ordinarybutloud's Xanga

Long Time No Blog

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:52:24 GMT

Well, first, I've been busy. And second, I've been so blissfully happy I've been uninspired. And third, my husband has been hanging around a lot lately and he gets jealous when I write in my blog.

So far this summer we've been on two long car journeys, one to visit my sister and one to visit my in-laws. We've also been to a couple of theme parks and the beach and of course we've been to the neighborhood pool a few thousand times. With school out of session and my social life comprised of my actual friends and my immediate family, I've almost forgotten all the reasons I used to think I don't fit in around here. I love my neighborhood! Just like I did when my kids were too young to attend the elementary school.

Something curious: in the new house, when I answer the door, people notice my bare feet and immediately take off their shoes. I guess they think I'm fastidious about the new floors or something. Not so. I'm actually just kinda lazy and casual and I never wear shoes around the house. I wouldn't wear a bra, either, if no one was coming over, but I don't expect my visitors to shed their bras at the door.

Everything is easier in the new house. EVERYTHING.

I'm training for a half marathon, now. I'm forty pounds overweight (okay, thirty...okay, twenty...but I wouldn't look too awful if I lost forty) and I can't stand it anymore. I realize there is some chance I'll run the half marathon and STILL be forty pounds overweight, but really, that must be better than being forty pounds overweight and sitting on my ass in front of the T.V. I mean, it sounds better, just typing it.

Time to go.

It Wasn't That Bad

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:31:40 GMT

I was being a big, whiny baby about it, and the child was charming. My kids are tired and happy, too, so they are quiet.

Though it WAS just babysitting in disguise. And here's the thing: no one, but NO ONE, takes all THREE of my kids, ever. Unless I pay them. Maybe that's why I'm so down on the pretend "play-date" reciprocal babysitting scam. How is two easier than three? Answer: it's not. Especially when the other two spend the whole time whining, "when is my brother going to be home??"

Some Disconnected Thoughts (or maybe they'll turn out to be connected)

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:59:04 GMT

First, why do people write "G-d" when they mean God? I don't understand this convention. Is this a grammatical construction of some kind? Are there other, or additional letters, aside from "O", that potentially exist in the hyphen for some people? I was reading the featured blog re: not "believing" in evolution and Christianity at the same time, and one of the comments, whose author stated very clearly she is a Christian and therefore believes in God, used "G-d" throughout her post. I especially don't understand this convention when used by Christians. Unless maybe it's using God's name in vain, to discuss religion in a conversational (as opposed to evangelical) manner?

Along those lines, when we got our comcastic new internet service, I allowed my husband to set up our new account. We couldn't keep the old one, because our new, comcastic internet service provider bought out our old service provider, which was fantastic. Not comcastic. Actually fantastic. I digress. I allowed my husband to set up our new account, and he put a hyphen in my email address. I'm sure, for all of my intelligent and writing-oriented readers, a hyphen presents no difficulty. You can probably picture a hyphen in your mind, without any trouble at all, right now as you're reading this. If you can't, just look up in the preceding paragraph and you'll see several of them. Unfortunately, the word "hyphen" is apparently not part of the everyday lexicon of most people. Many, many people are completely unaware of the definition of "hyphen." To make matters worse, thanks to internet and email convention everywhere, they have also become confused about the definition of the word "dash." Most people, when confronted with someone who says, "my email address is OBL hyphen LBO at comcast dot net," translate it in their head into OBL underscore LBO at comcast dot net. This is why I give them further, other information in the form of the word "dash." Now I say, "my email address is OBL hyphen LBO at comcast dot net. That's a hyphen...you know, a dash (drawing a dash in the air with my finger, to give the general gist)...not an underscore." Those who still can't figure it out end up calling me later and saying I gave them the wrong email address, which I emphatically did not. Typically I ask them to give me THEIR address, because that just makes the whole thing easier, although for the life of me I can't figure out why they think C.Brown.Smith@byu/oknet/abcdefghijkdept.com is any easier than OBL-LBO@comcast.net.

The point is, I should never, ever have allowed my husband to choose my email address. As it is he has one of those last names that is long but completely phonetic in its spelling, which most people find immediately disconcerting. "How do you spell that?" they ask, if I have given them the opportunity to ask by failing to immediately spell it, as is my practice. I do NOT answer this question by saying, "exactly the way it sounds," because I try not to be that abrasive in public. I spell it. Most of them say, "oh, exactly the way it sounds." Duh.

I digress again. WHY would he put a hyphen in my email address??? WHY? I would never have done such a ridiculous thing. Even an underscore would have been better. Imagine if he had used a semi-colon. I shudder to think what might have happened.

On another note, I am blogging at my laptop while staring out the front window waiting for my middle child's "play date" to arrive. I am quite grouchy about it because it is intended to be an all-day play date...9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. I should be more good-natured about watching other people's children, but I despised babysitting as a teenager and I despise it equally as much now. Most mothers these days arrange "play dates" as unofficial babysitting co-op...someone calls you, ostensibly anxious to entertain your child all day long because their child loves him so much, and of course you agree, because why not? But then you have to reciprocate, naturally, which is where the graciousness comes in. I should be gracious about it. I am, in fact, gracious about it on the outside, but on the inside I am a seething pot of boiling resentment. I don't mind the two-hour after school play date. I especially don't mind the play date where the mom comes over to visit and chat and help me watch the kids, just because we want to get together. But the babysitting disguised as play date gets on my nerves. It's gotten so bad I don't like my children to play with kids whose mothers offer to take them for a whole day (who are these people, anyway??) because of course, when I reciprocate, I have to take their child for the entire day. Ick.

Actually, I normally wouldn't mind, but today I had other things on my list, like unpacking. I ran into this mother in the grocery store, and of course she said, "my kid is dying to play with your kid!" And it's my turn to have them here, so I was stuck.

Some people say it's easier to have a play date, because it keeps the kids entertained. I suppose there is some truth in that. Right now, however, we are still more packed than unpacked, and it's hard to entertain kids with bits and pieces of broken toys. Many of the new, cool toys are in the garage, in boxes, where they are waiting for me to clear out the game room. Once I get the existing boxes of junk unpacked and thrown away, or sorted, or whatever, I'll get boxes out of the garage and then we'll have a veritable Kid Haven upstairs.

I just don't like the whole "mommy reciprocity" thing. Someone takes your kid for a day, and then you have to take theirs. I find it easier just to have my own kid for two days. Someone makes you a meal when you have a baby, and then every time someone in your neighborhood has a baby, you're supposed to cook them a meal. I find it much, much easier just to cook for my own family, right after I have a baby. I'm curmudgeonly that way, I guess. I think I will feel less curmudgeonly about it when the kids are older...the kids wander the streets and say, "let's go to your house!" And off they go until they get bored, and then they go to the next person's house. Less driving. Less planning. Less babysitting. Or really, no babysitting. Until that time, I'd rather just take care of my own kids, and be done with it.

Maybe it won't be that bad.

I stole this from Scriveling

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:12:34 GMT

I think I owe her a link, for stealing it. Not good at linking, though. Here goes: the Scriveling blog where I found this. I'm supposed to do a combination of bold type, italics, underlines and stars, but because I don't have Premium, or maybe because I'm just an idiot, I can't seem to bold/italicize/underline. At first this was quite a challenge for me, but ultimately I decided that if I couldn't blog effectively without such cheap tricks, perhaps I should reconsider my ambition to become a writer. Now I just use caps and stars. Indicating, I guess, that I should reconsider my ambition.

So, I'm going to star the books I've read. Scriveling says the average person has read only six of the books on this list. I have no idea how many I've read, but we'll find out!

*1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
*3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
*4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
*5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
*6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
*8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
*12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
*15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
*16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
*19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
*20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
*21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
*27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
*30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
*31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
*33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
*34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen too.
*36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
*37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
*39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
*40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
*42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
*43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
*45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
*46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
*47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
*48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
*49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
*50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
*51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
*56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
*57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
*59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
*62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
*64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
*66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
*67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
*68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
*70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
*73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
*76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
*80 Possession - AS Byatt
*81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
*86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
*87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
*88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
*91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
*94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
*95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
*100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So that's 65/100. Not bad! I must say, as I went down that list, I found myself wondering who made it up? I'm too lazy to go back and try to find out via Scriveling. But, I mean, Ulysses and Bridget Jones' Diary, on the same list? With no disrespect to Helen Fielding, or James Joyce, for that matter. I'm actually not a James Joyce fan. I just find those books absolutely unrelated in every sense of the word. And, as far as it goes, I suppose it would be extremely easy for me to compile a list of 100 books I've read, with mixed literary merit. Perhaps I should do it. Except then, it would just be a list of books I've read, and who would care???

I read pretty much all the time. I read so much it interferes with my other responsibilities. I try not to make it obvious that I'm shirking my duties by reading, a la my aunt, whom everyone in the family reviled because, "tsk tsk, her house looks like crap and all she does is read all day." People ask me, from time to time, how I have time to read with three small kids and all our activities and part-time work and the move. I am always stumped by this question. I have no idea, actually. I suppose it comes down to a couple different things: 1) I always have a book with me, so if I'm waiting in line or waiting for the doctor or waiting for a drive-thru coffee or waiting for the kids to finish karate, I can read; 2) I read really fast, or at least, faster than average by ten or fifteen percentage points; 3) I read at night, instead of sleeping; 4) I read during the day, instead of working; 5) I read in the bath and in the car and while my husband is watching TV "with me."

The other thing people fail to realize is I've been reading on a regular basis for about 31 years. It's not like I just joined a book club last year or two years ago. If that were the case, I would have read only 24 books. The accumulation of 31 years of reading gives me quite a substantial list of read titles. In addition, I like literary fiction or historical fiction. I tend not to like genre books, which means I read a disproportionately high number of books off the "100 Books to Read Before You Die," or similar lists. If my tastes ran toward the genres, I might have read an equal number, but I might only get to check off two or three on the lists. So, you know, the lists are biased in that way. Biased in a positive way, in my opinion, but that's just because they run to my taste. If you know what I mean.

I went through a period of time, during law school, where I completely lost the ability to read for fun. I can't explain it, because I enjoyed law school quite a bit, from the educational point of view. I hated the competitive atmosphere and the pressure about interviewing for law firms, etcetera, but I loved the actual reading and studying. It's not like I was burned out. It's more that I became so obsessed with reading for logic and searching out holdings and analyzing cases that reading for fun started to bore me to tears. I missed it, actually, but I just couldn't get back into it. I was in a reading slump. Then, like a lifeboat in the middle of a spare, sad ocean, I found Harry Potter. Don't ask me why it appealed to me so much...I don't know. Something about it just sucked me in, and I started reading like a fiend again. At one point I was in three book clubs at a time, and still didn't have enough to read. Book clubs seem to pick the same books as each other, or else they pick books I've already read (which, in fairness, isn't hard to do). From time to time I decide I'll move into nonfiction, when I pass by the "notable paperbacks" table at Barnes & Noble and realize I've read or rejected every single one of them. I think I'll start reading history or biographies, and sometimes I even read one, or maybe a memoir or two. Usually that doesn't last. I end up immersing myself in a brief flurry of reading on a hobby topic, like gardening or baking, and eventually I find my way back to fiction.

It's amazing to me how many books there are in the world, actually. I could read and read and read until I die and still never read all the worthwhile ones. That's why it's such a great hobby. No danger of running out of meritorious things to read.

I wish I could be a professional reader. I had hoped to be a writer, because I love books so much, but sometimes I wonder if that's a little bit like wanting to be fashion designer, because you love clothes so much. Related, but not necessarily in an "if/then" way. If you love books, then you should write them? Maybe not. Maybe, if you love books, you should just continue to accumulate and read them.

I can generally tell you the author of nearly any piece of literary fiction written in the last few hundred years, right off the top of my head. I don't try to memorize them. I just remember them, because I love books so much. There should be a market for that, somewhere!

On that note, I better get into my library and try to clean it up a little bit. We're having our first play date today, in the new house. The library is still a disaster.

I woke up this morning with waves of nausea. My husband said, "you're not pregnant, are you?" God, I hope not. I just gave away the nursery furniture, YESTERDAY.

The Odyssey

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:50:41 GMT

(The trip, not the van).

Our trip started somewhat inauspiciously because two days before we were supposed to leave my eldest child began puking in the toilet at noon. As some of you might recall, I was quite excited that he was puking in the toilet, and not down his shirt, as per his usual method. He's growing up! Anyway, he had had a really high fever with no other discernible symptoms, and then the morning the puking started I thought he was all better and took him to a jumper place along with his siblings and a play date. They jumped and bounced and played air hockey for about an hour and a half, so when he started puking at lunch I just kind of assumed it was "too much," after the fever and all. Evidently not. Evidently it was just a virus. Or rather, a really mean, nasty, puke-and-fever virus.

None of this would have affected the trip at all except that our middle child woke up the next day with a really high fever and an upset stomach. Unfortunately for all of us, he didn't puke. He had the opposite problem, if you know what I mean. We left on schedule, and then we had to stop every twenty or thirty minutes to dash into a bathroom carrying those Huggies Kandoo wipes, which, if you haven't seen them, are like diaper wipes but supposedly flushable. My son, who is six, won't use a public toilet without them. I don't know why, so don't even ask. We stopped every thirty minutes and meanwhile my mother, who has a lot of really excellent qualities, was indulging in one of her less-excellent habits: back seat driving. You're driving too fast! You're driving too slow! Get around that truck! Get behind that truck! Don't pass! Hurry up and pass! These two things alone would have been bearable, if annoying, except that my brakes stopped working. Suddenly the Odyssey (the van, not the trip) started shuddering every time I used the brakes. My mother said, "it's because of how you're braking. You're slamming on the brakes too fast. You're braking too much. Drive slower and use the brakes less. But get around this truck first." She does this thing where she squeals like she's afraid and practically jumps into my lap any time we pass an eighteen-wheeler.

Did I mention the trip involved a total of six days of driving, there and back?

With one child unable to eat or drink or make it forty minutes without a bathroom, and the backseat driving, and the car shuddering, I'm ashamed to admit I became a little...frazzled. I called my husband on the cell phone, because I like to share all of my worst moods with him as soon as possible, while I'm still fresh and enjoying the darkest part of the darkest mood, whenever feasible. We discussed the car. He hung up and called a Honda dealership in the town we were supposed to stay in that night, where I had made reservations at a Holiday Inn Express or Comfort Suites or one of those places. The Honda guy said he couldn't get to my car for two days, and was I going to be in a hurry when I arrived in Nowhereville? Then, just by way of conversation, he said this to my husband: "hey, and I know your whole family is planning to stay here in town, so you should know, we're having a real serious e.coli outbreak and they've shut down the city's water supply and none of the restaurants are open. You're not supposed to drink the water. I mean, I'm just thinking you might want to let them know, in case they want to get further down the road..."

Well. I mean, first off, I find that totally bizarre. And secondly, I find it not quite believable. But I can't quite believe any real-life person would have any reason to try to discourage me from staying in Nowhereville if it WASN'T true. What would be the motivation? It's just bizarre. Does e.coli even travel in the water supply? Don't we treat municipal water supplies for e.coli? I swear I read something like that somewhere.

We drove a few more hours just to be sure we were well clear of the e.coli, as I wasn't entirely certain my boys didn't have it already, and worried that a double dose of it might kill them. And even if it didn't, we really didn't need any more puking or diarrhea in the Odyssey, if you know what I mean. (either the trip or the van works in that sentence).

We stopped in TeenyTinyBurg and I promptly lost my cell phone charger, which I deserved, for sharing the worst moments of my trip with my husband.

Another thing that made this trip more interesting than usual was the fact that my babysitter came along, and my dad was following us. My dad hasn't been married to my mom for twenty-some-odd years, which, you know, makes caravanning in a big family group somewhat awkward. Not too bad, really, but there's always the slight fear that someone will get too drunk and say something a little too honest. My babysitter didn't come to help me. I mean, she wasn't working. I didn't hire her for the trip. She just happens to have a brother who lives in the same town as my sister, and she hasn't been able to visit him in about six years, because it's so expensive to fly and hard to get time off work. She was very excited to catch a free ride with us. I was great with it, but mom, dad and babysitter = worlds colliding, in an uncomfortable way.

By the time we got to my sister's house, both my sons were perfectly healthy and bouncing off the walls, and my daughter seemed to have escaped unscathed. Then the REAL fun began. It really was pretty fun, actually. We had the birthday party for my nephew and we took the kids fishing and we went to a theme park. My daughter thought she had stumbled upon Heaven, because my sister and her husband arrange their entire lives, and therefore their home, to suit their three-year-old toddler. As an example, there's a three-year-old sized indoor basketball court where the laundry room used to be. Kids can eat wherever they want. TV is constantly set to three-year-old programming, at volumes well beyond the ones I allow. Tantrums are routinely, nay, without exception, rewarded with indulgence. Decisions about activities, bedtimes, personal hygiene, and clothing are made by children. It's an amazing system, if you've never experienced it. At first I was all uptight and control-ly and worried about it, but by Day 3, after sleeping on the air mattress in the den for several nights, I just gave myself up to it and figured my kids would snap back to normal on the way home. My boys ate cookies for breakfast and played XBox the whole time, when they weren't experimenting with coffee and beer and soda (none of which they are allowed to drink at home). My daughter went from indoor basketball to Thomas the Train to sand and water table to Curious George Marathon to Enormo Legos with occasional pretzels and orange juice breaks. They all stayed up way too late and watched movies while eating popcorn on the air mattress (a.k.a., my bed). It was nice, and everything. But I was ready to go at the end of the trip. Now I'm going to send my sister a box of parenting books. I'm not going to be passive-aggressive about it, though. I'm going to put a note in the box that says, "I'm sending you these books because I think you should read them before your three-year-old goes a bad way." I'm not one to comment on other people's parenting, generally. Maybe privately, to my husband or something, but never ever ever never do I presume to give someone else advice on how to handle their children. And really, the box of books doesn't violate that rule. Technically I'm not giving her parenting advice. I'm just pointing her to some published authors who will.

What can I say? She needs the advice.

The drive home would have been uneventful except right before we left, actually the night before, my middle son came down with conjunctivitis, a.k.a. pink eye. His eyes swelled shut and turned gunky and gross in the corners and I thought I was going to have to spend sixteen hours in an emergency medical clinic. Fortunately, my doctor at home KINDLY called me back, within an hour, on a Sunday night, and then called in a prescription for antibiotic eye drops. May only good things befall that wonderful doctor!! Then I only had to cart eye drops around everywhere I went, city to city, hotel to hotel, and put eye drops in his eyes, four drops three times per day. That's twelve separate drops every day. And you KNOW six-year-old boys just LOVE eye drops in their puffy, infected, goopy, itchy eyes.

Now my older son has a bad case of conjunctivitis. I'm running out of drops. They cost $60 and I imagine they won't call me in another bottle without an actual doctor visit. ~sigh~

Thankfully we didn't get lice. Somehow I've made it to first and second grade, and no lice (yet).

Today I took the kids to a splash park where they had a great time and we all got terrible sunburns. I promise you, I used sunscreen. I applied it LIBERALLY. I don't know what could have happened. i got it the worst, which is good, as I've already ruined my skin. You know, my redhead was four years old before he ever got a single freckle!! I credit my diligent and liberal sunscreen application. Now, sadly, ever since I had my third kid, he has developed a whole face full of freckles.

Time for bed.

BO

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:36:22 GMT

A woman once said she thought I was "born organized," or BO, which is Flylady's term for people who are naturally organized and don't have to follow her system for keeping their home in order (because they already have their own system). The woman who called me BO said it derisively, though of course she meant it as a compliment, sort of like when you say to someone, "oh you...you're just naturally skinny...you can't identify with us mere mortals." I mean, it's a compliment, and not even exactly a back-handed one, but the implication is, "you can't understand the rest of us."

When she said it, I was surprised. Shocked, even. To me, it feels like I am constantly seeking new organizational methods and strategies. Organization is something I work on, religiously, like some people go to the gym. I hate the feeling of being disorganized. I guess, over time, I've gotten pretty good at being organized...so good, in fact, that to some less diligent people I apparently appear "born organized."

I remember in junior high we started changing classrooms in the halls after each period and we had lockers and notebooks for the first time, all within our own control (and therefore, zone of responsibility). I remember we got "notebook grades" in some of my classes, and I always failed "notebook." I just wasn't a self-starter, organizationally speaking. I hated those little dividers that required those sticky "reinforcements," or else they would tear away from the rings, and I hated the pockets in the front because they always turned into big, disorganized messes by the third week of school. I hated that whole three-ring binder idea. Remember Trapper Keepers? Oh, how I DESPISED Trapper Keepers. I wouldn't have dreamed, in seventh grade, that one day I'd be a big (albeit temporary) fan of Franklin Covey.

In hindsight I can see that perhaps I WAS born organized, but my innate organizational skills were hampered for many years by other peoples' systems. I don't do well with other people's systems. I love having a monthly calendar and I love carrying it around with me everywhere I go, so for a while I thought perhaps Franklin Covey could help me. I loved the *idea* of all their stuff, but in the end it didn't work as well for me as my own bizarre system of cheap month-at-a-glance 8 1/2 x 11 calendar with paper clips and staples and highlighters and receipts stuck between the pages. The same is true for Quicken. I LOVE the idea of Quicken, and I try, I really try, about every 16 months (which is not a conveniently spaced time period, by the way, like if I tried it every January 1 or every 6 months, even, or perhaps every 18 months, but it seems to be about 16 months when the idea strikes me) to get on board with Quicken. I think about how NICE it will be at tax time, and how great it would be to know at every second exactly how much money we have, but then....eh....I hate Quicken. It's cumbersome and it requires too much boring detail work and it has clumsy charts and graphs and it never does what I want.

Right before we moved into our new house, a friend recommended I hire a professional organizer to help me unpack. She did it in her new house, evidently. She told me this woman would unpack with me, side by side, and de-clutter my new house before I even moved into it. She raved about how easy it was to set up her new kitchen with the professional organizer by her side.

Putting aside the fact that I would never, ever, in a million trillion years, even if I could afford it (which I can't), PAY someone to help me unpack my boxes, the idea was extremely unappealing to me. I don't want someone ELSE organizing my stuff. I like to organize my OWN stuff...and I can do it better than anyone else. At the moment I first had that thought, I realized I really AM naturally organized.

Something else I hate: closets with one wooden shelf and one wooden rod, stretching across their entire length, and nothing but empty, unused space below.

I just spent about twelve hours measuring, purchasing and installing a modular closet system for my kids' closets, and I must tell you, it was extremely satisfying. The closets look fantastic. They have drawers and shelves and hanging rods and because of the closets I was able to get rid of their dressers, which means they have more space in their bedrooms. Their closets aren't very big, actually. That's one of the downsides of building a normal-sized house. It has normal-sized closets. But the beauty of a modular closet system is it works BEST in small spaces. It TRANSFORMS a small space. It's quite surprising, actually, how much stuff you can get into a reach-in if it is properly organized.

As it turns out, I was either born organized, or I've become exceedingly good at organizing things, through sheer force of will and time. I hope it's the latter. If it is, there might still be hope I'll finally get in shape.

We are back from our cross-country odyssey, in the Odyssey. It was fun. Kids seemed to enjoy it. I'll write about it later, I imagine.

One Wonders...

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:10:53 GMT

How many different viruses in the world can make a child vomit? I would have thought we had experienced them all by now, but evidently not, because today I took my kids to one of those jumper places with a little friend and when we came home for lunch the eight-year-old started vomiting. Poor thing. He had a fever over the weekend, but woke up cool as a cucumber and ready to go this morning, so I was surprised when it came back with a vengeance. He started vomiting and his fever came back, and he was feeling pretty rotten all day long. I'm not that worried about him, yet, because the fever is under control and he is able to keep down some Pedialyte and he doesn't appear to be vomiting anymore, but I am worried about this: a fever/vomit virus making the rounds among my children as we drive across the country in my minivan. That does not sound like fun.

On the bright side, he threw up in the toilet, for the first time EVER in his entire life. My younger children caught on to that particular habit of hygiene at a much, much younger age, but the eldest seemed to be utterly unaware, for many years, that he was on the brink of throwing up. He would yell, "I'm going to be sick!" And then...BLEH...wherever he happened to be, all over himself, the furniture, etcetera. Yuck. Today he said, "Mom, I'm going to throw up," and then walked calmly into the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. Repeatedly. Every thirty minutes for about three or four hours.

My laptop is falling apart. Literally falling apart. This is distressing because I do not want to purchase a new laptop. In fact, I would like this laptop to last me the rest of my life. I only dropped it a couple of times, in the airport, when my husband insisted I take it on a family vacation, while I wrestled my daughter and her stroller and my bags and her bags and her nunny and her blankie through the security lines (while he took the boys). BANG! I dropped the laptop. Thirty minutes passed. BANG! I dropped it again. Now it is falling apart. Which is distressing, as I think I've already mentioned. You know, we never even opened it, on that family vacation. Which just goes to show you, he owes me a new laptop. But since he just purchased me an entire new house, including the library of my dreams and a lovely front porch, I feel self-conscious about pointing out his culpability in the laptop-destruction incident.

I mean, we purchased the house together, of course. His money is my money, and all that. But still.

Tomorrow is my Trip Preparation Day. Tomorrow I'm going to get the car washed and pack (again) all our clothes and stuff and get together a bunch of food and print out a map of where we are going and perhaps (finally) make a hotel reservation for Thursday night, like I told my mother I would, months and months and months ago. Then we are off to visit my sister. It is going to cost a fortune, at $4 a gallon, but I think in the end it is still less than flying five people. Plus, we are giving my babysitter a ride too. She has a brother who lives near my sister.

Have a good day.

Ah, Home at Last

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:58:40 GMT

The view from my new front porch is quite lovely, and you can hear the birds and watch the squirrels (and also the wasps). I love the porch because the wider section, the section with the rocking chairs and handy little table, is nearly hidden behind a copse of suburban trees. An evergreen, an ash of some kind and some scrubby little trees called Japanese Something...I can't remember the name. The trees make it possible for me to watch everyone while remaining nearly invisible. It's funny...when we built this house my husband and father complained that the porch should have been in the backyard, not the front, for privacy. What is there to see in the backyard? Nothing but the fence, too close to the house, and some grass. This way I have privacy AND I have people to watch. I know I'm nearly invisible because several times friends and family have popped over while I've been sitting on the front porch, and completely failed to notice me.

My people-watching will be severely restricted, eventually. We are the second house from the end of the street, so under normal circumstances my view would be limited to the houses in front of me and the traffic up and down our small cul-de-sac street. Not much traffic, generally speaking. Not much to see. No one walks anywhere around here, even with gas at $4 a gallon, so the only people who are visible on our street are the dog-walkers and an occasional jogger. We used to have a crazy Swedish alcoholic elderly woman living across the street, but her long-time boyfriend kicked her out and she's gone. Too bad. I might have enjoyed keeping an eye on her. Especially from a safe distance, as she was quite dangerous in a vehicle even early in the morning, poor woman.

Fortunately for me, the house next door to me, the corner house, has been torn down. The house right across from it, the other corner house, has been torn down as well. Now I'm in a de facto corner house, temporarily, and I can see the much busier thoroughfare that intersects our street and all the houses along it as well. Much more interesting. Plenty of comings and goings. Unfortunately for me, a gigantic McMansion of almost unbelievable proportions is going up right next door, and an even bigger house on the opposite corner, so before long I won't be able to see much but bricks and stucco and the trees right in front of my face. But there will still be birds and squirrels. And who knows...maybe someone weird or interesting will move in across the street.

The best thing about my new front porch is the fact that my wireless internet connection works out here, at full force! It's almost hard to believe. Too good to be true. No more early morning jockeying for a parking space at the neighborhood Panera Bread, where I have to sit at a dirty table in a crowded noisy cafe to get some work done. Now I can leave my daughter with the babysitter and just walk right outside the front door. All the comforts of home, but more peace and quiet. She'll never even know I'm here.

There is something peaceful and inspiring about writing on the front porch, with the sounds of the cars and the birds and the cicadas in the background. I almost feel like myself again. The self that I was before I had all my kids and embarked on my crazy Podville life, I mean. My younger, more optimistic, less harried self.

Our new house is filled with many features like the porch, actually, that make me feel relaxed and peaceful. For example, my mini-library, that would have been a formal living room if I hadn't made them put french doors on it and bookshelves inside. Who needs a formal living room?? I love walking in that room, surrounded by all my books, read and unread. I love knowing that I could close the doors if I wanted to, and enjoy a little solitude. I haven't had to close them yet, because the rest of the family doesn't get on my nerves as much, now that we live in a house instead of an apartment. And we have a backyard again! Where the kids can run around, unsupervised, any time I think they *might* get on my nerves. The kitchen...ah, the kitchen. So, so, soooooooooooo much easier to cook and bake and feed everyone. It's impossible to describe how much easier it is. The appliances work. I never realized how much BETTER modern appliances could be. I was thrilled to death when we finally got a dishwasher at all, and it never occurred to me that a dishwasher installed in 1979 might be somehow inferior to a new dishwasher. I guess that seems obvious, eh? A gas stove...ah, how nice to have a gas stove again!! Space for everything! No more random pieces of furniture or utility carts to compensate for lack of pantry or cabinet space. In fact, I now realize how much less stuff I have than I thought I had. I actually don't have that much stuff. I have empty cabinets and empty drawers. I even have empty bookshelves.

Now that the house is done and the move is over and school is out, it's time to move on to other things, at long, long, long last. Gone is the feeling of panicky rushing. Gone is the feeling of being overwhelmed. No more long lists of things that must be done immediately. I might live in this house for thirty more years, after all. What's the rush? Now I can take my time and enjoy living in my home and playing with my family. What a relief.

A Podville mom came over to pick up my son for a play date on one of our moving days, which was actually very helpful. When she got here I took her through the house. You know, the Grand Tour. She said, "well this will be great for a few years, and then when you decide you need more space, you'll be able to sell it in a snap!"

Hahahahahahahahahaha.

Ah, the relentlessly upwardly mobile. I didn't have the heart to tell her I'll probably die in this house. Maybe even on the front porch.

I'm Falling Behind...

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:31:27 GMT

It's moving weekend. For some inexplicable reason I arranged to have packers come on Friday and movers on Monday. I can't remember why I did such a foolish thing. Now we have three nights in the condo with all our stuff boxed up. Who does that??

I made amaranth banana nut pancakes. Not bad.

More vomiting from my daughter. Book club...wine tasting...association meeting...swim meets...and the move. It's no wonder I'm falling behind.

Last night we watched some episodes of Heroes on DVD courtesy of Netflix, and then I dreamt someone was trying to kill me with a power washer.

In eleven days I'll be driving across the country in a minivan stocked with children and gluten-free foods.

That spray-on sunscreen can really make a mess on your wood floors.

My boys are away. I could accomplish something if only someone would take my daughter too. That's not likely to happen, however.

With a Little Coffee All Things Are Possible

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:43:18 GMT

I started drinking coffee at about 4:30 yesterday afternoon, because I never got around to it in the morning and I felt absolutely exhausted and bewildered by 4:00 p.m. I did the Starbucks drive-thru, just to treat myself. Yeah, yeah, I know it's crazy, my Starbucks obsession, but in my defense I had a $15 gift card my sister sent for Mother's Day. I ordered an iced grande skinny vanilla latte, but they accidentally made me a hot grande skinny vanilla latte, so the drive-thru woman said I could have both. Two grande lattes for the price of one, all sugar and fat free. By 6:00 p.m. I was high as a kite and feeling fine. I even cooked dinner, which is something I haven't been doing too much lately, in spite of my repeated testimonials to friends and relatives that I need my new fancy expensive kitchen because I cook so much. In my head, I cook a lot. In reality, eh, it's hard to say how much I really cook. I cook more than occasionally, but less than frequently. Although in fairness, I cook at least one or two things nearly every single day, if you count bread and muffins and other non-meal items.

At any rate I got myself nice and charged up because I knew I HAD to do some work. Procrastination can get you far in life, but eventually you have to pay the piper and sit down to do the actual work. Since we are moving this weekend and I have Mom's Night Out tonight and book club tomorrow night and a swim meet on Thursday night, I figured last night HAD to be the night. The kids and the husband went to bed and I stayed up until about 2:00 a.m., and lo and behold, I actually finished! Not the ENTIRE project, but the piece of it that was severely overdue. I got hired on two more appellate cases recently and I absolutely cannot procrastinate on those, as they are court-supervised and all, so I had to finish the editing work. It feels good to be done with it.

Happily, my daughter woke up feeling much better, and hasn't vomited again since yesterday. The boys woke up fever-free, and no one has vomited at all today. Good times. We have a mailbox. The landscaping is done. The fence problem is going to be solved, I just know it...and I found a checkbook with some extra checks in it. My closet installer showed up on time and I ordered some much-needed bedroom furniture on one of those 18 months, no interest plans.

I ditched the kids with the babysitter this afternoon because I just got tired of the whining and the demands and the requests. I planned to be back home by 3:00 to take them to swim practice, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was feeling extremely guilty about leaving them at home, bored, with the babysitter, while they were missing swim practice and I imagined them mobbing me at the back door when I returned, yelling, "I thought we were going to go swimming!" It is beautiful swim weather, too. Plus the babysitter was planning on one hour, not two, although she was happy to stay longer and make some extra cash (that I shouldn't be spending).

Meanwhile, I was sealing the grout on the tile at the new house, and enjoying the peace of an empty place. It's so clean and nice and peaceful over there. It almost seems a shame to move into it.

When I finally got home at 4:00, wondering what I'd have to do to make it up to them re: swim practice, I find them happily playing in their underwear thrilled to death to have a free afternoon. You just never know, with the kids, how they're going to react to a free day.

Now I'm exhausted. I'd like to crawl into bed and sleep for ten hours but I still have to make dinner and do showers and baths and read stories and get ready for VBS and tutoring tomorrow. Plus I have to finish sealing the tile tomorrow and install the shelving in the master closet and get my car serviced and buy some father's day cards and gifts and pack weekend bags for the family and box up everything in the condo. That reminds me, I need to get the boxes out of the attic.

Maybe we can have sandwiches for dinner. Or cereal. Or scrambled eggs. Maybe eggs and frozen waffles and microwave bacon and fruit salad. Breakfast for dinner!

Then I can have some more coffee.