This is the first week since I succumbed to this ghastly thyroid problem six weeks ago that I’ve managed to do everyone’s school with them and tick off all the boxes without extreme pain and suffering. Not only so but we also managed to finally “move in” to our own bedroom since we first came to live here. Places like one’s own bedroom get shoved to the bottom of the list in a move like this one. The living room has to be nice first, and the dining room and kitchen, then the children’s rooms and school room, and then, many months later, when everything else is pleasant and functional, only then do you realize that the place you shoved your bed and all the piles of boxes isn’t going to work. Of course, with both of us being not totally well and trying to keep pace with regular life, it took about three weeks to actually put things away and clean so that it feels like a real room.
The problem with a bedroom, as I see it, although this is true for every room in a house, is that you have to be able to see out the windows. You have to be able to lie in bed and see the sky and any tree that there might be. If you can’t see out the window you might as well chuck it all in and embrace the flirting specter of seasonal depression always lurking at your elbow–enticing and threatening by turns. So, the bed Could Not go into the alcove clearly designed for it. It was too big and you wouldn’t be able to see out either of the two gracious windows. But also, the long wall was precluded because that messed with my ability to come into the room without wanting to die. So that meant it had to go right by the door and partially cover the heater. Which is actually ok because that way I’m not dying of being too hot all night. From this vantage point I can see the early morning lights of downtown and also the sunrise. In the summer and autumn the big glorious trees will make me feel like I’m in Lothlorien. Take that Depression. Go find some other sucker.
This may seem counterintuitive but having a clean bright put together bedroom that is not piled high with all the stuff of the house that has no where else to reside is an enormous help to my overall ability to cope with reality. To work really hard all day and then come into a bedroom at night that is junked and shuddering under the weight of stuff means that all the other work seems pointless. If you keep the whole house clean but fail to clean your own bedroom you are guilty of the whole house being filthy. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Bible. Right now, I can’t keep the whole house clean, but the four days of having a clean bedroom has lifted the dooming sense of despair that follows me most every winter.
Really, the only barrier remaining for me being completely happy in this house is now to paint and peg board the kitchen. My hope is to put peg board on every available kitchen wall and then hang all the things on all the pegs. It’s going to be #fantastic.
Well, and maybe ripping up the floor, and doing something about the counters, and dealing with the attic, and stuffing the garden with flowers, and rearranging the girl’s room, and cleaning my pantry-office, and putting up the timeline in the school room, and painting the bedroom and the dining room chairs…never mind, I guess there’s still a lot to do.
The other thing I learned this week is that I needn’t go downstairs to the kitchen before it’s time to concoct luncheon–at least on school days. When I go downstairs, no matter how hard I try to rush things along, I can’t get my end of school started until ten. That doesn’t mean that no one is doing anything, it just means that the weakest and most dependent children don’t do anything. Which then backs us up into the afternoon.
If, however, I bring a box of muesli and a spoon up with me to my bedroom at night, I can eat it out of my teacup with my tea milk before my feet ever hit the ground. Then, not starving to death, I can actually stand up in the shower and pick up the sundry items that gather themselves all over the bathroom, hallway, and my own sparkly room. This system depends necessarily on the tray of tea being brought up by Matt between 4:30 and 5 and also by a child carrying it back down, making new tea and carrying it up the two flights of stairs to the attic school room. I then arrive, calm and collected, at Nine AM in the school room, ready to start, a Whole Hour earlier than before. This means that the potion of school that requires me is easily all done by noon and I have the rest of the day to yell at the children to do the stuff they can on their own. It’s pretty #fantastic.
I didn’t get to read very much on my own this week. I’m reading the Iliad to the kids, and Anne of Avonlea, and a stack of other books. On my own I only got in two chapters of No Little Women (5 stars so far), two chapters of Fierce Convictions (the writing continues to be my favorite), snatches of Miss Read, and Posh Food. Posh Food is the best because you can read each line in isolation and still be improved as a person.
And that’s Notes for this week. Have a lovely day.
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