Chris is renovating the bathroom off our bedroom, which means there will be both working lights and a mirror in which I can see my whole face at one time. I suspect this could be life changing. You may not recognize me. I certainly won’t.

The bathroom renovation is life changing in other ways, too. Designed at some point between Mid-Century and Shabby Chic, our bathroom is Early Modern Dumpster Fire: wood grain vinyl paneling with matching vanity, rusted towel bars, and a linoleum floor that is glorified contact paper. There are no light fixtures, but there are two outlets in case you wanted to put in a floor lamp.

The bathroom, we now understand, is ruining our entire day before we’re even out of the shower – which explains why some people shower at night. It also explains why some people lie imobile in the hallway for an hour or so after spending time in the bathroom. The hallway is one of the few places in the house where you can lie on the floor and maybe not see anything that needs to be fixed, cleaned, or burned to the ground.

The bathroom takes everything out of us. We stand in the shower and think “huh, mold on the ceiling. I should bleach that again,” and “oh look, there goes another piece of the floor” and finally, “where is my flashlight?” It is exhausting. It expends all our energy, and expands our mental to-do lists like rice in a leaky boat.

It’s a mental to do list because apart from moving out, there hasn’t been much we could do. Until now.

The renovation started because I bought the wrong vanity for the upstairs bathroom. I had found a narrow sink for the narrow bathroom and then accidentally bought the not-narrow vanity to go under it. The sink would have fit if we rolled up towels and stuffed them into the extra space, but we figured since eventually we wanted to replace the vinyl veneered monstrosity downstairs, we’d spring for the right vanity and keep the wrong one for later.

Which brings me to this: why is it called a vanity? A vanity is possibly the hardest working, no-nonsense piece of furniture in the house. It keeps the sink off the floor, and holds extra toilet paper. It’s like naming your Chihuahua “Fluffy.”

The mistake vanity, which I have just now named Fluffy, spent two years wandering in the wilderness of our house before ending up in the hall – where it was in my way every morning between showering and work.

It must have been in Chris’ way too, because one day I came home and our bathroom ceiling was gone, along with one of the walls. I texted a picture of our semi-demolished bathroom to my sister, who responded, “what’s different?”

There is now a toilet in my bedroom and a sink in the yard. Yesterday when I came home Chris apologized for the exploded vacuum cleaner bag. I’m not sure how he could tell it had exploded.

But dust and misplaced toilets aside, the bathroom has stopped ruining our days. Now it invigorates them. My kitchen is filled with IKEA boxes, contractor trash barrels and tools, and I do not care because when you are renovating all bets are off and no one is allowed to judge you. Every day I come home to more progress in the form of bigger destruction so I know we’re still going in the right direction.

I didn’t make a vision board on New Year’s Eve, but if I did one now I would put in something about smashing stuff, and replacing things that never worked with things that do.

Unlike Early Modern Dumpster Fire, Smashing Stuff is super in right now.

I have long conversations in my head. Sometimes they’re with other people, but not always. Often, they’re with my husband. Sometimes I talk to him more inside my head than face to face – although I am sometimes talking to him inside my head when we are face to face. He is glad for the inside-my-head aspect of our conversations, or at least he would be if he had to listen to all of it.

My shampoo is the latest thing we’ve been discussing in my head. My husband ran out of his shampoo and started using mine. I know this because it is disappearing at an alarming rate. I don’t even have to make those little lines on the bottle to mark the last known volume to see that it is disappearing faster than normal.

Full disclosure: I spend more on personal care products than I should. But I hardly use them. They last right up to the expiration date with me. I am careful, judicious, and cheap. I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t be. I mean, you wouldn’t use your eye cream as a body lotion, would you? Of course not, unless it’s not yours and it’s right there and you need body lotion and no one will notice.

So I stand in my shower and eye the bottle, which is emptier than I left it. He’s used my shampoo, I think. Will he buy more when it is done? Or will he move onto someone else’s shampoo? If he moves on to someone else’s and I buy myself another bottle of salon shampoo will he come back and empty it again? What did he get on his report card, on the line that says “respects other people’s stuff?”

This is when I call the entire family to the dining room table inside my head for a talk, because it’s now a life lesson. When these kids leave home, I plan for them to be fully functioning humans who are a delight to live and work with. Read: people who don’t use their roommates’ shampoos.

I start to doubt myself at this point. People don’t use each other’s personal care products, unless possibly they do when they’re married. What is the rule for this? I’ve had siblings and roommates, but I was never called to a dining room table family discussion about the politics of using each others personal care items in marriage.

I was practically 70 when I met my husband. I realize this is a biological miracle since we had two children after we met and married, so 70 may be more of a state of mind than a chronological fact. I had lived on my own a long time. I had matching china, tools, and a dust ruffle.

I know that I am picky about things not worth having outside-my-head conversations about, and have managed some workarounds. I bought him his own toothpaste and put it with his toothbrush in his own tooth care cup so he will stop leaving the cap off my toothpaste and squishing it from the middle. I bought us his and hers razors. His is a bright color he can’t help but notice and grab, while mine blends cannily into the shower basket.

I don’t mind if he raids my cast-offs from the bathroom closet. The No Frizz bottle that is of no use to me since my hair – which once rivaled Chia Pets – is inexplicably thinning. He is welcome to use it on his full head of Kennedy hair. Innumerable bottles and jars of lotion, relegated to the closet, are all his.

When I first noticed my shampoo decreasing I took evasive action. I put it in the corner of the shower no one ever looks in. I accidentally took it with me and kept it in my bathrobe pocket. I put the family shampoo front and center. And then I felt like a freak and put mine back where it was.

I will buy a new bottle when the time comes, I thought. This is not a big deal.

But seriously, is he using it as body wash? I think, noting that the level has dropped below Rosemary Mint and is approaching the ingredient list.

As I toweled off it occurred to me that not only is the level dropping, he smells like me.

When the kids were babies I realized I frequently rubbed my face on theirs, like a mother cat marking her young. I have stopped because they’re practically driving now and are taller than me, but the impulse is still there. What is so wrong about scent-marking your family so it’s evident that we are a unit? I have never managed to do this with my husband because marking your spouse seems like something out of a movie, probably starring Glenn Close. It’s creepy and possessive and I’d never get away with it. Unless, of course, he did it himself. Using my shampoo as hair and body wash. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. I am a genius.

“Hi,” I say, rubbing my face against his for good measure. “You smell nice.”

I’m so glad we had this talk.

My aunt took me to Plum Island in the off season once when I was a teenager, and I thought, “this is where I will go when I feign my own death.”

It was like an abandoned army barracks, with rows of houses on short, straight spikes of roads off a central spine, like fish bones.

You could hide there. You could have all the amenities – architecture, structure, the ghost of company – but never have to interact. Never be seen. This is where I will go into hiding, I thought. This is where I will spend months 4 through 9 of my unwed pregnancy. Where I will hide while the evidence proving my innocence floats to the surface and I’m absolved of whatever crime I’ve been charged with. Where I will write my novel.

I wasn’t pregnant. I had committed no crime. But it’s good to be prepared.

Ever since then I’ve had an eye for abandoned, solitary, outposts. There’s a mining town I passed regularly in Colorado that I wanted to live in called Silver Plume. It had just the right amount of nothing happening, mixed with a good number of houses that weren’t falling apart. It’s best to avoid actual abandoned places because they are likely laced with asbestos, or mask a collapsed mine. There’s a line between isolated and insane.

Speaking of which, I loved off-season hotels until The Shining came along. Perhaps a lot of us did, and that’s why Stephen King ruined them – to keep the rest of us away. I wish I had thought of that tactic first. There are so many hotels near us. It would be easy to check in on the last day of the season and then stand on the toilet seat in the lobby restroom until everyone went away, locking the doors behind them.

Yes, I have thought this through. I’ve thought about where I will park, how I’ll come and go unnoticed, where I’ll do laundry, and the black out curtains I’ll need to buy. When I pass hotels that are closed for the season I can’t help but look for a telltale sliver of light in one of the windows. I’m sure there are others who have thought of this, did they beat me to it?

Once I heard a news story about a homeless woman in Japan who lived in a man’s cupboard undetected for a year. Had she not taken food out of his fridge, she might have gone on living there indefinitely. But the man who lived there noticed missing food and thought he was being robbed, repeatedly, and admittedly a little weirdly. So he put in a security camera and saw her moseying around his house during the day. Even when they knew she was there, it took police ages to find her.

This obviously makes me think of some of the larger houses on the Cape. I don’t think squatting is legal here, but what if you occupied a cupboard, or an unused bedroom? Heck, some of these houses probably have entire wings that don’t get used. I wonder how long I could make it before I lost control and ate something out of their fridge?

I work at a place where artists and writers disappear for several consecutive months to write their novels – and have their babies I suppose if the timing is right – in a town where very little happens, in an unforgiving season. I wonder at the wisdom of this – placing artist-types at the edge of civilization, with intentionally little interaction, surrounded by darkness, sleet, silence, and alcohol. Because the bars are always open in these places.

If I had my druthers (whatever those are), and a book deal with a bottomless budget, I would pitch a book called Off Season and drag my family all over the globe to live in various resort areas when no one wants to be there. We’ll get off-season rentals and mingle with the locals, finding out what it’s really like to live there. Or maybe we’ll stand on the toilet seats.

The possibilities are endless.

Whoever said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results has never had my eggs.

[“It was Einstein, genius” – my entire family, including the dog]

I can totally cook eggs. I can make a poached egg so perfect it will make you quietly weep. I have to watch a video when I’m doing it to remember the steps, but I can do it. I also do a mean scramble – both the fancy slow cook method and the here’s-your-breakfast-eat-it-on-the-way-to-the-bus method. But those aren’t the eggs I cook daily.

Daily, I make path-of-least-resistance eggs, aka fried eggs on the griddle. Lately I’ve been frying eggs every morning because we are overrun with eggs. Eggs are the new zucchini.

Making them on the griddle means they have a little extra trace of iron. It also means I don’t really have to clean up after myself because you’re not supposed to wash cast iron. Instead, you wipe it off with a cloth, or vacuum it or something. DO NOT let the dog lick it off because it turns out that completely removes the “seasoning” aka layers of absorbed fat and your eggs will stick. Also, people think it’s gross but only if they see the dog doing it. Ignorance is bliss.

So I make these eggs on the griddle and every single time they come out differently. I have heard people in restaurants order all the kinds of eggs I’ve ended up making, so I know they’re legit: over easy, over hard, over easy with a broken yolk, sunny side up with a side of shell, etc. It’s not that I don’t know how to make eggs. I just like to mix it up so people don’t get in a rut. I don’t have a method, I have a repertoire.

Okay, fine. They never come out the same way twice, despite my efforts to do the exact same thing every time except a little more this or that to avoid whatever went wrong the morning before. It’s Mystery Breakfast Theater at my house. You can order whatever you want in my kitchen, but you get what you get and you don’t get upset. Scrambled, you say? Here’s your sunny side over hard.

I see my eggs as a morning meditation for my family. It’s a metaphor for the other things that may well happen to them during the day. Things don’t always come out the way you planned, or were told. Broken yolks, surprisingly rubbery whites, and perfectly solid over easy eggs are a gentle way to encourage my family members to be okay with things that really don’t matter. They get fresh eggs, with a side of buttered toast. When life hands you something unrecognizable on a plate, focus on the toast.

At least until I learn how to make a fried egg.

I realized that “Congratulations! So proud of you” was the wrong thing to write on the group sympathy card almost as soon as I signed my name. I say “almost” because it wasn’t until I looked at what others had written that I realized it was a sympathy card. Things like, “So sorry for your loss” and “Our hearts are with you,” and nine other distinctly non-congratulatory expressions.

In my defense, I have signed a lot of congratulatory cards this month. Plus, I am a Pollyanna sort of person who thinks “oooh, who has news?!?” when the phone rings, not “who died this time?” Note: I still won’t pick up. It’s not what I use my phone for, and that’s why God made voicemail.

Anyway there I was, the last one holding a thoroughly signed card.

I tried to figure out how to make my words make sense with additions like, “so proud of your strength” but there was really no way around “congratulations.” Which left me with only one possible alternative because putting the card in my purse and never speaking of it again is something I’m trying to give up.

“I’ll go ahead and mail this,” I said, sealing the envelope before anyone else could see. I tucked it in my purse (where it will never be seen again), and set about making a forged duplicate.

I tried to find the same card but honestly who will know? I resisted the urge to get a graduation card on the sale rack and went straight to the bereaved section of the store, where I picked out a suitably sad yet supportive expression of our shared grief. And then I proceeded to forge my friends’ notes and signatures.

Some were completely illegible, so I made up something appropriate in their place. “We’ll always have Paris,” is my go-to in such cases. Most notes were easy to replicate. To make them more authentic I utilized what I know of the Stanislavski acting method, and became each person as I performed their signatures. Note: I am not an actor, but I rock at googling “what is the Stanislavski technique?”

By the time I got to my own contribution I felt totally legitimate writing “my thoughts are with you.” Like, you have no idea how much my thoughts are with you. In reenacting the others’ laudable thought processes I had spent more time thinking about my friend than it would have taken me to make a casserole. Or a grieferole, as we call them.

I felt actual grief, and compassion, and an overwhelming desire to go to Paris.

Now I’m not saying you should intentionally screw up a group card, but I am saying that if that’s what it takes to overcome a knee-jerk interaction, go ahead and screw up the card.

Also, congratulations. I am so proud of you.

It is the morning after Thanksgiving, which means I have just made a bathtub-sized batch of raisin bran muffin batter to use up the almost-quart of buttermilk left over from the mashed potatoes. If I know anything about early New Englanders, it’s that they used all the stuff. (I also know that Pilgrims first landed in Provincetown, not Plymouth, and that they fasted on their Thanksgiving, but whatever).

Even though it’s happened for ages, I didn’t realize that bran muffins were our day after Thanksgiving tradition until this year – the year I’m actively re-branding Black Friday. Because who’s the genius who decided it was a good idea to pair a day of gratitude with a day of buying as much sub-quality stuff as will fit in your car?

It started a few weeks ago when my son asked when Thanksgiving was. I told him I was pretty sure it was on a Thursday this year, to which he responded, “oh right, because Black Friday.”

He regretted it instantly because of course a lecture followed. We dedicate a day to being grateful – for our families, our homes, our freedoms, our health, our Sea Monkeys, our whatever. And then we get up the next morning, spontaneously unsatisfied with what we have.

I do get it. If you need something and you are on a tight budget, you buy it when it’s cheapest – like buying vegetables in season, or your own personal stash of peanut butter Cadbury eggs the day after Easter. The thing is, my tight budget doesn’t like other people telling me what I need, and what stuff will make my life happier. You don’t know me, marketing people. No matter how many ads for those boots I want you stick in my sidebar.

So this year I’m starting a new tradition. I’m going room to room, noting all the things I’m still happy I bought, inherited, made, or was given. Quirky things, like the tomato knife I grew up with, and big things, like the couch we saved up for and picked out on our way home from a wedding.

I found out I have a ton of great stuff. Would you think it was great? Maybe not. Not everyone is going to love my tomato knife, the chicken figurines in the kitchen window, or the dinner chime that’s useless but really pretty cool. I’m okay with that.

Thanksgiving has taught me a thing or two about the stuff we own.
1. We inevitably use our tablecloth in a craft project, and then forget that we now have no tablecloth. Ergo, Emergency Tablecloth Run Wednesday. In the rock/paper/scissors of life, craft projects crush homegoods.
2. While we’re at it, we buy new cloth napkins because Jeremy Irons made us stop using paper napkins and by the time Thanksgiving rolls around again we have nothing that matches.
3. Ditto glasses. Maybe this is why people have glasses and plates that only come out on special occasions. I get that now. But I’m also okay with replacing things at certain times of year – like changing smoke detector batteries with the time change. This is why we get toothbrushes and tape in our Christmas stockings. (If you don’t get tape in your Christmas stocking, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rub it in.)

I really did go room to room, noting things I was grateful to have, and now I can’t stop. I’m wrapped in a mohair blanket my mom used to keep in the back of her car when she lived in the mountains, just in case. My pencil cup was given to me right out of a family’s kitchen cupboard in Bavaria. My stapler – the only one that hasn’t broken – was rescued from my dad’s office.

I like things that are useful, beautiful, do their job, and don’t break. Things that were given or made by someone I love. Things whose history makes me smile.

Please make a note of it, marketing people.

My Mom’s Raisin Bran Muffins
adapted from the Christian Science Monitor

15 oz raisin bran cereal
2 cups sugar
5 cups flour
5 tsp baking soda
a couple grinds of salt
4 eggs
1 qt. buttermilk
1 cup melted butter, cooled
Mix the dry ingredients in the biggest bowl you have (I use my soup pot).
Whisk the liquids in a smaller bowl and then thoroughly combine with dry ingredients.
Store batter in a tight container for up to six weeks.

To bake: Preheat oven to 400º. Fill cups of a muffin tin ¾ of the way full. Bake for 15 minutes.

When I make it ¾ c. of the buttermilk is actually whole milk because I used it in the mashed potatoes. Also, you have to estimate 15oz of cereal because my recipe is probably from the ’70s and there are no 15oz boxes.

I’ve lost count of how many dozens of muffins it makes, but it’s a lot. I will try to pay attention and update when we have a new total.

Chris and I both had events to attend in the big city last night which meant, obviously, that it was time to get new fish for our hydroponic water garden.

I don’t want to talk about what happened to Antler, the beloved fish who first inhabited the water garden, but okay fine, we lost Antler. Not lost like “Omg where’d I put the fish?” but lost like “oh look, the fish is napping.”

Antler was the greatest and we were very sad. So sad, that we contacted the water garden people to see what we could do better. The response was a kind and incredibly helpful email, which closed with: “Again, we are very sorry for your loss and can send you a care package when you’re ready.” That is customer service, people.

Emily the Community Happyness Guru (not even kidding, that’s her title) recommended we try guppies next, so the plan was to get guppies at a pet store the next time we were near one. But who should pick them up? Chris was taking the girl child to symphony, while I held down the fort at a school fundraiser. Which event would the fish enjoy attending more?

I mean, it’s November and we can’t just leave them in the car while we eat passed hors d’oeuvres. We’re not monsters.

I thought symphony would be a nice way to introduce them to life at Trout Towers, but there was also some argument for taking them to my event where they could mingle a bit and enjoy life beyond the tank before settling in. In the end,  it came down to logistics and the fact that Chris doesn’t carry a purse. And symphony ended way past their bedtime.

I had one extra fundraiser ticket but wasn’t sure it would cover three fish (there is absolutely nothing on the website about the ticket price for fish) so I smuggled them in.

The trouble started pretty much instantly. I ran into friends who invited me to join them at their table. “Here, I’ll take your coat and save you a seat,” one said. At which I may have clutched my coat and bag closer and made up a perfectly logical excuse like “I don’t have fish in here and don’t take my purse.” I don’t know where he went after that.

We – by which I mean the fish and I – looked at the silent auction items and placed some bids. Fish are really good at auctions that are silent.

Here’s something you may not know: Carrying tiny aquatic family members around in your handbag is really good for your posture. It’s like walking with a book on your head, because all you can think about is not sloshing the fish. All possible worst case scenarios come to mind which surprisingly do not include water and fish spilling willy-nilly from your handbag as you reach for just one more bruschetta.

And then you settle in because people take companion animals to things all the time and really this is no big deal. You chat, you bid, you have some cubes of cheese. And then you decide it’s time to go and by golly you can’t get out of there fast enough.

Safely in the car, you start worrying about keeping their bag of water upright, now that they’re not attached to you in their BabyBjörn handbag. You hold them in your lap but then you think about what would happen should the airbag deploy and believe me it’s not pretty.

Once we got home I followed Emily’s email to the letter. The guppies are settled in and seem to be in good spirits – although I’m sensing a tinge of symphony remorse. Maybe next time.

photo: Waving Guppies by Alice Chaos