Domestic Psychology

So I planted a flower (yet again)

// May 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // home, video

So, I planted a flower (again)

// April 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Doug, home, video

Our house should be this color

// April 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // flickr, home

So, I planted a flower.

// April 10th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Doug, home

domestic detective

// March 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // home, parenting

“What is this goo in your hair?”
“Who put a booger here?”
“Where is that smell coming from?”
“When did this get left on the counter?”
Why is that in the bathtub?”
“Which animal threw up?”

If I am going to spend all my time at the schools, maybe they will let me take some of their chemistry and forensic classes to solve the daily mysteries.

keep them behind a locked gate

// January 28th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // health, home, local, mental health, politics

After meeting opposition at every proposed site, the plan to create permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless all over Knox County has ended where so many wanted it to be, Lakeshore. Pessimistic voices argue that this keeps the mentally ill homeless near mental health services. Optimistic voices argue that Lakeshore is lovely and one of their favorite places to go for a walk. How many of those voices have ever been inside the locked buildings at Lakeshore? How many had no idea there are still patients at Lakeshore? How many understand that Lakeshore is not an out-patient medical center, but a crisis stabilization facility? How can they miss all the news reports that identify Lakeshore as the forensic facility for people whose dangerous crimes may have been connected to personal illness?

Do I take my children to the trails at Lakeshore? Of course I do. The difference is that those buildings with locked doors aren’t invisible to me. I am constantly aware of their presence and the seriously ill people inside them. People who are struggling to survive. People in very real pain. People who have been victimized by their extreme vulnerability. Human beings in locked rooms, in locked buildings, behind locked gates. Lakeshore is a hospital and no matter how much they have to sell their land to stay in business for the people who desperately need care, it is still a place where sick people go to get better.

Is permanent supportive housing a place for people with special needs who lack the support systems needed to fully function in society? If so, why isn’t it being put in neighborhoods with other people? Group homes belong among other homes. Apartments cluster with other multi-family housing facilities. Where are the other families living at Lakeshore? They are not there. Where can the PSH residents go when they need a cup of sugar? Shall they knock on the hospital door? Even the Lakeshore chapel was sold to make additional parking for soccer moms. That’s not a community. It’s a business. It’s not a business that will hire them though.

Oh, ha-ha Cathy. You’re so stupid to claim Lakeshore is not a community. Look at all the people walking their dogs and watching children play soccer. If a crowd of strangers decided to let their dogs poop on my street, they would not make this a community. Community is the all of the neighbors who know each other. Community is the ability to walk next door for a cup of milk or collect a neighbor’s mail when they are on vacation. Community is knowing that everyone in this neighborhood recognizes my children and keeps an eye on what they are doing just as I know and watch over their children. Community is not a place surrounded by gates and designed for lock-down protocol. Not gates to keep the scary out, but gates to control the residents and keep them inside the facility. Gates to keep the mentally ill and now the homeless out of sight and out of mind.

The people who don’t want this site discussed because they think this is the issue that will put someone in or keep someone out of the mayoral office are helping nobody. Constant media attention has made politicians completely ineffective people whose primary goal is their next elected office. The only decision politicians make that isn’t based solely on campaigning are the ones they make when they take off their britches. I know that the League of Women Voters could revoke my membership for saying that, but I suspect they recognize frustration and aggravation as the predecessors to focus and motivation.

you’ve got red on you

// January 23rd, 2010 // 5 Comments » // home, people

I realize that when I write about something as controversial as laundry I risk comments from the comprehension impaired, but I’m all about edgy topics like household chores. Aaaanyway, as I’ve said before, we have color-coded baskets for dirty laundry. The white basket is for whites. The bright green basket is for brights. The navy basket is for darks. This is not a complicated system. Everyone uses it to some degree. They just don’t use it equally. All the females in the house put red clothes in the basket for brights. All the males in the house put red clothes in the basket for darks. This begs the question, do males have rods and cones that “see” red differently than females or is this a gender based interpretation of the color red? Either way, since the woman is always right and all three females believe reds go in the bright basket, the men in the house need to adapt for survival.

laundry and dishes, repeat

// January 12th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // home, life

The majority of my days (and nights) are spent trying to stay caught up on the laundry and dishes. I wash and dry the laundry all week, but every Saturday I strip all six beds to end the weekend with clean sheets, blankets and clothes. If I don’t start Monday with fresh bedding, full dressers and mostly empty dirty laundry baskets, I feel like I am trying to run in a swimming pool all week.

The sink is filled with dirty dishes three (or more) times a day. I should wash them all day, but I usually just stand at the sink for an hour every morning and again every evening. If I miss a day of washing dishes, the counters fill with poorly stacked piles of drippy mess that threaten to fall every time a small child innocently tosses a spoon into the glass and ceramic tetris game.

The first problem was the holidays. Shopping, wrapping and travel made the laundry baskets multiply faster than Tribbles. The second problem was a mouse hiding in the kitchen who made his presence known in every drawer and cabinet. The normal dishes in our family are bad, but when I had to wash every single pot, pan, dish, glass and utensil as well as the drawers and cabinets that housed them, the mess was disaster movie quality.

The final straw was a week of freakishly cold weather, snow and ice. Every single blanket in the house was on someone’s bed. Atop the blankets were unzipped sleeping bags. While the adults waddled around the house wearing more layers than Randy, the children somehow managed to get their clothes soaking wet from snow and ice play, over and over again. Eventually, they had nothing left to wear except swimsuits.

Finally, I can see the bottoms of the dirty laundry baskets and the countertops have no piles of dirty dishes. I can sit down and write again OR I can hold my breath waiting for the major appliance break and stomach bug that are just around the corner.

forecast parking

// December 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // home, weather

We live in a tiny, older, working class neighborhood with residents who have been here for decades. The roads are more than a little bit steep. There are a few things that everyone in the neighborhood knows. When it rains, the creek is fast and dangerous. Once the leaves fall off the trees, the people at the top of hills can see into everyone’s homes. B burns leaves and branches in the creek whenever it is dry. If children do something stupid, someone in the neighborhood WILL tell the child’s parents. If something breaks, the city and county will both claim that it’s the other team’s problem. When there’s ice on the roads, the only people getting out of the neighborhood are the ones who were parked in the street at the top of the hill.

So, would someone please explain to me why all the neighbors are parked at the hilltop? Do they seriously think it’s going to snow tonight? Did I miss a big weather announcement for tonight? I know it’s forecast for tomorrow, but how often does that forecast come true in Knoxville?

if I don’t do it . . .

// November 2nd, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Doug, health, home

I spent Sunday with no voice, a hacking cough, stuffy nose and an assortment of aches and pains. The cough medicine made me feel like I was sleepwalking in a fog, but it didn’t help reduce the coughing. I swallowed Tylenol just before a coughing fit and one of the pills shot back out. I didn’t know that was even possible.

Doug looked up from his day long Roomba repair and told me to go back to bed. I looked at him through my eyebrows. “Everything will be fine up here. I’ll even wash the dishes.” I sat in a chair and folded clothes in slow motion until I accidentally fell asleep in the chair. I went downstairs. At some point, Evan came down to watch SpongeBob in my room. I woke up freezing and went upstairs to turn up the heat. The heat was off and all the windows were open. I think that I sat and wept until the children closed the windows. I don’t remember.

This morning, I expected a bit of a mess. My family exceeded my expectations. Based on the LAYERS of dirty dishes, all of the bowls and spoons were used at breakfast. Lunch required every single dish and afternoon snacks were eaten from serving dishes. Dinner was improvised with cake pans for plates. It looks like there was some kind of spaghetti battle. The squished pasta in the dogs’ fur must mean that they lost. The only possible explanation for every single cup and glass being used is that my family delicately took no more than a single sip from each glass before getting another glass. Every utensil, dish and pan was delicately balanced on every single inch of counter space and piled high like a bizarre tetris game.

Today, my head feels like it is packed with one too many cotton balls, but I don’t dare let Doug handle everything. His version of watching Evan would involve video cameras and duct tape.