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9 june 2003
currently reading
A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. I'm only about a third of the way through this book, but I can already tell you that it's one of the best I've read in awhile. Engaging and detailed, this is everyone else's history: Native Americans, women, child laborers, and the poor. Zinn does an outstanding job of balancing what we learned in high school textbooks with a less glorified discussion of our country's oft-violent, imperialist past. I will be incorporating selections from this book into my next batch of 8th-graders' lessons.
current listening
BBC World News.
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my genetics need counseling
I had a much better weekend than I thought I would. I was sure it would be tiresome and somewhat hopeless as I continued putting my home back together. People think that I am organized. I am not, or at least my environment isn't. Clean, but not neat. My brain keeps track of things better than my body does. It has been said that I live in layers: several layers of shoes in the living room, a few layers of clothing in the bedroom, and a layer of towels in the bathroom. The den is stacked up with mail, magazines, and dozens of cords at the moment. I need a nanny, an assistant, a (new vocabulary word for me this year) factotum. Someone to keep track of my environs while I go about the business of being a creative sort.
I don't go around blaming a lot of my shortcomings on genetics, but there's no doubt about this one. It's a Holzer thing. It's all bloodline, all day. We are legendary for being blissfully non-neat. We are the antineatnik clan. We know how to make ourselves at home! We don't need no highfalutin' decorators and fancy shelves and closet organizers that you buy from infomercials. Moving boxes make perfectly good clothes hampers. One of these days, a Holzer is going to beat the world record in hurdles, because it's what we must do just to traverse our bedrooms. We hurdle clothing stacks and whatever else is piled up around here. We have other things to do.
There are, of course, neat Holzers. They weren't born that way, okay? Some Mr. or Miss Neat married into the family and put their big, organized foot down and trained one or another of us. I think that's what happened to my Dad. He hasn't hurdled a stack of anything in years.
Gramma told me about the growing-up years of one of my aunts. She wasn't a big fan of doing laundry, so Gramma told me that this aunt would just grab everything out of a pile and iron the mess out of it to look all crisp. She was a good ironer. I have another aunt that married a guy who may as well have been Holzer stock. Their house is clean, but you're gonna do some hurdling. Like, you can't get to the piano anymore.
Gramma and Grampa's house is better now that they have a housekeeper to help. Also safer. It used to kind of freak out non-Holzer in-laws when us kids would get a stick-pin in our foot from running up the carpeted stairs. Or when we would find an unwrapped ham on the shelf next to Grampa's hunting gear in the basement. Their house was big fun when we were kids, though. We didn't know any better, except we were to make ourselves totally at home. So Heather fell in the litter box when we were pogo-sticking in the basement...it was still fun. Remember those really old weight-loss machines with the vibrating belt that you stuck your butt in and shook for awhile? They had one of those in the basement, next to the pool table. Our parents didn't like us sticking our heads in there and turning it on.
I suppose that there is some virtue in us not being too concerned with what goes where. I do worry occasionally, though, at my utter befuddlement when faced with organizing tasks. Dirt is a priority--I don't do dirt and smells. Bleck. I mop and vacuum and sweep just fine, thanks. But why am I perfectly okay with letting a load of CLEAN laundry sit in the easy chair for three days, and just pulling out what I need until someone comes over and wants to sit in the chair? Why do I let CLEAN dishes sit in the dishwasher, and pick out of it until it's empty again? There is always something more important to do. Write. Read. Anything but putting stuff away.
This probably makes no sense to you who aren't genetically wired this way. How can I be half Mom and still be like this? Mom puts things away. You can find things at Mom's house. You can't find matching shoes at mine.
I guess I just worry about 40 or 50 years from now, and what are kids going to find at my house that's going to freak out their parents? They gonna stick their hand in my 50-year-old juicer and juice themselves to a stump? Find a slab of open tofu lying next to vintage copies of Harpers? I don't want people wondering what my floor looks like forever. For crying out loud, I went to work a month ago with mismatched EARRINGS because I wasn't paying attention. ARGH!
Anyway, I hope you guys had a good weekend. I was finally able to make dinner tonight, quinoa tempeh with rice noodles and tabouli. I washed all the dishes, cleaned up, and mopped the floor.
The dishes are drying in the kitchen.
They'll be there until Thursday.
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