God Help Me, I'm a Housewife

I'm married to a house!  I'm a housewife!

I didn't mean to be, but I am.

The bathroom remodel, the damned refrigerator (another repairman),  a patio that's being heaved up by tree roots, the broken irrigation system.  I'd like to ignore all of it, but I can't.

I need a refrigerator, I don't want a patio that trips me, I can't waste water during a drought, and the bathroom is archiac and sometimes leaks into the kitchen below.

While I was coping with repairmen and carpenters and stonemasons this week,  I kept saying to myself, "Mrs. Thatcher was a housewife [she would dash from 10 Downing Street to buy a special sausage for her husband], and the Queen of England fiddles around choosing soap for her guests [she also makes maids dust the floors on their hands and knees but whatever]."

And then there's this lugubrious poem by Anne Sexton:

Housewife

Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart,
a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day,
faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah
into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

Thanks for sharing, Anne.  Especially the last two lines.

[During the time I wrote this, I was interrupted by the landscape irrigation lady and my sister sending an invoice for plumbing fixtures that needs to be paid for on the phone.]

* * * * *

My pool pals Val and Anne and I went to Pt. Reyes on Tuesday to celebrate Anne's birthday.  This required much planning re who brought what for lunch--inexplicably, Anne wanted to buy us lunch--but we managed to get it all together, load up my car, and get to Pt. Reyes in time for...fog.

Val and Anne at the Bear Valley trailhead

  

The sun never did come out, but no problem.  We walked the Bear Valley Trail to the Divide Meadow, returned to the picnic area near the park headquarters, ate lunch, and followed that up with a gooey and delicious dessert of cupcakes.  I'm afraid we were disgracefully greedy. We cut each one in quarters and sampled them all. 

 Val at lunch.  She's English, so of course we had a tablecloth.

 From top left:  Coconut, Lemon Kiss (2), Ginger, Raspberry/Chocolate, and Green Tea.  From "Love at First Bite," Walnut Square, Berkeley

Then we drove around  parts of Inverness and later stopped at Toby's  Pt. Reyes Station for coffee.

 Available at Toby's, euphemism and all

Selfie at Toby's

 A memorable day.  Anne just turned 81, but really she's 35, no kidding.

* * * * *

Yesterday I met my sister, who's designing the bathroom, at warehouse in West Berkeley where the genuis woodworker, Wes, had laid out boards with measurements showing how big everything was going to be: vanity, towel cupboard, and seven new drawers for quilting fabrics.  Here we are amid the dust and measurements:

 

They pondered measurements...

 

...while I gazed around the warehouse--very dusty

My hero, Wes, and my sister, who drove from San Jose for a 45-minute meeting

Now I'm off to pay for plumbing fixtures.   Have a good weekend and try to stay out of the fog.