Numbers and Letters

"Let's play the numbers and letters game," I would declare. Then whichever of my siblings wanted to spend an hour dreaming of a better life would pile onto the couch and the fantasy would begin.

It went like this:

1. The person sitting in the middle would hold the J.C. Penney catalogue.
2. We would claim a letter and a number. "A" and "1" were the best.
3. We would then flip through nearly every page of the catalogue, identifying which outfits, toys, and home furnishings would become "ours" based on the numbers and letters we had chosen. If you picked A or 1, whichever item bore that letter or number in the catalogue would go in your fantasy home. 

We would play this invented game for hours, going through nearly the entire catalogue, skipping only the men's fashion and tools. 

Numbers and letters was complemented by other games my siblings and I played together. Games that involved creating 2D architectural renderings of our dream homes, or building elaborate homes out of wooden blocks and Fisher Price toys. We would set up our tableaus in places where they could live for days at a time (i.e., under the dining room table, in the attic), because building a home took more than one day. 

As an adult who has had more than her fair share of therapy, I know now that, at least for me, the Numbers and Letters game helped satisfy the longings I had as a poor kid living in an increasingly wealthy and materialistic world. 

This week, The 52 Lists Project asked me and BMG to make a list of things we would do to rejuvenate our space, My brain immediately keyed into my own longings about the tiny space in which I live today, particularly the cluttered office and our pantry.  

The spare bedroom, aka the office, that I share with BMG today

The pantry/cat box space/utility storage/laundry room at The Tiny Bungalow

So let's play the grown-up version of the Letters and Numbers game. And instead of using the J.C.Penney catalogue, I'm using Houzz.com.

So, if I had all the resources in the world to rejuvenate my current space, I would:

1. Create a tidier, lighter feeling office space. Maybe something like this?

Photo by Swedish Blue Designs / LMF Design LLC - Browse eclectic home office photos

2. BMG uses the office almost entirely for storage. Which means he's ALWAYS in the living room - working, playing, relaxing, napping. If I could, I would add comfy seating to our office, so I can have a space to which I can retreat when I need some alone time or want to escape the inevitable sound of snoring on weekend afternoons. Maybe something like this?

Photo by Atlantic Archives, Inc. - Look for eclectic family room design inspiration

3. Moving on to the utility room, rejuvenating this room means creating a space that doesn't put food in such close proximity to cat poop, and doesn't require sweeping every day in the fight against the our cats' desire to pave the floor with cat litter. Something like this? 

Photo by Brickmoon Design - Browse eclectic laundry room ideas

4. I would also like to have a utility space with exceptionally efficient storage, solid shelves, and maybe a and a tidy counter, a place that doesn't overwhelm me with the constant need to rearrange things to make it look less cluttered, to make the food being stored more accessible. Maybe something like this:

Photo by Kapela Solutions - Search traditional kitchen pictures

5. While I'm dreaming about rejuvenating my space, I'd also like to request a tiny meditation space, where I can go to breathe. This would be a space that is all my own, a space where I don't have to share or compromise, where I don't have to navigate my husband's clutter, where I am not confronted by housework I have to do, bills I have to pay, obligations I need to meet. Maybe something like this:

Photo by Sheri Kaz Designs - Search Asian home gym pictures

I know I'm solidly middle class, living a life of privilege. BMG and I have enough money to shelter, clothe, and feed ourselves without having to struggle. By all accounts, mine is a good life and is typically one without complaints.

But, I still have longings. There is still a 10-year old self inside of me, who longs to have the finest things that she can possibly imagine. 

Thanks for the dream time, 52 Lists. 

The Cherry Pitter

I live in a tiny house. A tiny house with a tiny amount of storage space.

This tiny amount of storage space, combined with my natural propensity for simple living, are the reasons why I tend to shy away from single use kitchen gadgets. Things like egg slicers (knives work just great), grapefruit spoons, and spaghetti servers. Yeah, nope. Don't need 'em. Don't want 'em.

But, I *do* have a cherry pitter.

This is a tool that expels the pit of a cherry into a small chute, and then with a poof, pops it into a waiting vessel (like a hand or a bowl). The sound of the pit being forced out of the fruit sounds like a gnome-sized nail gun to me. And the part of device that presses into the cherry to push out the pit looks like a gnome sized pick-axe.

The result of the pitter's work is tiny piece of stone fruit with a gaping flesh wound that looks as if a bullet has passed through it. While it is no longer gorgeous, but it is also free of the tiny pit you need to awkwardly and ungracefully dispose of every time you consume one cherry.  

I've owned mine for three years. And I've used it maybe four times. It takes up precious real estate in my limited drawer space. By all rights, it is not the sort of thing I would ever own.

But I'll never get rid of it.

Because every time I use it, I'm reminded of my father-in-law.

In the short time I knew him, he introduced me to the magic of the cherry pitter.

It was a weekend day, long before BMG and I were actually married, and I was visiting with him and my mother-in-law. As I chatted with them, my father-in-law was discreetly flexing his hand and causing a small popping sound.

"What are you doing?" I remember asking.

And he explained the cherry pitter, even letting me take the reins of the device and giving it a squeeze.

I may have scoffed at the need for a cherry pitter, perhaps extolling the diverse virtues of the knife or asking "How hard is it to eat around the pit?"

I remember my father-in-law laughing and telling me the cherries were much more delicious when they were pitted. And that was that.

A couple of years later, after he passed from this earth, BMG and I were planning our wedding. I insisted on putting a cherry pitter on our registry. BMG raised his eyebrows at me (he knows me well), but I insisted. And that was that.

*****

I much prefer to infuse everyday objects with meaning and memories, rather than holding onto other types of mementos. Doing so gives me regular opportunities to reflect on the person or event that I associate with the object. The size of my home makes it harder for me to display or interact with other types of memory devices, like photos stored on Facebook or in print albums or souvenirs from trips,

And I don't need them. I don't need a photo of my father-in-law to remember what made him such a special person. I don't need to hang onto every gift he ever gave me to make I don't forget him. Nope. All I need is to pit a few cherries and boom, I'm reminded of how much I hold him in my heart.

A Room of My Own

“Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.” 

― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

My husband gave me a desk for my birthday this year. And by this I mean he cleaned out our spare room (aka "the office") so I could make room for a desk and some of my personal things.

My desk is utilitarian. A boxy black tabletop affixed to a tool bookshelf on one side, and a smaller one on the other. On it rests my laptop computer, a box of bills to pay and paid bills to file, and accouterments of an ordinary office. I look up and see a collage I made more than 10 years ago, framed and reminding me that no one can squelch the light that shines within me. I also see a picture of my family and another of my nieces and nephews. Hastily decoupaged tins, commandeered from the bathrooms where they once held cotton balls and band-aids, now hold my dusty collection of designer markers and colored pencils collected long ago to supplement a stamp art habit. And, of course, a photo of Paris, taken on my first trip there with BMG more than seven years ago.

Looking around the 6' x 4' space I've been granted in the office, I am reminded that it is energizing and essential to have one's own space for creative endeavors.

Now that I have a desk, I'm finding myself excited about all of the computer projects that were piling up. Projects like:

• Help my husband organize the accounting and project management system for his business
• Teaching myself Wordpress so I can work on our blog and other social media properties
• Helping my husband set up an Etsy shop to sell his photography
• Starting to write again
• Starting to do more paper crafting
• Breathing. 

I hadn't realized how much being forced to pay bills from the kitchen counter or being relegated to the cat hair covered couch to do my blogging in the wee hours of the morning before my hubby flipped on ESPN was cramping my style. But it was.

I write this at 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. ESPN is, in fact, blaring from the living room (which is also the kitchen and the dining room in our tiny home). But I'm neither distracted nor bothered by it. And, from my little space in the office, all I can see are the tools of my productive life. There are no rugs that need to be vacuumed, dishwashers that need to be emptied, litter boxes that cry to be cleared, and washing machines whose silence reminds me it is time to throw their contents into the dryer.

It doesn't take a lot to make this girl happy. And I am happy to have a room of my own. Thanks BMG.

The First Thanksgiving

BMG and I were multi-tasking while watching the DVR version of the Plimoth Plantation episode of Top Chef 12. As Padma announced that the chefs were preparing a traditional Thanksgiving feast for descendants of the first Thanksgiving - both the first pilgrims and the Wompanoag peoples, BMG and I looked at each other and observed we were both moved to tears by the premise of the episode.

And then we started laughing.

As we moved towards one another to hug each other BMG said, "I am so glad we found one another. No one else would understand, let alone share, my tears in this moment."

Me too darling, me too.

Park N-Shop

I had to take the strengths finder aptitude test for work and discovered that I am an "achiever."  What this means is "By the end of every day I must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about myself."

Big surprise.

I was raised by a list maker. Every day she would make a list of things that needed to be done. When my four siblings and I were old enough to read (and do chores), my mother would make lists for us too. "You can't play until you've done everything on your list" was her mantra. To further cement the importance of lists in our lives, we even played games that started with making lists.

Park N-Shop dealt each player a set of errand cards. The object of the game was to run your errands more efficiently than anyone else. The game board was a mock-up of a downtown square, and you rolled the dice to see how many sidewalk squares you could move to get to your next destination. Park N-Shop was such an influential game in my family that it became part of our vernacular, slang for being more or less efficient than one would like. As in "I am not park n-shopping very well today."

In Park N-Shop your errand cards functioned as your list. and one of the core strategies of Park N-Shop was to review your cards and plot out the most efficient route for tearing through downtown.

Luckily, I also married a list maker.

We just made our list of things to do this weekend, and have finished negotiating the first leg of our weekend errand running. We will drive to the farmer's market. Buy whatever vegetables (or other goodies) we want. We will then store them in the car while we walk to a local watering hole so BMG can pick up his football cards. We'll then walk back to the car, and head to the mall to return something and look for a new bookshelf for the living room. On the way back, we'll stop at Bed Bath and Beyond so I can get the new floor and carpet steamer I've been wanting. Once at home, we'll move the clean sheets from the dryer and make the bed, and move the wet towels to the dryer. Then, I'll clean the bathroom (including steam cleaning the floor).

Boom!

This achiever feels satisfied today.

A Household Quiz

You are restocking the medicine cabinet in your bathroom and have two empty boxes that need to be thrown away. 

Oh no! You realize the bathroom waste can is full. 

Do you:

A. Empty the waste can, put in a new liner and throw away the boxes? 

B. Find another trash receptacle in the house to toss the boxes in?

C. Realize these are paperboard and you can simply fold them up and put them with the other paper recycling?

D. Set the trash can on fire? (It IS getting colder outside and you'd rather not pay for heat if you can burn things.)

E. Do this and hope your wife doesn't notice when she gets home?

I'm pretty sure I'm going to blink first on this one.