THE DOMESTIC
has had it with living with her mother
Ijust can’t get comfortable in my mother’s house. It doesn’t add up — it should feel like a five-star hotel compared with my much more modestly proportioned home. “Tiny. Your tiny home,” I can almost hear Herself interject. She’s always quick to point out what a minuscule house it is. Even if she tries to compliment it, she never quite manages it.
“Their house could be lovely,” is her favourite way of describing it to others. I think the implication is, it could be lovely if only we were not the owners, intent on filling it with crap (possessions) and refusing to enact her every well-meaning suggestion for improvement (nagging).
The irony, of course, is that Herself ’s home is stacked to the rafters with crap. My theory is that she suffers from home dysmorphia. There are two spare rooms in her house; one is plushly carpeted, and has brand new wardrobes and a beautifully appointed en suite.
The other contains all of the following items: a double bed, a discarded sofa, a discarded desk, eight empty wicker trunks, six paintings (not on the wall), an old dresser, a wardrobe and too many other random items to catalogue in full here. It is the room where unwanted things are stored. Himself and I were given this room for our two-month stay.
Herself thinks my living-room set is a particular downfall of my tiny, couldbe-lovely house. It’s a hand-me-down from Himself’s grandparents that I ambitiously decided to reupholster myself during a particularly aggressive nesting phase in my first pregnancy. Unfortunately, the baby arrived before the project was fully completed, and ever since, Herself’s every encounter with the not-quite-covered sofa actually causes her physical pain. There is palpable anguish there, so much so that one day I might complete the job, not to improve my living room, but as a gift to her.
The living room in her house is, oddly, not really conducive to relaxing — this again, I can’t help but feel, says everything about how Herself feels about us barging into her house, toddler in tow, and basically wrecking the gaff. The sofa is a two-seater, and, in theory, should, you know, seat two. However, Herself has a prized throw-pillow collection of fairly epic proportions, and as is the way with all ornamental pillows, they are not compatible with the human form at rest.
Some of the pillows are satin and slippy, so that one finds it virtually impossible to get satisfactory traction on any lounging position without kind of sliding to the floor. Some are horribly scratchy, a bit like a throwpillow hair-shirt; and some are full-on jewel-encrusted, causing the loungee to actually experience a stabbing sensation when supine.
We’re hopefully on the home stretch of this very uncomfortable room-mate situation and — she doesn’t believe this — I know she’ll miss us when we’re gone, or if not us, exactly, then at least my recipe-testing for this column. These fritters make a delicious brunch. ‘Recipes For A Nervous Breakdown (And How To Cook Yourself Sane (ish!)’ by Sophie White, published by Gill Books is out now, priced at €24.99