Escapism

So, my house kind of smells like a barn. I didn’t realize this until I left and came back in. Not a horrible smell- just like hay. That’s been peed on.

It’s absolute chaos here. Our puppy, an Australian Shepherd, is a herding breed, and herd she does. She does this by chasing the children relentlessly about the yard, nipping at their feet. Aside from the screaming, it's pretty hilarious. And Ella, poor Ella… Ella is small enough that the dog’s mouth fits snugly about her small calf. She's taken to perching atop the couch and tables and other high places, out of the dog's reach.

But, my word, this puppy is cute. She has two modes of being: manic and dead to the world. And she switches from one to the other in a blink of the eye. Which I completely understand. When I spend a good fifteen minutes wrestling a soda can and barking at it, working myself into an absolute frenzy, I pretty much pass out afterwards, too.

Daniel, possibly inspired by the puppy’s potty-training progress, has completely potty-trained himself in 24 hours. Pee and poo. There hasn’t been ONE accident since he first sat upon the porcelain throne. In his pants, anyway. I can’t say that the pee and poo always hit the prospective target, which has definitely contributed to the barn smell in the home.

The house is a wreck. If you are planning on visiting in the next couple of days, please go to the bathroom beforehand as I cannot promise that the condition of my own water closets will be amenable to guests. I simply can’t keep up. I’m constantly doing laundry, extricating my dog’s mouth from my daughter’s leg, making completely non-nutritious foods, cleaning up pee and poo, helping Caleb with his homework, and daydreaming. Lots of daydreaming. I daydream about having a nicely decorated house like this:


Serene blue and white, light and airy, a touch of French country. I look at rooms like this in magazines and scoff, saying, "How impractical!" But a room like this would make me feel calm. Though I could do without the dead zebra carcass on the floor.

I love blue and white. I am inspired by Monet's kitchen (I don't mean to brag, but I've been here):

Cookware as decoration! A marvelous idea. I wouldn't feel like I was being so wasteful with my pots and pans.

Or, I could be quite content with a room like this:

Looks like it would be cozy in the winter. And John would probably fit in better here. We'd call this the library. We would also have a parlor and a drawing room. I don't know what a drawing room is. I read about them in Victorian novels a lot, and I think there might be one in the game Clue.

They all did it. But if you wanna know who killed Mr. Boddy, I did. In the hall. With the revolver. Okay, Chief, take 'em away. I'm gonna go home and sleep with my wife.

In this room, I could easily draw Caleb hanging from the chandelier, Daniel taking a ride down the spiral staircase, Ben being Spiderman on the wrong side of the balcony, and Ella throwing all of the books on the floor. (She threw all of our Ayn Rand books on the floor the other day. Sometimes, she seems so very intelligent.)

I was feeling kind of guilty about my escapist daydreaming. After all, there are people in the world who have to live in yurts. Then I saw this picture:

Holy crap, that's a nice yurt. I've gotta find time to clean my house but good. Did I mention it kind of smells like a barn?