algorithm

News-later, or: I'll show you chaotic good!!

Dear you, oh hi.

I’ve been pretty much exclusively taking care of my children, playing call of duty, and cleaning my house for seemingly never ending visitors. One day I will make my peace with the fact that we’re not visitor-friendly-house-on-a-random-Tuesday kind of people, but today is not that day.

Now, I’ve made it sound as if these visitors appear of their own free will, which is not the case at all. What I’m complaining about here is that people keep coming to my house, the phenomenon that keeps calling upon my responsibility to clean the house. The twist is, I’m the one near forcing these visitors to appear. I lure them to my house with promises of wine and stimulating company; what they find is a stale half bottle of sauvignon sharing the fridge with what will probably be featured in the next season of The Last Of Us, two adults who have regressed to their pre verbal states, and chalk covered chairs. Upon seeing other adults, we light up and challenge ourselves to form coherent sentences without including the words “help” “hide” and “spawn of satan”. And sometimes I think, maybe I should just stop inviting people over? but my mouth is already open as my brain watches it say the two magic words, as if in slow-motion: Triviaaallll….. puuurrssuuuuiiiitt…..

***

There should be a limit to how much rainbow rice and taste safe sand one is required to produce in their lifetime. I thought I had reached it a few months ago, but for all of my efforts as a mother, homemaker, host, and online murderer of teenage boys, she decided to pour milk all over her lovely things thus ruining the rainbow rice and the flour, I mean,.. sand that I had painstakingly prepared in the last months of my pregnancy. So now I have to take to my already abused to the max pantry and take all the flour and all the remaining out of date quarantine rice.

Here’s the thing, though. Rice - fine. We’ve had it since may 2020. But since the first time making taste safe sand I have become something of a *flips hair* homemaker. I kid. Don’t open any drawers, don’t check expiration dates of things in the fridge. But I did start baking. It’s a good way to feel in control when my universe is oh so chaotic.

The sense of accomplishment is so real. I see it now. I never got baking before, but I see it now; I guess my life just had to get sad enough. Once again I joke (it is April fool’s. I don’t have an excuse for the rest of the year, but today it’s illegal for you to complain.) I’m not sad at all. But I do spend a lot of time feeling quite unaccomplished, no closer to my dreams than yesterday, tossed around by the whims of infants, behind on chores, praying for PleaseNoMoreRain and still getting rain every day. It’s actually surprising that I’m not sad, but here we are.

No doubt this is how people accidentally join cults. One day I’m making some cheese bread to go with the chicken soup for man flu ridden Julz, the next I’m adding flour to my weekly shopping list, making sure I never run out and feeling stingy using it for taste safe sand for my poor neglected toddler who very unexpectedly lost her mother’s attention to an unlikely-and-yet-here-we-are baking addiction. Phew, breathe. So anyway, I’ve been baking various things. They always come out really tasty. You can’t really win or lose in childrearing, but you do know a delicious pretzel when you taste one.

One of the main culprits for this sudden addition to my already jack of all trades master of none persona is definitely social media. In retrospect, quite obviously, there’s an overlap in the venn diagram of types of people between Gentle Parenting Mother and Homesteader. The Algorithm just thought: Hey, you’re a mom. You seem to have adopted a near masochistic approach to mothering. Maybe you like chickens. Maybe you like to see children playing with chickens? Maybe you like nature. How about delicious bread? Actually, here’s a person who empowers you to produce more and consume less, and produce more of what you consume. Wouldn’t that be nice? Some freshly baked bread for your sick fiancé and your kids, maybe?

Next thing I know I’m scrolling through hundreds of women from all over the world living their best trad wife lives in big countryside houses converted into mini farms. They’re out there making cheese at home. Don’t we have special people for that? I have absolutely no qualms with that sort of lifestyle, beyond the fact that I never wanted that for myself. I enjoy seeing it, from our small central London apartment, knowing full well even our liberal building managing company would draw the line at chickens. Who knew what our anniversary trip to New York and a surprise pregnancy would lead to. I never knew how few blinks there are between getting frisky in the big apple and making cheese at home.

There’s a non insignificant part of me that would love to subscribe to this lifestyle. I could probably trick Julz into moving to the countryside with promises of fresh cheese and bread and hand shaped meatballs. I just don’t think I’d be any good at it. To each their own. I’m good at… I’m sure there was something. One day I’ll find out again. The point is, whatever I’m terrible at doing outside of the home, I still have a chance of being financially rewarded for it. The best homesteader gets paid nothing for their efforts, takes no evenings off, doesn’t get to go home. I don’t care to debate on the rights and wrongs of it, but however you slice it this place isn’t set up for women to thrive as homemakers. For anyone to thrive as a homemaker, really. Whoever the stay at home parent is, they’re putting themselves at future risk.

Okay, the real truth is that me being left to my own devices would also be also putting me at risk, but let’s pretend I turned into a competent adult at some point. It’s just true.

***

Zoe is turning in front of our eyes from an otherworldly beautiful infant/toddler into a beautiful otherworldly angel child. I say angel because I’m her mother. She is NOT, I repeat, NOT always an angel. Doesn’t matter, because the five seconds she’s an angel, she’s very very good at it.

The other day we stopped on our walk to feed the baby.

“Look mommy! A bumblebee!” There was a dead wasp on the ground in front of us. “Bumblebee sleeping!”

“Yes, the bumblebee is sleeping”, I said. “Let’s be really really quiet so the bumblebee doesn’t wake up.” Also so your baby sister doesn’t wake up.

“Bumblebee is sleeping on пол!” She says the word floor/ground in Russian. It’s one of the only words she does.

“Yes, she’s sleeping on the ground”, I speak to her in Russian the whole time anyway.

“Bumblebee is sleeping outside!” what a detailed analysis of the situation based on a completely false premise.

“Yes,” I say. “The bumblebee is sleeping outside.”

“Zoe sleep too! There!” Points at the ground.

“No honey, you can’t sleep outside. That’s just for bumblebees. You’re a girl.”

“But I want to sleep outside. With bumblebee.”

“Sorry Zoe, but you really shouldn’t. There’s different rules for girls and bumblebees.”

***

Anyway, I’ve unfortunately had to become even more forgiving towards myself. Maybe regular writing is beyond the realm of possibility for me. I really just find myself without a functioning brain most of the time. But here I am, I pushed myself, are you impressed? I guess sometimes you have to really lower your standard to have a chance to raise it up again.

I baked some bagels today. They were really good, I wish you could have some. There’s now a pile of dishes where there wasn’t one before, but the bagels are all gone. I wonder sometimes what life would be like if I knew how to do all these things that people seemingly are born with, like remembering to throw out expired food and stuff. I wonder what it’s like to have your needs come first; to have children, or if you don’t have those then chores, be an interruption in your day rather than needing to interrupt a million other things you’re doing to have a sip of coffee. Or sacrificing having clean counters to have a couple of hours to yourself. There really are different rules for girls and bumblebees.