I read this yesterday, about the best places to live on the planet, based on a quality of life score (”factors [included] health services, political stability, traffic congestion, crime, media censorship, pollution, mail services, and even the variety and quality of restaurants and theatre,” according to another article). I’ll summarize for you: Europe-Europe-Europe-Canada-Europe-Europe… and so on.

I always feel a little bewildered when I hear people absolutely terrified that our government is going to make us more like Europe. Huh? I can understand a whole host of political viewpoints, objections, opinions, but that one frankly makes no sense to me. I guess there is a seedy underbelly of Europe I just don’t know about. I mean, I’m only half kidding, because I’ve only been to a European city once, and I was a tourist, so really how the heck would I know? I guess since there aren’t commercials on TV with crying, shoeless European children and a narrator telling me that “just thirty-eight cents a day feeds a child!!” and since their cities always top these Best Places list, well Europe just doesn’t sound like a very bad Worst Case Scenario to me…

I woke up at 6:00 this morning to head into town for our Congo team’s “debriefing” at 7:30. Far too early for a meeting, if you ask me, but that seems to be the only time of day we’re all consistently available. Granted, we’ve been back for more than a month, but in a lot of ways this meeting did not seem late in coming. I feel I’m just starting to process the trip, that I’m just starting to get enough distance to even begin seeing it for what it was (just don’t ask me what that is, because I don’t know if I’ve processed enough to articulate it yet!).

After the meeting, I was to watch Story (remember the cute snow baby? that’s her–so stinking adorable, and the easiest baby on the face of the planet to watch), and I told Sharon we’d be finished by 9:00, easy, ninety-four percent sure. At 9:15, I left the meeting, everyone else still talking. I guess I’m not the only one just starting to process the trip. It surprised me that a lot of what I’ve experienced on “re-entry” was what a lot of the others were also going through, namely the awkwardness and seeming inability to reintegrate into the circles we swam in before leaving, into life with its previous definitions and boundaries and foundations. A lot of my pre-Congo habits have resumed, and things look back to normal on the surface, but I cannot shake the oddness of it, the strange feeling in the back of my mind, in the pit of my stomach.

I’ve been out of the Congo for a month, but nearly every day I’m thinking of how to get back. Looking up flight schedules, reading hotel reviews (for Kigali, Kampala, Kinshasa). Trying–and failing–to convince Jesse that he really does want to go to Africa with me one day.

I bought a two-liter of Crush orange soda the other day, hoping to find something on par with the orange Fanta we drank while in Bukavu. Orange Fanta here is way too carbonated. I had a cup of it at a local pizza parlor the week after I returned, and I couldn’t drink it, it was so strong. Crush is much more similar, though still with a bit more bite than the Congolese Fanta. I’m plowing through books about colonialism, the Belgians, Mobutu, the genocide in Rwanda. Last night I watched a 1959 documentary about the Congo jungle, with a ridiculous narrator and footage nearly completely faded away.

I feel like this is just circling the same topic over and over, and I know you’re probably sick of hearing about Congo. Seems like it’s all I can talk about, all I’ve been talking about for months. I promise I’ll write more about vegetable gardens and the cats and life in general and other not-Congo topics. But thanks for listening as I process. Thanks for letting me wrestle with this, with what it was and what it might become. Thanks for helping me “debrief.”

Fiston’s shoes were always clean. In the two weeks we were there, the five of us—Evan, Robin, Luke, Fiston, and I—trounced through some of the muddiest places, walked over some of the dustiest roads. Our shoes became filthier and filthier, turned deeper orange as time passed. But Fiston’s shoes stayed immaculate, spotless. I watched his shoes the whole time. He had brought three pair with him from Uganda, where he’s living with his brother in Kampala. The first day, when he was at the Kigali airport to pick us up, he wore a smart-looking pair of brown leather shoes, shoes that seemed distinguished. These he reserved for Sundays, for special occasions. The other days, he alternated between a pair of white leather tennis shoes or a pair of dark gray Converse Chucks.

One day, after a night of rain, we visited a woman to film her getting ready with her kids in the morning. The sun was just starting to come up, and we slipped our way down steep muddy pathways to her house. Fiston was wearing his bright white shoes, and they were quickly becoming bright orange.

To my surprise, a few days later he was wearing those same shoes, once again bright white and nearly spotless. But there are many surprises in Fiston. He’s incredibly quiet, with an intensely gentle disposition—yet he has one of the strongest, most lovely singing voices I’ve ever heard. He’s introspective and at times brooding—yet he speaks with conviction, passion for his country, the place where he grew up, the place where he’d like to one day raise a family. He knows at least four languages, possibly more, has grown up in a house with a spectacular view of the lake but cannot swim, is the second to youngest of ten children and everyone we met on the streets near his family’s house was “a cousin.”

There are two things that define Fiston in my memory. The first, how gentle he was with the women he translated for, the rape survivors, how soft his voice when he was around them, the tender way in which he helped them put on the microphones for the camera, the trusting way they looked at him, the way their faces broke into smiles every time they saw him. And his shoes, which even after slogging through the muddiest places always came out clean, always ended up pristine.

The other day, before I lost one job and lost pretty much all hours on the other, I made a list of improvements I’d like to make to our house eventually (key word here, eventually–even before losing most of my income), organized by room.

Kitchen. Paint the walls (first, decide on color: Jesse wants yellow, and I want purple; we’ll probably end up with something completely different). Windows (blinds? curtains?). Island where the little table is now. Pot rack over the island. (And if we’re being really ambitious, I’d love new countertops, preferably in a neutral color, to replace our lovely–ahem, sarcasm–green ones.)

Living Room. Windows (again: curtains? blinds?). Get a long picture shelf from Ikea. Flat-screen TV and new entertainment center.

Back Porch. As in, have a back porch, rather than a “back conrete slab.” Specifically, make conrete slab larger and then attractive with tile or something. Add pergola and plant jasmine or some other beautiful viney plant. Add pretty lights on the pergola, a grill, and a fire pit.

Front Walkway. Make it pretty.

The Yards. Re-do the front landscaping. Plant more rose bushes out back. Plant vegetable garden.

My Dad always has a list of improvements he wants to make on his house, though I doubt he has to write it down. He has it all in his head, complete with a schedule of which project happens first, a plan of action for actually completing said projects, and a way to pay for everything. My list, however, has no schedule, no plan, and no money behind it. But, I’ve got to start somewhere, right?

We’ve been in our house for three and a half years. Hard to believe. I remember when we bought the house–we had been living in the worst apartment either of us had ever lived in. Our ceiling was leaking and then molding. Our air conditioner refused to cool the place, even though we were paying nearly $200 a month in electricity (!!). And there were the roaches, the ants, the spiders…You get the picture. I remember the day we closed on this house. I left the lawyer’s office and drove my little car load of stuff straight to the house. Jesse had to go back to work. I stopped by Subway to get a turkey sub and a Coke and I sat on a cooler in the middle of the kitchen–our kitchen!–and ate that sub, which tasted better than anything from Subway has ever tasted, before or since. I was in our house. The one we owned! (Or, at least, would be paying for until I was 52.)

I still love our house, but three and a half years is a long time to have the same wall colors, the same furniture arranged in the same way. It is for me, anyway. When I was a kid, I used to rearrange my bedroom on an annual basis, or more often if I felt like it, and there was something thrilling about the first night of sleeping in a room that felt completely new.

I do know that at least one of the projects on the list is going to happen, even if the others are becoming more and more “long-term.” Mom and Dad are coming down for my birthday and we’re planting a vegetable garden in the backyard. Which is good, since Dad has a green thumb and has planted plenty of vegetable gardens in his day. I keep hoping I’ve inherited his green thumb, that it’s just been dormant all these years, that I’ll be able to maintain this garden and keep it alive long enough to eat what it produces…I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

So Jesse and I have been into sandwiches lately. (Pause for just a second: I wish this post could be about something important. Something worthwhile. Like, maybe there’s a really nifty metaphor coming up that will illuminate some deep meaning or epiphany. But, no. It’s really just about sandwiches.)

Okay, back to sandwiches. We seem to be eating quite a lot of them lately, mostly on pitas. Hummus and veggie sandwiches. Chicken salad sandwiches. Turkey and swiss sandwiches. And, strangely enough, braised lamb sandwiches (we were trying to be creative with leftovers, and it turned out really tasty). They’re great for lunch, but they’ve become my new favorite dinner. They’re quick, cheap, and nutritious, and they dirty precious few dishes. And paired with a side (baked sweet potatoes are my current favorite), they’re plenty filling for a full meal.

Yeah. That’s all. I’m just loving sandwiches these days and thought I’d share. I’d love some new sandwich ideas if you’ve got a favorite or two…

It struck me last week. I am my mother. Okay, first things first: This is not a bad thing. My mother is awesome, sorry to brag. She’s got this West Virginia twang, and she’s sassy and funny and says things like “Behind every dark cloud, there’s another one” when she was trying to say “Every cloud has a silver lining.” She put up with my teenage temper tantrums and when I thought I might be a lawyer when I grew up, instead of cheering and thanking God that I might make a decent living, she asked whether I thought that job would allow me enough creative agency.

I am not funny like she is, and I am not the survivor she is. And I probably would have slapped my little teenage self silly, and I don’t know if I could be as supportive as she’s been. There are, however, a million things I catch myself saying, a million little habits I find myself repeating, that could be examples of how I am just a quirkier, moodier, more over-the-top version of my mother. But the real clincher was my decision to change how I approached chores.

My mom stayed at home with me when I was a kid. She homeschooled me, always had dinner on the table at 4:15 sharp, and cleaned the house on a weekly basis. Not just kept the house clean on a weekly basis. But cleaned the whole house–every week. My childhood memories all smell like Clorox and clean laundry.

(Lest you think my mother is Martha Stewart, she once painted one of our living room walls the most insane color of bright pink you could ever imagine. And we will never let her live it down.)

So, last week I found myself in the “underemployed” category. Lost one job out of two, and the second has been sporadic with the hours. At first, I’ll be perfectly honest, I was dismayed. And not so much because of money. More because my pride was wounded. The moment I lost the first job, I was sitting at my computer, working on some query letters. And when I got that email (as nice as it was, as full of phrases like “the current economic situation” designed to cushion the blow), I just stopped. I had no motivation. All I wanted to do was sit around and cry. Suddenly, I understood exactly why people who lose their jobs get depressed and end up in their bathrobes at 3:30 on Tuesday afternoons, watching TV shows they don’t care about and eating the last of the chocolate chips in the pantry that had been bought for making cookies. (Not that I, ahem, did those exact things…well…okay, I totally polished off leftover baggies of two different kinds of chocolate chips, and they were both stale and kind of tasted like plastic. And I ate them anyway. And I didn’t care.)

So, I melted down for the afternoon and whined to Jesse about losing a job I’ve been complaining about for nearly three years, and was feeling very sorry for myself because they don’t love me, and Jesse said, why don’t you just take this time to work on your writing? Why don’t you do the things you want to do but don’t have time because of work? Something else will come along.

At first, I thought, I can’t do that! I need to contribute! And then eventually I realized that, as always, he’s right. And he’s being indescribably cool about this whole thing. So, I’ve been writing proposals and query letters and I’ve been revising the book again and reading all about agents and contests and grants and all sorts of fun things like that.

But this post is about becoming my mother. One of the things I’ve decided is that to “contribute” more, I’m taking over most of the household chores (Jesse still takes out the trash because I hate the big trash can outside–it stinks and it gets heavy when it’s full). Jesse works full-time plus freelancing on the side to bring in extra cash, so it makes sense that I take on the house stuff. What I hate, though, is doing a bunch of cleaning all at once. So, I’m splitting up the chores like this. On Mondays, I do laundry and linens. Wednesday is for floors. Friday is for the bathrooms. The dishes get done daily, and I clean the kitchen counters and sink each day. Tuesday and Thursday are for whatever other chores need doing (dusting, cleaning out the fridge, killing fire ants–outside, of course).

Then I remembered, this is exactly what my mother did when I was a kid. Of course, she cleaned a lot more thoroughly than I do. But, she started at one end of the house at the beginning of the week, and by the end of the week she had done the whole house and was ready to start again. There’s something oddly enthralling about cleaning the house like this. Instead of having everything in various states of dirty, things seem to be in various states of clean. And nothing really takes longer than a half hour at a time (except laundry does kind of monopolize the whole day in little spurts). And nothing gets especially dirty, either, which is rather exciting.

Okay, I realize that not everyone gets quite as excited as I do about chores, but frankly I can’t say I understand why not.

This has been stuck in my head nonstop for, like, two weeks.

And Evan and Jenny are also evil for having us over for dinner and then letting me watch Marley and Me, a movie I swore not to cry over. Hey, I tried really, really hard, okay? The worst part is, I knew exactly what was going to happen before ever watching it. And I still cried. Ridiculous!