I thought of doing some housewifely things, like ironing my bedsheets.  They do say that there’s nothing nicer than slipping into crisp, unwrinkled bedsheets as (almost) the last thing you do all day, I mean, just think of all the hotels you’ve stayed in, the sheets have always been ironed right?  Having just happened to have bought a new iron even an ironing novice like myself can see that it’s much nicer to do that job with decent equipment.  (Next step will be to get a new board or at least a new cover but that is another dull story for another day).  So I picked a film – Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, which turned out to be funnier than expected – got the iron going, and ironed precisely three pillowcases and one sheet before my arm got tired/i got too bored with the task in general.

But as for why I don’t really like the leaving the house on my day off.  There’s a number of reasons.  One, I’m a cancerian, and we certainly are homebodies no?  On my day off I like nothing better than to sleep late, roam around the house, eat, drink, watch the sun go down and go back to bed, having seen or spoken to no one, except maybe A.  Two, what can I find out there that is more interesting or satisfying than everything I already have in my house or in my imagination?  Three, other than going for a walk, what reasons do I have to go out?  Social events seem to have be planned and always occur quite some distance from where I live, I’m trying to avoid spending money and I have plenty of everything so shopping is completely unnecessary.  Tell me, what else is there?

But I went out today, because I had to buy wood varnish for the bedroom floor.  And what happened?  (a) traffic.  (b)  they didn’t have what I wanted. (c)  when i queued at customer services like A would have expected me to do, some woman jumped the line and made it look like she was just with her husband but instead took a separate issue to an assistant and spent ten minutes discussing rental of a carpet cleaner.  (c)  after 20 minutes i gave up and drove to their competitor on the other side of town and experienced more traffic.

Such is life.

Bring on the rain i say!  The more people that stay at home the better!

So today I read that yesterday featured a solar eclipse as we go into a new moon.  Read more about that here at Julie Dembosky’s Astrology blog.  She says that this eclipse is in a configuration of “high stress”, bringing with it a kind of “crisis energy” or a “need to face” things that we might not have wanted to bring up.

An  eclipse is really an opportunity to put lightning in a bottle; let’s do our best to use the energy wisely.

With such a celestial event going on, perhaps that explains why so many of my customers were in such shitty moods.

As for me, well yesterday I happened upon a job advertisement in my Journal for a temporary position with a medical journal. Reading about it and the kind of role that they are recruiting for I got very excited and spend the day reading more and more about evidence based medicine and the ins and outs of publishing such a journal.  It was the most excited I have ever felt about a job opportunity and even should I apply and not even make interview I finally felt awakened to something I actually want to do.  I had a feeling like the feeling I get when I haven’t done my morning pages for a while, a strong need to throw myself into literature and quench this thirst within me.  SomethingI could feel passionate about.

And then last night I had a dream about being pregnant.  There’s been a lot of pregnancy around me lately, from H in Austria, J at work, plus a guy yesterday was telling me about the difficulties his wife had had in getting pregnant.  In the dream I was walking around with this big old belly, positively glowing and I felt so happy.  I certainly feel that the dream was nothing to do with me wanting to have a child myself – I am definitely not ready for that stage of wifedom – but more to do with being pregnant with possibility, and the fact that I was glowing was down to the way that people seem to shine, to light up, when talking about or doing something that really means something to them.

So today, at home, on a well-earned day off, I am starting off well by having showered as soon as I got up rather than loungeing around in my pyjamas.  I have breakfasted on a low-fat bagel, orange juice and hot tea, I’ve opened the windows and lit some incense and already written this blog post.  Next, its the CV and the covering letter and some baby steps on the road to changing my life…

An untypical Sunday, given that I worked today, 11am to 5pm.  It doesn’t feel like the end of the weekend, simply that I now have another five days to go until an actual weekend.  Thus I have been workwife today rather than housewife, but I have two days off during the week in which I can indulge my housewife self to the full.  Or as much as circumstances will allow anyway.

It is so frustrating to all the time to have things getting in the way of everything else.  I mean the time off from work seems to work out so finite – a day off disappears into writing Thank You notes which, five days later, are still in the box unaddressed and unstamped, and actually only about half complete.  How can I turn myself into someone who can say things like “You only live once, thus I live every minute I can to the full”.  I can read something new everyday.  I can do something, anything, everyday, whether it is baking cakes, learning how to draw, reading one of those books that I think to myself when I’m rearranging the shelves or trying to artfully lay a couple around the house before guests arrive would be fantastic to actually have read, there’s just so much information here waiting to be absorbed by me.  I can be the envy of the people out there, just as I envy anyone who does anything – that at work can say “What did you do last night?  I got so wrapped up in writing the next chapter of my novel I didn’t even leave my desk to eat!”

So basically I want to turn myself into an Anthea Turner/Martha Stewart type, the irritatingly chirpy perfect housewife, add a dash of that woman who looks amazing in the gym in her designer sportswear, with perfect hair and make up yet clearly works out everyday given her toned and slightly muscular physique, not to mention is well-read in literature, philosophy, politics, current events and can speak a handful of European languages.  You know, the woman in the end who seems to be incredibly high-maintenance and neurotic to the point of psychosis, who eventually will burn herself out and alienate everyone around her and forgets the point of what it was all for.  What tally is she trying to build up, which judges is she trying to impress?

Thus far, the first few posts on my new blog have been rather morose affairs, inevitably discussing my failures and the things I wish I had or should have been doing.  Yet I’m beating myself up a little bit (and in all fairness, probably boring anyone who might happen across my writings and finds yet another self-deprecating ramble on how I’m just not good enough) when actually I have written a fair amount over the past few days, and even on this Sunday evening when normally I’d find some trash to watch over again or indulge in some new trash, I’ve instead washed up, ironed, tidied up, read and written – all things that form part of the perfect housewife’s day in my imagination.

Baby steps, baby steps.

1.  Not sit down before the house is at least tidy, if not spotlessly clean.  This morning I am sitting on the sofa, writing this, A is upstairs sanding the corners in our bedroom, I am surrounded by random bits of discarded plastic following the delivery of a few internet ordered items, and I know without checking that there is a pile of washing up in the sink.

2.  I should plan menus for the week, so that when we go out in a while I can pick up all we need for a wholesomely nutritious week.

3.  I would go to the gym at least four times a week, instead of peering into the mirror and wonder if my belly is really becoming that much more rounded than I am used to, or if possibly I’m just carrying a little bit of water weight that will disappear over the course of the day.

4.  Every spare minute I have I would be learning a new skill or reading something of cultural or useful value.  A recent purchase of Anthea Turner’s Perfect Housewife includes plenty of tips on how to manage your household which I could be digesting and putting to good use.  Instead I am sitting at this computer writing about it.

5.  My diary would be up to date with upcoming birthdays and events.  All birthday cards, anniversary cards, thank you cards and so on would be stored in my House Desk, which is where I will also sit every now and then to review our household budget, write invitations for our dinner parties, plan our menus and so on…

6.  Perhaps once a week I would do those detailed cleaning tasks that I don’t think have ever been done in the three years we have been living together.  I mean things like move the furniture so I can vacuum underneath it, dust the skirting board, vacuum the cobwebs from the corners.  The stuff that I’m aware should be done, think I’ll get around to it someday, and then simply don’t do it.

There’s more I can add to this list I’m sure, but for now I’ll leave these six things as my main failures today.  It’s not been a total write off though, I’ve been good about loading the dishwasher and I will do that washing up.  I soaked some haricot beans in advance and now a lovely dill-tomato-bean stew is bubbling away on the hob, just waiting for us to finish our spate of decorating and sit down to eat, hopefully with a nice glass of wine if A is in the mood for it, otherwise it’ll be just gin for me.

Having said that, I know I’ve already given myself a topic today, and that is motivation!

I’ve been at work on an eleven hour shift, no breaks, naturally.  I’ve dealt with a few cases of Swine Flu, generally ratty customers and staff who react before they think.  In general it’s been a typical good but tiring day and I have that familiar pain between my shoulder blades that tells me that I really miss the days when I had good posture.  And so generally on such a typical day I come home and hit the sofa straight away, flick on the TV and try to find something that’s not Friends or The Hills, but fail and hate myself a little bit more for not having enough energy to do something else with my evening.

A isn’t here at the moment, I’m waiting for him to get back from The City so I can cook us some dinner and we can make up after our night of not talking.  When I’m waiting for him I always feel this weird combination of (a) relief at being home after work (b) happiness at having the house to myself for a while (c) anticipation at A arriving back and (d) mixed sensations of guilt, mostly for not doing something I think he’ll think I should have been doing, such as going to the gym, tidying up the house or cleaning, plus feeling guilty for my own neglect of such things, plus not writing, watching TV instead of reading, and not exercising so I’ll become a fat pig.  But the thing is, I say to myself, I have just got home from work, I’m almost at the end of the week, this is My Time and if I want to just lie down then dammit I will lie down.

Still.  Motivation is a funny thing.  I don’t feel more relaxed or happy if I spend the evening lying on the sofa, or even going to bed at a stupidly early hour.  Instead I feel sluggish and weak, bitterly berating myself in my head for being lazy and not good enough.  I feel far better if, for instance, I read for an hour instead of watching two episodes of Friends that I’ve watched 800 times before, or if I spend the whole evening making Thank You cards or painting or learning to draw.  I take that evening’s motivation into the next day and feel happier and, wouldn’t you know it, more motivated as a result.

Motivation is powered by our personal reasons to take action.  Perhaps we stimulate motivation through cycles of positive feedback.

It depresses me to think of all the ideas I had during the driving on the honeymoon and how we’ve been back for two weeks and hardly any of that has turned into reality.  It actually depresses me – I get into the cycle of criticism of my self, which in turn makes me feel less motivated and so I go on achieving nothing.  But then I have to remind myself I have actually started the blog I thought about starting, I have started writing my thank you notes, I’ve hosted a few meals using my new china and even baked a batch of chocolate muffins.  And even tonight I am writing this blog post because I am motivated to do so, motivated by my need to start in my new life as a wife as I mean to go on.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life it is that every journey starts with small steps.  I might not have instantly morphed into not just a perfect wife but a perfect everything on my wedding day but I have that sense that the times they are a-changing and these little steps motivate me to stretch myself a little further every day.

I hope.

I’ve never been a particularly traditional person, yet in the 26 years I’ve been alive I’ve ticked off what seems to be quite a number of traditional boxes – school, university, profession, marriage, pets/kids.  Wearing this ring has got me thinking about how I am in a new stage of my life whether I like it or not.  I have been focused on achieving certain goals, and the last eighteen months I have spent so much time thinking about the wedding and planning for it and so on, that this is the first time in a long time I’ve got a bit of breathing space to think about actually where I am and what I’m doing.

So being a fan of tradition or not, I find myself looking forward to being a wife, even if that does mean lovingly ironing and folding my husband’s laundry, learning how to bake bread without referring to a recipe and generally managing a household.  I am a Cancerian after all – a homemaker by nature.

Those long hours spent thinking in the car saw me imagining many potential scenarios, all of which had me decked out as the absolute perfect housewife.  I wonder if I am just falling for the same nonsense that afflicts me at every new year, or birthday, or end of the weekend where I imagine that I have endless reserves of energy to get me to the gym for half an hour at six in the morning before work, do a typical twelve hour shift without breaks, come home and cook a “proper” meal then write a chapter of that novel that of course would come pouring out of me if I just sat at my desk instead of on the sofa in front of the TV.  The vision that I know is unrealistic and leads to me just feeling bad about myself when I don’t live up to my own aims and could do without, but feels just about within reach if I just stretch myself a little.  I think my visions in the car are basically just a new version of my perfect self, with the fact that I am now a wife just giving me a new frame to look through.

We have been back home for twelve days and my perfect wife plans have been thwarted by a sudden desire for redecoration, so forget the permanently tidy and organised oasis of calm I thought we’d be walking back into.  We are instead not even sleeping in our own room since A decided to pull up the carpet so we could sand the floorboards.  The living room is full of new and old mismatching furniture, the floor covered with books since we haven’t decided what to do with our old bookshelves and I can’t bring myself to get rid of any of the books I own.  My energy levels hit an alltime low last week after a full week back at work and I realised that it’s not even just the early starts that tire me out, but that actually standing on my feet for a twelve hour shift plus two hours of driving in the commute all combine to make sure I can barely cope with eating let alone cooking by the time I get home.  And then of course in my visions I was a perpetually happy, humming bundle of joy to be around, wanting nothing more than to take care of my man when in reality we manage to have a huge row on his birthday and go to bed without speaking thus breaking the cardinal rule of never going to bed on an argument.

I suppose it’s just that real life never goes away.  We can but strive for perfection.

So the point of it all, it seems to me, is that now I am working on building a life for the both of us (plus the cats).  I need to be the best person I can be in my own life, and that means writing every day and writing constructively, reconnecting with my spiritual self and finding work that means more to me than my current job, as well as looking after my home and family.  A healthy priestess makes all things sound.  And if we are going to be in it for the longhaul then I want to make sure I’m doing it right.