Happy Homemaker’s Household Hints

If I had posted yesterday, like I intended to, you may have been concerned for my mental state and perhaps you would have had all sorts of interesting suggestions to combat my case of the Januarys. Or perhaps not. Anyway, people, I have been BLUE. Blue and gloomy and so very very sick of being freezing cold all day long. But it seems that the weather has broken and so has my mood, and this is partly due to the application of my patented anti-sadness formula of…drum roll…housecleaning and bread baking!

Maybe I should rename this blog “The Happy Homemaker”.

You know that kind of activity that is known, when you are pregnant, as nesting but when you are not pregnant it is simply crazed maniacal cleaning? That’s what I have been doing. Crazed maniacal cleaning. Like, baby, I am going to town on those baseboards. I have my spray bottle of cleaner and I am scrubbing the hell out of my kitchen cupboards. All those weird little nooks and crannies are now appropriately disinfected. Or inappropriately disinfected. The problem with this kind of cleaning project is, while it is quite satisfying for me, no one else (read: my husband) can really notice the results. So while I’m showing him the fruits of my labour with a crazed glint in my eyes, he is looking at me in the alarmed and suspicious way that you might look at someone who just spent four hours in a 1950’s housewife stupor.

As an aside, several years ago I received an email, undoubtedly from my mother, entitled “Helpful Household Hints”. I don’t actually remember any of the hints except this one: “Stop throwing out that leftover wine! Instead, freeze it in ice cube trays to use later for sauces!” I am still baffled by that hint. Who has leftover wine? Don’t you just, um, drink it? Especially the amount that would fill an ice cube tray. If you have wine that would make one single ice cube, suck it up and, well, suck it up. That, possibly, is the worst household hint I have ever heard.

But back to the second part of my anti-sadness formula – bread baking. Just when you thought it couldn’t get more exciting than baseboard cleaning, here I am talking about bread. Today I made two baguettes, and they actually look like baguettes! And taste like baguettes! My New Year’s resolution is being kept, and it’s already the ninth! I know it’s a bit late, but maybe I will make another resolution: not to throw out any leftover wine. I’m just going to drink it. It’s going to go great with my baguettes.