Yesterday morning when I was driving to town to help load the Fresh Air kids onto the bus for their trip back to New York, I heard a little blurb on NPR that I’ve been mulling over ever since. It went something like this:

North Americans have a clutter problem. Fifty percent—40? 70? um … a large number—of garages are so full of stuff that there is no room for the cars they were built to house. And you can tell the state of someone’s house by looking at the outside of their refrigerators. A messy magnet-y mess is indicative of a house with too much stuff.

We do not have a garage, so I ignored that statement. But after a nanosecond of introspection, I realized that my fridge is truly indicative of the state of my house, and not just in regards to clutter.

My fridge is partially covered with papers, beat-up random magnets, a large much-looked at calendar, a bunch of lists, a couple odd-ball pieces of children’s art work, and some other pieces of paper that I haven’t gotten around to tossing for the last two years or so. The top of the fridge is gently mounded with books to return to the library, a broken radio, random cassette tapes, a tube of wrapping paper, a deflated ball, and a couple confiscated sharp sticks. The refrigerator door does not have a handle, and there are dents in its side from where the deck door slams into it.

So according to my fridge, my house is not cluttered (too much) but what’s in it is broken, beat-up, and worn out. Functional wins out over pretty. We have a nightmare of a filing system, and the attic (the house’s top of the fridge) is loaded with forgotten stuff.

I could spend five minutes and whip the outside of my fridge into pristine conditions—well, except for replacing the door handle; that would take more time—but I don’t care so much about the outside of it. It’s the inside that I find more interesting, and tasty. Open the door-that-doesn’t-have-a-handle of my fridge and you’ll find cartons of whipping cream, a bowl of roasted beets, a bunch of special meats for the birthday girl’s supper, cucumbers from a neighbor, bottles of wine, milk, loads of condiments, and dozens of eggs from our chickens (again, in keeping with the theme of less than perfect, many of them are cracked, thanks to pecky chickens and klutzy kids).

I love cozy, put-together, lived-in homes. They are relaxing and welcoming. But no matter how hard I try (admittedly, I don’t try very hard), I can’t get my feathers in a ruffle over finishing the window trim or fixing the dining room table so it doesn’t almost collapse when someone leans their elbows on it (which you’re not supposed to do at the table anyway, so there).

However, of the three adjectives I used in the first sentence of the last paragraph (“cozy,” “put-together,” and “lived-in”, for those of you who don’t like to have to work when you read), I’m only missing the second one. We have lots of gentle lighting (even if the lamp shades are dusty and have permanent marker scribbles on them), soft chairs (that tip over backwards and don’t match), and easily accessible supplies like (mismatched) hanging mugs, (old pickle) gallon jars of granola, and (spilling over) mountains of books. And there’s certainly no doubt about it, we live in this house.

And that’s the story my fridge told me when I looked at it.

The end.

This same time, years previous: sweet traditions

One late afternoon last week, my husband called me.

“We’re on our way home. If the kids want to get buckets of water and soak us when we get out of the truck, they can.”

My husband had been working on my parents’ house all week long in the broiling heat, and this particular day, my son had been helping him, too.

Usually my husband gets semi-sick when he works in hot-hot weather, but my parents were up at the property, too, and my mother spent her days pumping everyone full of liquids—mint tea, iced coffee, juice, water—the end result of which was that my husband didn’t spend his evenings suffering from headaches and nausea and being a bear to live with.

My younger daughter was at camp—her first, week-long camp—so she missed the wet homecoming.

I stayed on the porch where it was safe and dry. And hot.

Always, always hot.

The water party didn’t last for very long. My husband said the water felt good at first, but soon the extreme cold on his extremely hot (eh-hem) body turned from refreshing to painful and he had to call it quits.

Water is amazing. Did you know that:

*even when the house is still 91 degrees (in the cooler parts), a ten-minute soak in a tub of nearly totally cold water provides at least 30 minutes of reprieve, maybe even longer if you are willing to sit motionless in front of a fan.

*swiping your skin with a cool, damp washcloth and then lying under a fan actually gives you goose bumps.

*a watermelon, when properly gorged upon, will fill you up to the brim so that no supper is necessary.

Now that the heat wave has finally broken (and I spent the night shivering!), this post feels out of place and kind of useless.

Then again, August is coming.

Do you have any Staying Cool Tips to share?

This same time, years previous: rain (well now, isn’t that appropriate!)

This same time, years previous: the green-eyed monster and me, quotes for writers (and how I do it), baked oatmeal (the kind my family likes), zucchini skillet with tomatoes and feta, zucchini with sausage, tomatoes, and oregano, simple creamy potato salad, French potato salad, tempero, vanilla pudding, apricot pandowdy