Housewifing
The best part of Kevin and his contractor friend Phil being at my house this week building the studio is that I get to housewife.
See, I’m that kind. The domestic sphere is my jam; nothing makes me happier than being tucked into my hobbit hole with everything I need. I’d much rather “cook for the boys” and do their laundry and errands than do the sawing and hammering and measuring and all that. I can do it. I renovated the downstairs of my first house learning from experienced friends.
I just don’t like it. It’s prissy of me, but I just loathe that kind of work. It seems like so much effort for such basic results (this can only be said by a spoiled modern westerner, I realize).
Give me a household budget to manage, food to lay in and meals to plan for, and people to cook for, and I’m into it. Everything’s a mess everywhere and I spent a lot of time chasing after them and putting tools back where they go and taking things off ledges that shouldn’t be there. Someone has to constantly decrease entropy just to keep up.
So it’s a couple meals and five or six sinkfuls of dishes a day, plus errands to get the necessary hardware.
The two of them are doing quick, amazing work, and I’m glad for it. It’s nice to have company to look after, and the honest truth is I’m a housewife at heart when it comes to the home.
This concludes the Houghton-Mifflin Filmstrip Series: “The Homosexual: A Study in Pearls.” REMOVE STRIP WHEN ACCOMPANYING TAPE BEEPS
Josh, in this piece and all the others, it's you, serving up a steaming warm cup of soup on a cold day in a snowstorm, with your words. Even when what you write is hard-hitting, or disturbing, or sad, I can smell the fragrant aroma of your craft and envision you in your "mind kitchen" experimenting with phrase ingredients, spicing up with extra punctuation, and occasionally dishing up a song as a sweet sauce on the side.
Your passion for planning - whipping up and serving up delicious meals - and then cleaning up, leaving a sparkling kitchen for next time around - is so much the way I see/feel/touch/smell your work, Josh. I always sit down to an original recipe, and I always always leave satisfied! Thank you!!! You know I just love you so much!❤️💕🥰
This brought me such joy to read, describing yourself 'hobbit-ing'- I feel this. I can do the construction myself in basic ways, have done it helping build my own house once-upon-a-time. Which I knew enough to design. I still do most of the 'muscle-work' around the yard- I'm a gardener in the 'homesteading' sense; I prune, saw, rake, haul, shovel, pile- to make berms, clear fallen trees, create swales, direct runoff, clear ditches, trim borders and lawns, pull invasives(please if privet had never gone wild...I'll take bamboo to manage any day), make leaf piles, and I just have a very modest less than two acres. Mostly for wildlife, with a 'tidy garden' for myself. Very Shire-meets-Japan-via-India. lol. But then there's the 'hostessing' part of me. Getting out both grandmothers' crystal serving dishes or hand-stitched doilies when the now-rare guest comes to tea or for when no one comes over for every holiday that I decorate for. I love holidays, and I have 'unconventional' ones, like Imbolc and Obon. Lunar New Year is a big deal for me. I make paper decorations myself, make special treats. My daughter used to enjoy being part of that, we shared those interests. Then 'woke' happened. If she ever is interested in speaking to me again(I'm a holistic health practitioner and will not mask or obey compelled speech for a cult), I'm hoping each of us can have sessions with you. It's a hope, at least. Happy Hobbit-ing~! <3