BIG JULY
everything I got up to this month: exquisite functioning, The Gilded Age, Lord of the Rings rewatch, northern WI Zillow, and more
In a needlessly cruel and violent world, there are a few things that always make me feel like I’m back on solid ground. The first is strenuous, ass-busting workouts three to four times a week. The second is gardening. This is my first summer not moving in SEVEN YEARS, which means I can finally have a garden of my own and baby, I’m growing kale, chard, summer squash, zucchini, pumpkins, pinto beans, pickling cucumbers, jalapeños, bell peppers, a pepper whose identity is unknown to me, and several different kinds of tomatoes.
It’s a lot of work to get a garden going in the spring and a lot of work to harvest and put all your food up once your crops start coming in (here in Zone 5A, this happens in August to September.) But for now, everything is trickling in at a snackable pace and the garden doesn’t need me very much at all. I mostly go outside just to look at it. In the morning, I drink coffee with one hand and pull up weeds with the other. In the evening, I take an ice cream sandwich out there and check for new cucumbers. This is living!!
The final thing that gives me a sense of control is actually a whole umbrella of activities that I call “exquisite functioning.” Exquisite functioning is doing housework on hard mode and includes such endeavors as drying herbs, hanging laundry outside to dry, and making sun tea. Mending clothing is exquisite functioning, so wearing a large straw hat and buying a big thing of lemon juice. Saving ribbons is not inherently exquisite functioning, but it is if you actually use them to wrap gifts. It’s a life of garage sales and talking to your neighbors—the radical parts about being a trad wife and also Wilson from Home Improvement. It’s consumer activism, crunchiness, and rejecting a carbonized economy rolled together, but you’re also having fun with it. The only rule is that exquisite functioning doesn’t reward suffering, so it’s okay to drop off sometimes and order pizza, let the dishes pile up, drink a diet soda, etc. I try to be in the zone 75% of the time.