Housework Monday

Today was way better than yesterday. Yesterday I cried. (I think it was menstrual.) Saturday we tried to have a little party for my birthday. 3/4 of people could not come. I felt very grateful to the two very important to me couples that did come. I felt I should send them a thank you note just for taking time out of their schedules to come. AND they gave me gift cards AND they both brought bean dip. I think it's much better when you tell people to bring a dish instead of a gift, to ask them to bring whatever they want because what is funnier than every single person bringing the same thing? That is a cohesive group of friends. Another friend came a little later but I offended her, she soon left, and then I felt bad through the next morning about it. I was just keeping it real. I really thought it was dumb to rename yourself after a building material. Maybe without margaritas I would not have said it out loud. But I came to a conclusion. I CANNOT live in an isolated ecovillage. This may be the Geography of Nowhere, but I am here, my family is here, my friends are here, enough people are here that I can meet diverse interest groups. I like that. I know by now that happiness has everything to do with perception and little to do with location. We are going to have to do something with the suburbs anyway. It wouldn't be efficient to completely tear them down. Better to be a beacon of education in a crowd than a purist in the middle of nowhere.

So yesterday, I finally got dressed, resenting the New Year's Eve sort of inevitable-let-down pressure of an adult birthday, and drove in the rain to the best hot chai latte, one town over. No wallet. I scrapped together the coins from Chris' car, enjoyed the latte, and reflected on how I would live out my cob dreams, realizing now that I was unwilling to live in places where people renamed themselves Cob and were defensive about it. I began to imagine a municipal sculpture park, inspired by Nikki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden, which was inspired by Gaudi's Parc Guell.

Colorful and inviting, that children could climb and crawl into and play with, each sculpture representing a tennet of sustainability or suggestion toward. So I'm drawing up ideas. I know just the park for it.

I came home after the latte, sat around and watched TV with my family, who did not want to go on my annual walk in the woods, and got depresseder. I finally decided to go to the bookstore by myself, feeling guilty that I was choosing to leave my family as my birthday treat. Gracie gave me such a power pout on the way out that I turned the corner and pulled the car over. Then I pulled into a parking lot and cried. I ended up going to a movie with my best cousin (also an attendee from the night before) but guilty and anxious about Chris' feelings about my leaving him to go to a movie. (again with the menstrual) We saw Burn After Reading. It was pretty funny.

I already skipped yoga today. I just didn't feel like it. But we did 3 loads of laundry -all the way to folded and in the drawers, and finished the dishes and got the kids to tidy the house and work in their workbooks and made Thai food for lunch and peeled and sliced a dozen apples t0gether (which is harder) and made 2 apple crumbles. Then I called my MIL about the kids coming over later and had a very awkward exchange when Chris answered the phone, thinking it was his brother sounding creepily like Chris, because why would he be at his mom's and not school. I guess he didn't have anything to work on. But he is leaving early tomorrow morning because he has to work on some stuff. I feel uncomfortable about this. I don't want to micromanage his time or be on his case, but I am jealous that he has free time. I don't have any free time. If I am not with the kids, I am at work, or in transit to one or the other. But he has secret mystery hang out time? I felt like I caught him cheating. I mean, not just like. Just a little like.