But the Yankee Candle Store has invented a new 4-D matrix reality where there is a candle scent called Leather. That’s right. Leather. Or White Cotton. Do you get it? This is a candle that smells like . . . white cotton. Not yellow cotton. White. What does white cotton smell like? You inhale the candle and suddenly you know! It’s surreal!
And that’s what you start doing when you take a wrong turn at the mall, like I did the other week. You start methodically unscrewing and snorting these rows and rows of candles like an addict—
Getting a Yankee Candle contact high—
And now you’re into the next section—Marguerita Sunset. Caribbean Rum. Luau Colada. This is odd. Why am I standing alone in a mall and snorting candles that smell like hangover-inducing umbrella drinks from a bad Cheech and Chong movie? But were there any good Cheech and Chong movies? Who knows?
Next section: food! We are talking candles that smell like, and I quote: “Root Beer. Maple Pancakes. Vanilla Frosting. Fudge Brownie. Bunny Cake.”
It’s like an Escher painting: Who would burn a candle that smells like Bunny Cake while actually baking a Bunny Cake? What kind of sugar cleanse would that necessitate? As if in a trance, I buy four. I’m so exhausted from the light bulbs, I can’t help it.
THROWING SOME SHADE
Hannah is complaining about too much light in her bedroom. Her curtains are too gauzy. It makes it hard for her to sleep in ’til noon, which she considers her right on weekends. Because I know nothing, I foolishly say, “Let’s get you some blinds!”
Swirling a fresh cup of coffee, I click open Angie’s List. I type in “blinds.” Do I mean “custom blinds”? Sure! Here’s a 10 percent-off coupon—I’m printing money! It’s for a highly rated custom blinds guy named Roger. Within two hours he’s at my house for a free estimate! #winning!
Roger is charming, friendly, conversational, and—get this! Also a blues musician! He oohs and aahs over my 1906 craftsman house, with its large, beautiful, “unusually sized” windows. Older and wiser now, the phrase “unusually sized” should have been the tip-off that another custom-zero was being custom-added, but I thought nothing of it then. Oh no! Roger was so friendly, I offered him a cup of coffee. Presumably because I was home on a weekday, he asked what I did for a living. I said I was a writer. He asked what kind.
Now I know that this is called emotionally “bonding” and you should not do it when getting a quote unquote “free estimate.” In hindsight, I realize I should have said, “I am unemployed,” and burst into tears, rather than trying to make my career sound so successful and lucrative. Roger then spends what seems like half an hour—he’s thorough!—measuring two windows. And he goes to his truck and returns with a thick, beautifully bound binder. Full of . . . blinds.
Not just blinds. And I quote: “Window treatments of your dreams.” And I think, Who literally dreams of window treatments?
Someone, because there are honeycomb ones, blackout ones, vertical ones—with different kinds of pulleys, cords, and stylish “valences”—in complicated colors like Banana Ice Milk and Taos Midnight Persimmon. Yankee Candle aromas will be coming next.
Bottom line? For two bedroom windows, it will take three weeks for the custom shades to arrive. Cost? $1,800. “They will look amazing!” Roger enthuses. Inwardly, I agree. They will be the most amazing thing in my teen’s messy bedroom piled with laundry, makeup, snarls of electronics, and crumpled tissues. $1,800? We just want something to block light.
After Roger leaves—in an air thick with mutual disappointment—I eye a trifold from Sally’s science fair project. I contemplate simply nailing blankets over the windows. In the end, I give Hannah a nice new sleep mask. Although that night I do indeed dream . . . of window treatments.
And Bunny Cake.
LIBERAL DIRT
For decades, I’ve never hired a regular cleaning person. Why? Feminist guilt. In Nickel and Dimed, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich argued that it’s oppressive for a First World woman to pay a Third World sister to scrub her toilets.
So when we first moved into this giant house, I invented a game for my girls and me to play. It was sort of an Upstairs Downstairs thing where we pretended to be the servants of wealthy people. I procured “fun” cleaning gear—a Miele vacuum cleaner, battery-powered Swiffer, products like “Kaboom!” Violent and possibly toxic, it cleans your toilet bowl. Sally in particular loved it. “Kaboom!” we yelled, and flushed, like we were getting away with something.
But as girls move into teenhood, they lose the joy and become judgmental. Hannah can be a great refrigerator-cleaner when she puts her mind to it, but she pulls out every gross thing and describes it to me as if it’s my fault. It’s like an unwanted show-and-tell from a precocious child from some hateful Montessori/Waldorf preschool.
So I finally say, “To hell with Barbara Ehrenreich!” and I hire the cleaning lady Luz our nice gay neighbors enthusiastically recommend, because she needs more clients.
See? By hiring a cleaning professional, I am providing employment in the world. I even insist on paying Luz more than the almost absurdly low price that is quoted.
But then, of course, Luz arrives. She is like an avenging angel sent by Barbara Ehrenreich to haunt me, in my own home.
Truth be told, Luz is on the cusp of being a little too old and frail to be doing this sort of physical labor. In the morning, she’ll wheel up a cart with cleaning supplies and enough bottled water to provide hydration for the next, clearly grueling, eight hours.
Luz is mesmerized by this tree in our front yard that, to my surprise—is that what those are?—has guavas. She harvests them so diligently, I worry that, for her, they may represent a major food source.
Also, it pains me to complain, but Luz will rearrange everything. She’ll literally move objects randomly from one room to another. It’s terrifying. In the evening, I’ll reach over to my nightstand, for the important books I was mindfully trying to read, jar of TUMS, reading glasses, New York Times crossword—all gone! Why?!?
I feel violated because my intimate things are always being moved—and then I feel reviolated because I’m having such a foot-stomping, First World reaction. Soon I will have to pay more money to take myself to emergency Cleaning Woman Therapy.
PLEASE DON’T EAT THE BASIL
My new Green Goddess Cookbook has an inviting recipe for fresh pesto.
It is a perfect opportunity (“A Passion for Ramps!”) for Charlie and me to go to our delightful local farmer’s market. Picture charming stands bearing gentle moraines of pesticide-free raspberries, votive candles women from Ventura have insisted on crafting out of honey, and a battered, blue-eyed soul brother crooning Crosby, Stills and Nash. It’s less a market than a lifestyle.
We stop at Sunchoke Farm Sisters Produce. It is overflowing with the abundance of the earth: frothy kale, golden beets, gloriously tumbling oyster and shiitake mushrooms. I root around: okay, no, not here, not there . . .
“Do you have basil?” I ask.
“No,” the farm lady declares, “too early.”
I turn to Charlie. “March is too early for basil?