Rescuing a day that begins with the discovery that the dishwasher is on the fritz (and that the problem isn’t in the plumbing) is uphill work, but I was lucky to have the adroit assistance of Ray Soleil, shown here in front of his handiwork, the beautiful paint job on the mantel and bookshelf, which I will enjoy long, long, long after the dishwasher woes are forgotten. (Well, never forgotten.) The dish in the center, behind the Doulton figurine, was the wedding present that Ray and Fossil Darling gave us thirty-one years ago next month.  

***

It’s dinnertime. I haven’t had the chance to sit down until now, what with the dishwasher, the ink cartridge that wouldn’t print the checks with which to pay the bills, a penitential sojourn at the local Staples (no air-conditioning and impossible music), a long lunch, a bit of furniture moving, tea (on a tea table at last!), a haircut, and a quick visit to Agata & Valentina and the liquor store. Also: finishing the new Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth. I’ll write about that tomorrow. I read almost all of it yesterday, after a jolly brunch with Will and his parents. I would put down the book every now and then, to refresh my mug of tea and to impose a bit of order here and there in the apartment. There are piles of things everywhere, and I still haven’t unpacked a couple of bags from Fire Island, because I want to write down what’s in them (kitchen equipment) and what ought to have been in them. This list will go into a folder that I will slip into the Christmas box, because that’s where things that happen once a year are memorialized. Another job for tomorrow.

I thought, for a while this morning, that the benefits of my month on Fire Island were going to be undone. It wasn’t just the dishwasher’s being on the fritz, although that did make it difficult to prioritize. (Another job for tomorrow: trying to find the receipts from the last repairs, several years ago. The dishwasher is ours, and the building’s handymen won’t be able to fix it.) I needed a haircut, I needed to pay the bills — well, see above. Kathleen was very good about helping me to keep calm, and I came to believe that a couple of days of sorting out the immediate junk will make it possible for me to get to work on real projects. By the time I went out to Fire Island a month ago, my nervous system was a hairball of household Sisyphoolery. I had just about completely lost the knack of taking care of the house without stepping into the quicksand of drudgery. I wish that there were an intelligent and intelligible way to write about this problem, but I haven’t found it yet. It’s very personal, and yet everything that I say about it has the clang of a self-help book. It’s a matter of rhythm and balance, not of checklists. Writing is a matter of rhythm and balance, too, but I don’t break down as a writer nearly as often as I fail as a housekeeper. The whole trick of housekeeping is to do what servants used to do, but without feeling like one.

If Kathleen and I are going to have dinner on the dining table, I’ve got a bit of clearing up to do, so I’d better get to that.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2012 at 7:56 pm.