus the zucchini, which suspiciously ended up still on his plate when he was all done), and Abby actually declared that I am the best chef in the house--ha!  :)  That made me smile--our sweet girl will try anything, and likes almost everything.  Jake freaked out about the veggies and wasn't a fan of the chicken flavor, but did manage to eat most of his chicken after some coaxing.  He was in tears, though, so I wouldn't call that a success.  Alex was super excited and played with his edamame--at one point, he was putting them to bed on his lap--but he never actually ate any of the food (not a shocker).  I even tried the are-you-eating-my-dinner trick, which has been working like a charm up until this meal, but he just smiled and said, "You eat it, Mommy!" while offering me his full plate.  Sigh.  So it wasn't the best family meal, but I was still really proud of myself for stepping WAY out of my comfort zone--cooking, cooking unfamiliar foods, and eating those unfamiliar foods!

The New Maid

I wish I was making an announcement about the new cleaning lady who'll be coming over to our house once a week...but alas, the cleaning lady is still plain old me, upgraded to Maid 2.0 with a new plan of action.  After our big clean of the house this past weekend, I really, really wanted to get crackin' on the cleaning schedule.  I intended to create one after the last big clean...but it didn't happen.  So I set to work on that yesterday, and after some searching, I found a template that I thought could work for me.  This isn't the first cleaning schedule I've created--my first one was scribbled hastily on a scrap piece of paper, and it stayed in my nightstand drawer for a few moves.  Why was it in my nightstand drawer, you ask?  Because I wrote it after I went to bed late one night, when inspiration hit me and I thought, "I need a cleaning schedule to make life more manageable!"  I crawled out of bed, found a scrap of paper and a pen, and wrote out the bare bones of a plan.  I want to say that was at least 4 years ago?  In case you couldn't guess, a piece of paper shoved in my nightstand has not at all helped me keep my house clean.  That first attempt at a cleaning schedule (and all my research since that has unfortunately not resulted in anything concrete) was at least a little helpful in that it gave me some direction when creating my new, improved cleaning schedule:

it looks good, so I'm hopeful that it's functional as well!

As you can see, the schedule is already hanging on my fridge, right next to our calendar.  I'm hopeful that checking the schedule will become part of my morning routine, so I'll know what's on the docket for the day.  I tried to give myself a lighter load earlier in the week, because Mondays are short days for Abby at school (which therefore cuts into my naptime hours to get anything done), and Tuesdays are busy with Jake's gymnastics in the morning.  I'm not sure how only doing laundry twice a week is going to work out--I will probably have to add extra loads here and there since Dan has a habit of springing things on me (like, "Honey, I'm going to bed since it's almost midnight...oh, I meant to tell you that I spilled coffee all down the front of my uniform today, so I need it to be washed before tomorrow..."), but if I can make it work on Mondays and Thursdays, I'll be pleasantly surprised.  I don't know if you can see the detail of my schedule from that picture, but I put certain tasks in bold font--those are the "deep clean" tasks, and I tried to space them out so that I do light cleaning most days, with one day a week devoted to a deep clean in one area of the house (bathrooms, kitchen, floors, etc).  Hopefully this will keep me from having to "company clean," which has been my ad hoc cleaning schedule for the last few years...and we don't have company over nearly enough to keep this house clean on a regular basis!

The Company Clean--my previous haphazard approach!

I'm sure I've forgotten some crucial things that should be on the schedule, so I will tweak it this month and have a better product next month.  The stars must have aligned to make the timing right on me finally setting up a schedule--yesterday was the first Monday of the month, and I was able to start my schedule on Week 1, Day 1.  That totally pleases the OCD in me!  :)  I had done laundry on Sunday (not knowing my new schedule would call for Monday laundry), so I spent yesterday doing a few more loads, as well as folding and putting it all away!  I know this will make Dan happy--I think one of his least favorite things is overflowing laundry baskets all over the floor.  So I've already checked off the tasks of one day, and the sense of accomplishment I derived from checking them off will definitely keep me on schedule.  Hooray for my new cleaning schedule!  Please tell me I'm not the only person who gets excited about stuff like this!  :)