Maintenance and projects

Sometimes, presumably because I'm a housewife (I'm a housewife? Yes, I'm a housewife), life seems to consist of nothing but maintenance cycles. (Graham is the exception:  he's a project.) Yesterday afternoon as I showered—I rarely have an opportunity to shower before noon—I noticed mildew growing around the bathtub drain, which would be neither surprising nor upsetting if I hadn't scrubbed the tub just five days ago. You may be thinking that I evidently didn't do a very solid scrubbing job, and you may be right. But on the same day I scrubbed the tub I also ridded the house of dust and dander, and I'm certain I was thorough about it:  I swept (not just around furniture, but also under), washed all the linens, and wiped every surface (even the surfaces of books) with a damp rag. But the sun shines through the window today to show that our house is again inundated with dancing dust particles, after just five days. What I did not do five days ago was clip my fingernails, and they're beginning to be too long. It might also be time to shave my legs.

So maintenance cycles are the things you have to do just to redo soon after, and I'm not confident that I can make any sort of convincing distinction between them and projects, but I think projects are the kind of things that move always forward and don't involve nearly as much crazy-making monotony as maintenance cycles. Graham is a project, both mine and his own, but he also involves maintenance. I change his diaper both before and after I change his diaper, and I feed him in between, preceding and following diaper changes, baths, story times, naps, walks and hissy fits, which end and then recur before ending and then recurring again. But the monotony associated with baby maintenance is momentary, because Graham is growing, and he changes between each task. Yesterday he swallowed his food; today he spits it out; someday he'll eat dinner with friends in a restaurant.

Fingernails are not nearly so interesting. Of course I could let them continue to grow, but fingernails don’t grow forward for long—after a while they begin to grow downward and then curl back into themselves, the very picture of a cycle. I'm still haunted by the childhood memory of seeing on the cover of a magazine the world record holder for fingernail length:  they were as big as a Frisbee and not too clean, if I remember right. 

My tub might grow a forest if I let it. 

Signs you're no longer your own project include:  feeling deeply fulfilled over the opportunity to fold laundry; getting excited about running out of milk and cereal at the same time, a coincidence (the uninteresting kind) that makes efficient shopping possible; enjoying eating leftovers; feeling glum when you walk out of the house and into the sun of the porch because you love the sun but also finally get that it's a bit menacing. I understand now why sunburns are bad, just like I understand the urge to hang a "baby on board" notice in the window of your car. I would buy a sign, but I don't think the message is adamant enough to be effective. It should say:  "My cargo includes a person infinitely more important—and also more fragile and innocent and more full of potential for goodness—than either one of us, so don't endanger his innocence or potential by driving reckless near him. I'd rather you drive into a tree alone." But wrecks would ensue if drivers actually attempted to read the long message, which to fit on a sign would also have to be tiny, so I guess it makes sense to be brief and bold. But adding a "damn it" wouldn't really interfere with brevity or boldness. Baby on board damn it. I feel like I sound like my father attempting to replace a broken doorknob when I say the word "damn." He recently told me that he read something I wrote after Googling my name. Great. Hi, dad.

We live with spiders, and each time I see one and consider squishing it with a flip-flop I remember what I learned as a child from the S encyclopedia:  that fewer than two percent of spiders found in North America are dangerous. I guess spiders have projects. They make webs that I’d like to remove from ceiling corners as I dust but don't. And spiders make little babies, which I guess go on to make more dusty webs. So maybe if I did get squish the spiders I wouldn't have such endless dust troubles.