Be it Ever So Humble and Odd

One day, when my gal-pal, Lyle and I were still raising babies and up to our ears in diapers and baby food, she said to me, "Sometimes I wonder how many weird things there are about my house that other people notice and I don't."

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

After she said that, I wondered too, especially since we were at my house when she said it. I still wonder years later, just in a different house. I no longer have raising babies as an excuse, but still, life gets hectic, my kids couldn't care less if our house looks like we just hosted a frat party, and I'm not very handy. You get the drift.

As I write this, there is a cobweb growing ever bigger on the front porch, as if our house were practicing for Halloween. There is duct tape wrapped around the kitchen faucet, and the kitchen waste basket is in the pantry, one step down from the rest of the kitchen and out of reach of everyone but giraffes and orangutans, because when we put it anywhere else, the dog gets into it and trots the contents all over the house.

The paint is peeling off several of our interior doors, but only at about six inches up the outside edges because that is where the cats squeeze their paws in to open doors that aren't quite latched. If we were to shut the doors more tightly when we want privacy, the paint would be peeling off the outside of the doors in whichever bottom corner the door knob is on because that is where the cats "knock." Since they tend to "knock" with their claws, we can tell which of us is most popular with them by comparing the number of scratch marks. 

There are two large pieces of plywood lying in my driveway, placed there by the restoration company before they deposited a garbage dumpster over them last winter; that was because the basement had flooded. I keep meaning to call the company to have the plywood removed but I'm too busy knocking down the cobwebs and wrapping duct tape around the faucets. Household maintenance can be demanding.

Our car has idiosyncrasies too. There is a towel covering the front passenger seat because during a girls' weekend last spring, I forgot one of the weekend's many candy bars in there and it melted. Then there was a period of several weeks where the trunk wouldn't latch because I had broken it trying to attach a bungee cord, and since it didn't fly up and nothing was getting wet in there when it rained, I let it go until the car was smashed up (not my fault) and it had to be in the shop anyway. The only thing that got tiresome about not having the trunk latch were all the people pointing it out to me that my trunk wasn't latched. Sounding appreciative when you're actually annoyed is annoying in its own right. I wanted to say, "Oh, thank you, but it's fine. It's been like that ever since I stuffed my ex-husband's body in there last fall."

Anyway, I suppose life is like that for everyone to some extent. It's easy to get used to little oddities until we're barely aware of them. 

I hardly noticed that body in the trunk until I bought a bookcase at Ikea.

Jenny and the Christmas Vomity Mess

In early December my house was a Christmas vomity mess, then it looked lovely, then it was a Christmas vomity mess again. I hate it when Christmas vomity messes go full-circle - and they always do. 

Kitt, our cat, staking her claim in the
Christmas vomity mess. Copyright,
Teece Aronin. 

The Christmas vomity mess is that stage of home Christmasness characterized by ornaments scattered across floors and ornament hooks that hide among carpet fibers and don't come loose until they hitch a ride out of there embedded in the sole of your foot. 

The Christmas vomity mess is scraps of gift-wrap strewn like confetti - your house looking like New Year's Day, six a.m. It is also whole hanks of gift-wrap curled up on the floor like victims of a war on gift-wrap because someone didn't measure once and therefore cut twice. 

The Christmas vomity mess is every construction paper decoration and tree ornament your children have made since pre-K, now flung across the dining table from which the table cloth hangs, all catty-wompus and drunkenly grazing the floor. 

The Christmas vomity mess is all your Thanksgiving paraphernalia co-mingling and canoodling with the decorated plates, candy dishes, hand soap dispensers and towels which must be trotted out or it just wouldn't be Christmas. 

I first heard the term Christmas vomity mess from my smart, sparkling, optimistic friend, Jenny. Even though it can't always be easy as a working, single mother, Jenny has a gift for seeing the good. 

Jenny is the kind of woman who can tell you that someone just graffitied her truck and manage to spin the tale so that it sounds like the sun just flooded her garden, every flower turning its little face toward the light - and that it was adorable when one of them sneezed. 

When Jenny sees a Christmas vomity mess she sees fun-loving elves playing peekaboo in the debris. When I see a Christmas vomity mess, I see elves dressed as Chucky dolls. I don't perk up until the Christmas vomity mess is downgraded to at worst, a Christmas hiccuppy mess.  

I first heard Jenny use the term on Facebook right after Thanksgiving when this post appeared next to her pretty, smiling face: My house is a Christmas vomity mess! 

'Oh, my God!' I realized, 'So is mine!' 

This year I did almost all of my holiday shopping online, causing my Christmas vomity messes to expand and include cardboard boxes, stacks of them; a small-scale homage to Citizen Cane and the crate maze remains of a life spent grabbing, grabbing, grabbing. And spilling from the boxes to tumble all over the room were tiny air-puffed packing cushions equally useful as floaties for little baby rabbits. 

And because ninety percent of this stuff was intended for my kids whose last scraps of holiday innocence I'd like to protect by keeping at least some gifts a surprise, the Chrismas vomity mess has spread into my bedroom in a big way. This gave me pause one night as I turned out the bedside lamp. Normally, I navigate my dark bedroom like a fish in black waters. I know every curled corner on every throw rug and gracefully sidestep the tiny three-legged stool near my closet door.

But this Xanadu microcosm could send me tush over teakettle if I connected with it in the dark. I could fall, break a hip and become a burden to society when I'd be perfectly happy just burdening my children someday. Then a Scroogey voice inside my head nagged, "And you'll keep Christmas by losing your independence!" So, even as I told Ebeneezer to shut his figgy pudding hole, I got up and shoved the boxes out of the way.

But almost enough about me; Since the Christmas vomity mess is a multi-stage phenomenon, I manage to clean it up in time for Christmas morning and holiday guests only to witness it reinventing itself during the gift opening phase like an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 

This year I found these cycles exhausting and so did my Christmas tree which eventually refused to light whenever the place was a shambles. Like me, it can't seem to get turned on when the house is a mess. 

So that's it for this year's Christmas vomity mess. I might feel nostalgic for Christmas from time to time but never for the Christmas vomity mess. 

And Jenny - smart, fun, light-hearted Jenny - what planet are you from and may I spend next Christmas there with you?