Hog toys. || Big Bob ahoy. || Witches’ brew. || Build your own engines. || Dog versus leaf blower, metamorphosis begins. || At all times, dignity. || Godzilla versus Mito Komon. || A gift for the mother-in-law. || Good idea. (h/t, Perry) || Day 14. (h/t, Damian) || Moon whales detected. || The sounds of cake. || Customer service. || Cat chatter. || Leader of the pack. || A project for the weekend. (h/t, Dicentra) || Her missing shoes. || I think they may be wombles. (h/t, Julia) || Today’s word is intervention. || Lively scenes. (h/t, Neontaster) || Minus 7 Celsius. || Paranormal car crashes. || The transparent jigsaw puzzle you’ve always wanted. || And finally, quite instructively, on the proprieties of video conferencing.

Can you access a broader intelligence and gain quick information without having to use your logical mind?

From the pages of Everyday Feminism, an offer you can’t refuse.

Sharpen your sense of self-awareness.

Just $35.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

For Mother’s Day I asked for one thing: a house cleaning service.

In the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, Gemma Hartley bemoans the chore of getting her multiple bathrooms cleaned by someone else. Actually, the clean bathrooms are, it turns out, a secondary concern:

The real gift I wanted was to be relieved of the emotional labour of a single task that had been nagging at the back of my mind. The clean house would simply be a bonus.

It’s been said, here at least, that when someone uses the term “emotional labour” unironically, the person doing the mouthing is most likely a bit of a nightmare. Say, the kind of woman who complains about the “emotional labour” of hiring a domestic cleaner. Or the kind who bitches about her husband and his shortcomings in the pages of a national magazine, where friends and colleagues of said husband, and perhaps his own children, can read on with amusement.

My husband waited for me to change my mind to an “easier” gift than housecleaning, something he could one-click order on Amazon. Disappointed by my unwavering desire, the day before Mother’s Day he called a single service, decided they were too expensive, and vowed to clean the bathrooms himself. He still gave me the choice, of course. He told me the high dollar amount of completing the cleaning services I requested (since I control the budget) and asked incredulously if I still wanted him to book it.

Details ensue.

What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labour I would have done if the job had fallen to me.

Many details.

I had wanted to hire out deep cleaning for a while, especially since my freelance work had picked up considerably. The reason I hadn’t done it yet was part guilt over not doing my housework, and an even larger part of not wanting to deal with the work of hiring a service. I knew exactly how exhausting it was going to be. That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift.

This, it seems, was unknown to said husband and so, alas, ‘twas not to be.

Because I’m generous, an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

I’ll set the ball rolling with scenes of lockdown enforcement in what appears to be North Yorkshire. 

Oh, and this. 

And as some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

It helps to keep this place here.

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

High stakes game. || Hardcore buffet. || You think you’ve had a bad day? || A brief history of Supermarionation. || Insert tab ‘a’ into slot ‘b’. || Whatever this is, he’s doing it better than you. || Hot mountain. || Handsome devil. || In my day, we had to make our own entertainment. || Nommy nommy nom. || San Francisco, March 22. || You want one and you know it. || The Antarctic Winter Film Festival. || Wash your potatoes thoroughly. || Under pressure. || Build your own paper jukebox. (h/t, Coudal) || A guide to the giraffe. Includes chest-butts and achieving longness. || Isolated showers. || Look sharp, your date’s arrived. || Unintended consequences. || And finally, amphibiously, one tab or two?

Dan Butler, 29, a radio journalist, and his husband, Hugh O’Connor, 31, a theatre production designer, are also in a relationship with Charles Davis, 28, another theatre production designer.

Heh. Sorry, mustn’t laugh. I denounce myself. And in case you’re wondering, yes, the above is from the Guardian’s ‘Lifestyle’ section, where polyamory – or glorified slutting by emotional inadequates – is still the latest thing and breathlessly endorsed. It starts off quite romantically: 

[Dan and Hugh] met as students at a party… And then the night was over, and Dan was one of the last people there. He said: ‘Goodbye, Hugh.’ And I thought: ‘Oh my God. I have no idea what this guy’s name is. I really like him.’”

Ah, bless.

They moved in with each other after about two months, and held an unofficial wedding in 2014, before same-sex marriage in Australia was legal. They legalised their marriage in 2018… “I remember feeling the happiest I’d ever felt with Dan,” says Hugh.  

So far, so rosy. Readers should note, however, that, despite all this professed happiness, Dan and Hugh’s marriage was an “open” one “from the start,” which is to say, not really a marriage at all. The misuse of terms, in attempts to repackage dissatisfaction, inadequacy and commonplace grubbiness, may crop up again.

“And then when we met Charlie. It was like this extension of a really positive energy.”

For instance.

Charles also had a boyfriend, but that, too, was an open relationship,

Why, it’s almost as if there were a pattern, a trajectory. 

I remember one morning, the three of us had just gone to the beach and Hugh had a meeting, so Dan and I drove Hugh back to the studio. And then Dan drove me back to my suburb and dropped me off. I think he leaned in and kissed me. We were parked outside my apartment block and I looked across the street and saw my boyfriend.

Those golden romantic moments, to treasure forever.

Time for an open thread, in which to share links and bicker. I’ll set the ball rolling with three topical items.

Via Damian, tensions mount. 

Via Julia, a lockdown mystery. 

And via the Beagle, today’s word is improvisation. 

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

His copper bonsai is better than yours. || Serbian ensemble. || Like a stubborn jar of pickles. || I was previously unfamiliar with the erotic practice of stumping. || More joys of public transport. || Portraits rendered in charcoal. || Clouds over Lake Michigan. (h/t, DRB) || Twitching meat. || Lockdown scenes. (h/t, Dicentra) || Those prone to fainting should look away now. || Name the counties of the United States. You have 12 minutes. || Virtual tours of gardens and grand houses. || George’s besties. || It helps to have a back-up plan. || Hey, kids. Come play. || Old-school cloaking technology. || Simple but effective. || Filth removal of note. || And finally, topically, when the guy in front of you is doing this.

Sometimes, it can feel surprising that any beauty still exists in the world. It can feel wrong to keep cultivating our gardens while the world shatters outside our windows.

Yes, it’s time to once again gawp at the mindset of the Salon-reader demographic. Or at least the Salon-writer demographic, with which it presumably overlaps. Specifically, a piece by Ms Alex Dew, “a recent graduate of Eastern Washington University’s Master of Fine Arts programme in Creative Nonfiction,” and whose urgent bulletin to the world is titled My Houseplant Garden Is A Tiny National Park Donald Trump Can Never Destroy.

If that sounds a tad overwrought and not entirely even-keeled, do read on.

I begin each day by taking a mental inventory of whatever horrors Trump has committed since I have been asleep,

As one does.

scrolling through news outlets and social media on my iPhone, even though I know that this probably bad for my mental health.

I suspect this may be a matter of putting the cart before the horse. And perhaps tellingly, mental health is mentioned more than once in Ms Dew’s article.

There is evidence that Trump’s presidency has had a negative effect on the mental health of many Democrats, with 72% of those surveyed in one study reporting an increase in anxiety since he has taken office. Sometimes, it’s enough to make me not want to get out of bed.

A phenomenon at which we’ve previously marvelled. More than once.

After reading the news, it is time to attend to my indoor garden, to do the work of keeping my plants alive: the trimming and the watering and the fertilising. This work is meditation, a way of going on.

Yes, going on. Bravely, heroically, and despite the realisation that your preferred candidate lost an election, four years ago.

Time, I think, for an open thread, in which to share links and bicker. Feel free to recount your adventures during The Old Testament Event of 2020, aka, The Toilet-Paper Apocalypse.

For those in need of diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at.