When my appliances arrive, I am going to be as happy as a woman in a retrograde ad for cleaning products, I am going to load my dishwasher and light my stove and wash my clothes with a spring in my step and, if I could whistle, a whistle on my lips. I can whistle, but it’s a sad little whistle, made a strange way, and I can’t control the note it sounds. I mean, I sound the same note again and again. Anyway, I am going to be so happy doing housework! I am going to tell all my friends how wonderful my new appliances are. Did I already mention that we’ve ordered a microwave that’s a drawer? I hope this is as wonderful as it seems. When the new appliances come, and are installed, and the kitchen has been painted and the stools are at the island and my new sink gleams, I am going to experience real happiness on a daily basis. And you, my friends, will envy me.

Today I went to Henry’s year-end poetry fest. Henry read a poem he wrote about Jose Reyes of the Mets that brought actual tears to my eyes. He was wearing a Jose Reyes shirt. It was a tremendous performance. As a rule, I don’t like to say disparaging things about the other kindergartners, but since you asked, yes, his poem was the best. Mom is great, mom is this, I like baseball, etc. Some poems about summer. Please. Children. Make it interesting. Engage me. It’s cold out there, if you know what I mean.

We are going to start renovating our house, of course. I say of course because almost everything we do is overdetermined, from where we live to what we drive to where we vacation to when we’re going to have the third one. Oh, you have to have a third one, if you’re going to have a fourth. Anyway, the kitchen needs updating, darlings. Our appliances are ancient, and there’s forty years of shit between the floorboards. I found a kitchen I liked in New York magazine and so we’re off. Who cares if we don’t have the money? No one ever has the money for this kind of thing. Except in our neighborhood, where some people do. I’d gloss over this fact, except that it seems somehow important.

I’m surprised by how much I care about appliances. I could talk to you quite movingly about the appliances I used to have, when we lived in the city. The apartment had just been renovated and they were state of the art. Now the children don’t remember the ice maker. They don’t know the “ice maker” exists. We’ve developed a highly ritualized procedure for the Getting of the Ice and the Cracking of the Ice. Before it can happen, everyone’s hands have to be washed. But recently I told them that some day we will have an ice maker, and all this will be over. We’ll remember these times fondly. When we were young.