Cleaning Rotation

Our household chores have naturally fallen into a fairly comfortable division wherein Pocket of Bolts takes out of the garbage, does the laundry, does (maybe slightly more than) half the dishes and cooking. Meanwhile, I clean the bathroom and sweep and mop floors. This has been a stable division between us ever since we started living together. PoB does his jobs whenever they need doing. I try to do my jobs once a week, but sometimes I fail to and usually I don't do every single room, especially since our apartment now is the biggest we've lived in.

A few weeks ago, when our place was pretty dirty and guests were coming, I tried to clean the whole apartment. By clean I mean just: tidy, dust, and do floors (and of course clean toilet, tub, sink, and mirrors in the bathroom; counters and stove-top in the kitchen). Mind you the place was pretty filthy, and I am a perfectionist cleaner when I get started. But HOURS later, I was exhausted and still hadn't finished two of the rooms. We both enjoy living in a tidier environment, but my marathon cleaning day made me realize I had been putting off or failing to do my jobs because the task seemed so huge. Doing a proper job is obviously not the work of single day.

So a little over a week ago I decided to change my strategy. The house has seven rooms (counting the long hall and the big hall closet) and the week has seven days. So I decided I would do a small dose of cleaning each day. So far this has been working really well! It's a good thing to do when I feel like procrastinating, and I count it into my nutritional economy as light exercise so it even allows me to eat more. (Always a plus!) The house has been cleaner, so much so that it was difficult to restart the cycle yesterday--it just didn't seem dirty enough! Cleaning is more rewarding when the area you're cleaning is really dirty, since it feels like it makes more of a difference. But on the other hand, it's much easier if the area is NOT dirty because less scrubbing is required.

Another advantage is that doing the cleaning in small bits allows me to concentrate on things I would ordinarily pass over--reorganizing the shelves, washing and scrubbing inside the garbage can, mopping the spot underneath the arm-chair, etc. My mom always says that cleaning is a meditation. If so, my mantra has usually been, "It's not about achieving perfection, but about preventing accumulation." Recently, though, it feels like perfection might also be almost within my grasp.

Aren't I becoming quite the housewife?! (Just kidding, Pocket of Bolts. I am still working on my dissertation, honest.) Actually, though, speaking of being a wife... after more than a month of procrastination and wavering, I finally took the first step in changing my name to Mrs. Pocket of Bolts. Namely, I filled out a form and took it with my passport and marriage certificate to the Social Security Administration. It was a quick and easy procedure after the hour or so of waiting. I had to sign with my new name...! I have practiced on three or four different occasions, but it's still a shocking feeling. Oh well, for now I'll just think of it as being like a spy. Signing "someone else's" name is, like, part of my tradecraft.

Our New Gym

[A guest post from Pocket of Bolts, at the request of Zapaper]

We've joined a new gym. I don't know how ZP feels about it, but I like it: nice place, good workout program, etc. But... well, it's a... how do I put this? A yuppie gym.

So I was leaving the locker room today, after having groomed myself in the "Fully-appointed executive locker rooms, with complimentary towels, grooming aids and accessories", and paused to note the enormous flat-screen plasma TV in the waiting room between the men and women's locker room. Tuned to CNN, it was reporting that Russia had invaded Georgia. Nuclear armed superpower, invading possibly also nuclear armed breakaway former Soviet republic? Pardon the technical terms, but: my nuts tightened up. And as I contemplate what will happen--the President is issuing statements, etc--a woman walks out of the locker room, sighs loudly, and shouts "Hello? It's the Olympics? Why aren't the Olympics on?", and angrily changes the channel.

That's our new gym. I occasionally regret not joining the insane bodybuilder gym around the corner, but I suppose that they don't actually have flatscreen TVs, so I wouldn't have known. Right?

Updates

Last Friday I had my first-ever blogger meet-up, with ComeBackNikki from 10Eleven. We had great Ethiopian food and somehow ended up talking for four hours! That was really fun. Among other things, I learned a lot about the teaching scene at various places. Wow! Does everyone work 300 times harder than I do, or just most people? I felt I had a very soft life.

While I am updating about recent events, I should mention that when my college friend and Pocket of Bolts' grad school friends were in town last week (Tuesday), we finally managed to go on the architecture boat tour! I highly recommend it, even if you're not an architecture fan. The boat goes fast enough that you actually only get a bite-sized snippet of information about each building. You get an overall sense of architecture along the river and in the city generally, but no boring long diatribes or anything. And now I feel like most of the buildings on the tour are at least acquaintances if not actually friends. Even though it was like 90+ degrees, the guy talking was so interesting we didn't even notice we were hot. As soon as we got off the boat, though, we had to retreat to an air-conditioned bar.

After that, we did the obligatory amble through Millennium to see the Bean. That is such a fun structure to play with, photographically! Here's the whole group of us.

Afterwards, we ended up all taking naps on benches under the trees. It's interesting how having friends in town makes one feel so happy--connections are strengthened when distance might threaten to erode them--and at the same time so exhausted. Our daily routine is a fragile and really under-appreciated thing. Getting up at a certain time, cooking and eating our relatively humble and inexpensive meals, doing our work and our work-outs, going to bed at our usual time... all of these things got disrupted, and as happy as we were to see our friends, we were also happy to get back to normal. Given that we're all academics, I suppose it's possible they felt the same!

Storm Tonight

There is a fantastic thunderstorm in Chicago tonight, and in particular MY part of Chicago. Even in the tiny bit of sky enclosed by our courtyard we saw very many bright and well-defined lightnings. Rain is coming down in sheets, and the sky looks almost white with the constant lightnings above the clouds.

We had been planning an after-dinner constitutional to bookstore, but that turned out to be highly impractical. We turned back when pelted by the first drops of rain and opted for a workout instead--the new gym being so close and all. All the satellite TV stations were out for a while, but everything else was in good working order, including the delicious steam room.

I burned enough calories that I got to have frozen yogurt with sprinkles for dessert, and we sat and watched the lightnings, listened to the river-flow sound of the rain. It's been a really nice evening in fact!

Sketch Diary

The past little while has been quite hectic. I'll try to write more about it later, but I don't have much time now either. I had meant to have the sketch diary be a regular Monday thing, but then I couldn't manage to do a post last Monday. You might also notice the lack of any drawings between 7/25 and 8/2--we had a house-guest, and then were recovering from that. Anyway, I'll maybe post these every Monday or every other Monday depending on how things go.


This is from a lovely bouquet that Pocket of Bolts got for me. It's a hard discipline to draw flowers without color because the color seems so much like THE point in drawing them!! But it's probably good practice.


This is copied from a great picture book that I have, called The Arrival, by Shaun Tan. It's a great fantastical book about the immigrant experience, which has no words at all (the caption is just made up by me) and is very much about communication without language. Also features a lot of wonderful weird creatures.


These are growing in our backyard on very tall stalks, in a variety of colors. They seem like some kind of hibiscus, but I can't tell exactly. VERY hard to draw without colors.



Copied from a National Geographic article on the mass extinction of amphibians. I can't say how sad the extinction of amphibians makes me. Also, drawing frog fingers/toes makes me realize how very unlike our fingers and toes they are, and in general how really alien frogs are in their structure. But that's awesome.



Copied from a picture of a fourth century Chinese tile. The silly cartoonishness is in the original too, so it wasn't just me!

Organization

Organizing things is the key to making any progress! This isn't for any practical reason, but rather for aesthetic reasons. It's not that I couldn't find what I want without devising a system. It's that without a system I just don't want to find anything. It's a strange realization. I wonder if I'm in the wrong line of work, given that I find the system (the form) more appealing than the stuff that the system contains (my actual scholarship). Or maybe it's just a phase.

By the way, Intrepid the hermit crab has now joined his Pokey companion in the invisible world of moultitude, which I should probably be pleased about (they find the environment I provided for them to be congenial to their needs) but instead feel a little bit abandoned. I'm trying to figure out if there's any reason to keep putting out food. Probably not, right? But I guess I will have to keep checking to make sure they haven't come out yet.

Sketch Diary

Lately I have had lots of stress and one thing I find that comforts me and helps put me in a productive frame of mind is making little pictures. I won't say I'm learning to draw because that implies that I'm learning from someone or something. I'm just practicing drawing, which I have never been all that good at. Here are some recent sketches though.

My first drawing in a very long time. I was quite dissatisfied but Pocket of Bolts liked it a lot. After he liked it, I liked it more too. It is clumsy, but looks like I did that on purpose!

Same shell as above. For several days, Intrepid spent the daytime wedged with his whole shell into the hole of this bigger shell. It was really funny!

Copied from a National Geographic photo, while I couldn't sleep one night.

Practicing drawing "shiny." The teapot my students gave me.

Intrepid and Pokey

After weeks of hesitation, I have finally taken the plunge and acquired my first pets since the ill-fated Chinese turtles. Yes, if you can believe it, I was anxious about whether I was up to the responsibility of raising... hermit crabs. Finally, I decided it was silly to have a terrarium all set up with nothing in it, so yesterday I bravely acquired the little critters.

It's funny how from the minute I put them in their new home they showed extremely different "personalities"--I mean, if something can have personality in a brain the size of a pin-head. The smaller one ("Intrepid") literally hit the ground running, explored all over the cage immediately, and did some death-defying stunts on some of the taller shells. The larger one ("Pokey") didn't even venture to put his legs out of his shell for about five minutes. I was worried that it had died in transit! When it finally did get moving, it retreated immediately under the huge shell I gave them to hide in, and has not been seen since. (Intrepid disappeared during the day today but has made a few more exploratory laps of the cage this evening.) I am excited to think Pokey might possibly be molting. When I peeked under the shell, it was buried down in pretty far.

Pocket of Bolts just thinks they're feeling a little hot. So are we! Heat really doesn't agree with me. Have been huddled up in the bedroom, the only room so far that has an air-conditioner, for most of the day.

Muscles

This is a picture of me taken in Hawaii, but I had to put it up here because I think it makes me look unusually strong! I think it was just an accident of posture, since I generally look softer and rounder. Maybe not for long though!

Yesterday I mentioned how my fitness rating was so excellent at all? Today I had to pay for it. I went and did the first workout routine as recommended by the computer program (based on my goals, test results, demographic info, etc.). It turned out to be really hard. What was supposed to be about a one hour workout plus some cardio ended up taking me more like two hours. And I am extremely sore.

Still, it was a fun way to do exercise. Like weight watchers, it appeals to the compulsive record-keeping side of me. The computer spits out a workout card, you jump through all the hoops it gives you, writing down the results (how many reps you managed) and give it back to them. It gets put back in, and contributes to (at least one is led to believe) further customization of the next workout. The desire for completeness even forces me to do the hated ab exercises.

The important role of mirrors in weight-lifting areas: I sat tediously pumping little bits of iron and studying my face and figure. I look strong! I asked Pocket of Bolts, what if I get too muscly and it is gross? He says it is probably not a worry, but he'll be sure to tell me if I do. I don't want to be a female body-builder or anything. But it's nice to contemplate being a really strong woman. There's really not much of a down-side, at least for now!

Ikea Nesting Instinct

We have been back in our little home for a few weeks now. I would say we are both alternating between bursts of nesty domesticity and occasional moments of post-wedding blues. It's hard to go back to normal after such a lot of big and intense events. Setting up our little nest is a fun distraction though. One of the things we talked about during our honeymoon was how to make our space more productive, and we concluded that we need to change around the furniture in the study. You might think this is a strangely mundane topic to discuss on our honeymoon but actually it was a really good time to talk about many aspects of our "new" life. I mean, it's not like things have changed drastically, but it's true that we both do feel a little different about our lives together now, and that we want our circumstance to reflect that.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that we got the IGo car for the afternoon and went to Ikea. As usual we ended up with more stuff than we intended, but we had a great time. The pictures are us doing the traditional round of Ikea furniture assembly. I particularly like my pigeon toes holding down the frame of the small drawer assembly, and the slightly crazed look in Pocket of Bolts' eyes as he ponders the smaller pieces of our new kitchen island. The kitchen island is great! It doubles our counter space and gives us room for the new appliances we have as well.

Other things we've done include finally joining the gym next door. It's expensive compared to the school gym, but can't be beat for convenience. I mean, it's in the next building over and is open 24 hours during the week! I think we will especially appreciate it in the winter, and if I take advantage of some of the free classes it will help get me out of the house--now that I'm not working at an external job and could probably become a shut-in if I don't watch out. I had a fitness test yesterday and I was overall "Excellent" (there is only one rank above "Excellent" and that is "Superior", but I have a long way to go)! It's true that I am feeling in pretty good shape lately. Pocket of Bolts is too. Hawaii, far from being an episode of total decadence as we had feared, turned out to be a very active sort of vacation with so much hiking and swimming that it nearly counter-balanced our self-indulgent eating. So we are excited about being healthy and domestic, and I am actually managing a bit of enthusiasm for dissertation work as well. It's not easy, mind you.

Well, more soon.

Postcards from Big Island, Day 5

Black sand beach.

Actual LAVA coming out of the mountain!

Postcards from Big Island, Day 4

Postcards from Big Island, Day 3

Postcards From Big Island, Day 2

Postcards From Big Island, Day 1

Postcards From Maui, Day 4

Postcards From Maui, Day 3

Traffic Jammer

Driving back north toward Lahaina, traffic slowed to a crawl. We were tired after our long hike, but okay, good-naturedly snapping pictures and listening to our favorite island radio station. (We developed a favorite early on; it has a certain parody quality like the radio in Grand Theft Auto Vice City.) Then the radio announcer said something like, "If you're driving along the road south of Lahaina and are wondering why traffic is so jammed up, it's because there's a guy--or girl?!--in a bikini out on the rocks playing drums, and people are slowing down to look at it. If you're down there and you are interested, just pull over! Don't slow down the traffic." No sooner did we hear that, then we actually saw the phenomenon she was referring to! It made the island feel like quite a small place. Below is a detail photo.

Postcards from Maui, Day 2

Postcards From Maui, Day 1