Two Days into the Countdown

Tonight I am assailed with doubt again. Feeling like I don't want to leave, feeling like moving is a huge mistake. I am again just barely functioning. I can pack if there's someone there to help me or point me in the right direction, but in general I feel too overwhelmed to do much. Why can't I just move forward and be done with it? Why can't I turn my thoughts toward all the advantages and ignore everything else? Instead I feel on the verge of implosion.

Today my mom helped me pack and as I was trying to express why this move is so hard for me (after all, I have actually lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere in my entire life -- thanks a lot mom and dad) she began talking about medication and chronic depression and things of that nature, which then made me think, okay, how far out of scale is the way I'm feeling? Isn't it only natural to feel sad and fearful? I tried to explain how important my surroundings are, how critical to my state of mind, and I don't think I made much of an impression. Everyone in my family knows I'm the picky one...I guess they don't understand how deeply that pickiness (read control issues, kids) goes.

Am I crazy? I mean in the treatable sense? Am I chronically depressed? I'm not really sure. It certainly doesn't feel at all like the depression I had after Grant was born. I felt so sad and so full of despair then, like nothing in the world really mattered at all. This is more like a low level panic attack, a kind of thin thread of anxiety running through my every waking moment and through a good chunk of my sleeping moments, too. I think I am anticipating loss (old house) and constant unrelenting work (new house) and that's all my tunnel vision can grasp.

Change is so hard for me. I have never adapted well to change, even as a kid. I think it was just less obvious then because I had so little say in what decisions were made for me. In particular, I never had the right of refusal. Now, as a grown up, I know I sometimes say no just to say it -- I sometimes say no to quite good ideas, just to enjoy the feeling of putting my foot down. Then later I think, what the heck? That would have been okay!

Then, too, grieving is not something I do easily. Emotionally speaking I am fairly private and grief, although I feel it keenly, is the most private of all. And what I am feeling a lot of lately is grief.

D-day in 2 days.

R & R

Went to Kansas City this past weekend because we'd planned a trip there nearly 6 months ago and had non-refundable tickets to the Raiders-Chiefs game. The idea was that the men would go to the game and the women would shop.

As it turned out, some of us shopped, though not as much as we'd liked to have done. The kids swam in the hotel pool Saturday night and we had a splendid dinner at Jack Stack Barbeque (and I am still having indecent thoughts about the crown prime ribs I had...sooo good). Maggie and I survived being separated from each other for 40 hours (she stayed at home with Grandma) and in general, a good time was had by all.

On the face of it, it seems irresponsible to run away for the weekend when we're moving this Friday and I am not even slightly organized or ready, but it felt really good to just not be here; all the stuff that torments me at night and makes me hyperventilate during the day melted into the background and I felt more relaxed than I have for a long, long time.

My sister and I did some painting in the new house on Friday and that felt good, too. Sort of like claiming the space as my own. We have a long way to go, but I feel more like we're going to get there without me needing to be committed.

My task now is to survive the actual move and all the attendant craziness and upheaval. I may never find anything again once we're actually moved -- I've had to chuck stuff in boxes and cram things in willy-nilly just to get the house show-ready, so now I have only a very hazy idea of where a lot of things are. The process will be complete this weekend when it all gets shifted to the new house.

First road trip of the new year will be to the closest IKEA for some storage shelves to corral the toys.

Wendy Whiner

I know I am. I know I am petty, and shallow and worldly and probably very, very sinful into the bargain.

But I hate my new kitchen.

I also hate all the dark, heavy oak trim that's around every door and window in the house. Likewise the heavy dark oak chair rail in the dining room, kitchen and entryway. Also the heavy oak vanities in the bathrooms. And I really hate the white ceramic tile on the floor. Hate it all.

I should be thanking God for the space, thanking God for the reduced price which allows us to live there without going broke. Should be dancing a jig at the thought that I will finally have a closet large enough for all my clothes, on and off season. But I'm not.

I feel like all that I've worked to accomplish here, all the style and grace that it took me so long to infuse this house with is gone in an instant, replaced by a big ugly yurt of a place with absolutely no style at all.

And I know, because I've gone through this before, that I am going to have to fight for every little improvement. And I'm going to have to wage war for the not-so-little improvements. And I am already thinking, how long do I have to live here?

This is not good, when you haven't even moved in yet and you're looking for an escape clause.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

I was so wrong about finality quelling panic. The very finality of the finality induced more panic, but not until 4 a.m., which is when everyone wants to be awake sweating about the massive purchase they've just made and whether or not it was a wise decision.

It's been so long since I've had normal sleep rhythms. I take antihistimines to sleep at night, then drink tons of coffee to wake up in the morning. I either have to drink more coffee to stay awake in the afternoon or succumb to a nap. I am functioning only minimally -- I get the kids dressed and out the door and I am putting meals, however crappy, on the table, and the laundry is done for the week, but that's about it. No cleaning, no packing, no nothing that isn't absolutely critical for our immediate survival. Tim and I have hardly interacted the last month except to distribute child-related tasks or pow-wow about house projects before we take off in opposite directions to do them. I feel exhausted, isolated, mildly crazy and overwhelmed.

This morning at 4, I was lying on the couch downstairs and thinking, endlessly, about how I only have 2 more weeks before this isn't my house anymore -- not really, anyway. Oh sure, I'll still be paying for it but I won't have it wrapped around me like a giant security blanket. Everything about the new house is distorted in my mind, looming out of all proportion.

I have trouble eating, I am not sleeping well at all and I am not really enjoying the things I normally enjoy. Like eating and sleeping. I can't live like this much longer. Tim says that I have to just tell myself that I can't live like this and then STOP. Very handy if there's a little switch marked "FREAK OUT" that I can just turn on and off. I have to think, though, that my body will eventually give it up, that it will finally say "Oh...is this all? This isn't enough to get worked up about" and then I'll be able to roll over and go back to sleep at night.

Maybe, and I say this with as much hope as trepidation, maybe the anticipation is worse than the event. This is often the case with me, getting all het up about something that turns out to be much less heinous than it seemed in my imagination. I am hoping this falls under the same category. I guess I'll know in 2 weeks.

Welcome to Fiscal Irresponsibility

It's done. We now officially own 2 houses. Technically, Tim and I could begin living separately if we so chose. Sadly, it's not legal for us to leave the kids at one house while we go have a nice long soak in the tub at the other house.

Because that is wrong.

Last night I had what I hope will be my last meltdown. Now that it's a done deal, I am hoping my brain will recognize the essential futility of panicking over whether it's the right thing to do. Now I can panic about things like double mortgage payments and dual utilities.

You know, normal stuff.

After we signed the 42,000 sheets of paper that constitute our new loan agreement, our mortgage guy, Brad, said to us "I hope your new house is all that this house was for you and more." A nicer sentiment he couldn't have offered. What a mensch.

And this is what I want for us...that all we've felt about this house, the warmth and security, the layers of tradition and routine that define homelife, the glow of memory, that all of that will be ours in spades as we take this show on the road. And that, of course, makes it sound like we're moving 2,000 miles away, when in fact it's slightly less than 3 miles from our current home.

Do I tend to get worked up over nothing? You betcha.

Coming to Terms...

with the fact that this is going to be the Fall That Wasn't. We worked so hard to keep the yard leaf-free for showings, there wasn't time to play in the leaf piles. We worked so hard cleaning and taking stuff out of the house so it would show better that there wasn't time to go to the pumpkin farm. We have now pushed the move date back by 2 weeks so we can clean and paint at the new house, so Thanksgiving is really just going to be a blip in the endless continuum of home improvement work. We move the first weekend in December and will spend most of the month unpacking and figuring out what to do with stuff, so Christmas is looking like it's going to be a casualty as well.

I don't know how I'm going to complete any holiday shopping for nieces and nephews. This might be the year of the gift card....

All this is making me feel discombobulated -- just off kilter, like the whole universe has developed a nervous tic and I'm the only one who's noticed it.

Anatomy of a Panic Attack

First, your brain will not shut off. Thoughts swirl around in a miasma of negativity. Some of them are recriminatory, some are laced with fear, others are like endless lists of what ifs which always culminate in disaster.

Second, you feel like you can't breathe properly. Air is going in and out, but too quickly, while (paradoxically) you feel starved for oxygen. This is called hyperventhilating and it is about as fun as it sounds.

Third, the tiny part of your brain that is rational keeps chipping in with soothing, calming thoughts designed to stem the overwhelming sense of impending doom. These thoughts are largely ineffective, like shouting at a thunderstorm.

Fourth, you are seized with a frenetic energy. You must move; run, pace, wring your hands continually, whatever. Sitting still is not an option. Although you may be physically exhausted, this in no way mitigates the need to expend that energy. I find it is best to follow the "flight" impulse until it burns itself out.

Fifth, your husband, completely unable to help you with this, suggests you seek professional help.

Welcome to My Crazy, Part Deux

Final walk through on the new house tonight and it was miserably depressing. Came home and promptly had another massive panic attack.

What happened was this: we killed ourselves for 2 days cleaning and painting and otherwise spiffing this house up so we could hold an open house before we move next weekend. Very much work, very little sleep. Spent afternoon at the inlaws which wasn't bad, precisely, just a gross inhibition to sleeping, which was mainly what I wanted to do after two straight days of backbreaking work. Went to do the walk through and found that the new house, now empty, looked much shabbier, dirtier and generally unappealing than we remembered. Carpets were stained and walls were gouged and the whole place was vilely dusty and grimy. Without furniture to distract us, the cabinets seemed more worn and dated and it was obvious that the whole interior of the house needs to be painted. After weeks of working on this house, I went to the new house and was confronted by MORE WORK.

Small wonder, I guess, that I lost it for a bit.

That, married to my exhaustion and coupled with PMS, a case of pinkeye and a back that went out on Thursday, have left me feeling very very very low. But let me just whinge on a bit more about my big new house and how awful it is. What a twonk I am.

One tiny bright spot: a group of kids from the neighborhood saw the lights on and came over to meet us and find out if we had any kids. There was a little girl Abby Kate's age and a couple boys Grant's age. They were very friendly and seemed nice.

I am trying hard to remember that this move is not all about me.

Marry Someone Who Makes You Laugh

I am under the sink, rummaging for AA batteries to restore the dead TV remote so that Tim can work out and channel surf at the same time when he says this:

"You are so good to me. I don't know why; ninety percent of the time I'm throwing poo at you like a bad monkey."


Love love love that bad monkey.

Neotoma Cinerea

That's Latin for Pack Rat.

Wikipedia says a person who is a packrat is a compulsive hoarder. That's me in a nutshell. Now, in all fairness, I was raised by compulsive hoarders. My parents never got rid of anything on the off chance that it might be necessary at some later point or possibly come back in style. They are the reason why I a) hardly ever throw stuff away, and b) feel really guilty when I do.

After my linen closet epiphany, I decided I could do with a spring cleaning in that area. I went through my towels and sheets and realized that I had every single towel I'd ever owned, starting with the two sets I got as high school graduation gifts. Considering that my20-year reunion was 3 1/2 years ago, I've held on to those towels a long time. I got rid of sheets that went to a bed I don't own anymore, sheets that never really fit the bed we own now, sheets that I only have the top sheet for, and pillowcases that go with nothing in any bedroom whatsoever. I bagged up the ivory towels that have turned dingy, the green towels with the bleach stains, the other green towels with the brown marks on them that won't come out. I got rid of their matching hand towels and most of the washcloths, too. All together I filled two kitchen garbage bags with linens and took them all to Goodwill. I only saved about 5 old towels for clean up jobs and garage use. Everything else went bye bye.

I can take things in and out of my linen closet and nothing else falls out when I do. It's brilliant.

But that's not the end of the story.

I happened to mention this little act of purging to my mother and her reaction was one of distress and alarm. Did I not know that old towels were useful in the garage and other places? I assured her I did. Did I think that maybe I'd want those double bed sheets someday if one of the kids decided they wanted a double? I informed her that if one of them wanted a double bed someday, they could pay for it themselves as we have already provided them with a perfectly serviceable single bed. But what if we needed it someday for a guest room? I told her I'd buy new sheets if that were the case. At this point she subsided, but I could tell she was not entirely convinced of my sanity.

So it's not just that I have to muster the guts to get rid of the stuff, I have to be sufficiently on my game to explain why I got rid of it as well. Pretty big task for someone with so few functioning brain cells.

The Anthem of Adolescence

Nobody understands me.

I know I sang this song repeatedly from about age 14 until age 23 (late bloomer, ya know). Now I find myself singing it again and I have the same basic sense of ill-usage coupled with a desperate yearning to be understood which is patently not being fulfilled.

All of which gives one cause to wonder whether I've evolved much since age 14.

Everyone -- no exceptions -- is excited about this move but me. Try as I will, I cannot seem to muster any whoop-de-do.

I have, however, come to view it as fait accompli: it's going to happen and I am going to have to deal with it one way or another. I am trying not to do that with excessive kicking and screaming.

Fact: this house is too small for our family. In about a year, when Maggie will be out of the highchair, we will not all five be able to sit down to a meal together because our eat-in kitchen is too small for a standard size table. Tim and I can't really fit our stuff into the closet we share; it's all over the floor of our room, almost all the time.

Fact: this house is not soundproof enough for our family. Normal conversation in the kitchen is enough to wake Maggie, whose room is directly above. Sound from the living room is funneled up the stairs. If Tim watches TV downstairs, I can hear it crystal clear in our bedroom. The shower wakes Maggie up in the morning; the toilet wakes up Abby Kate (their rooms are on either side of the bathroom).

Fact: we have probably done all we can do to this house. We've redone all the flooring, much of the lighting, the wiring, the driveway, the garage, the kitchen and both bathrooms. We also replaced 1/3 of the windows and installed a sump pump. When you consider what we paid for this house and what we've put into it, we're probably not going to make that much on the sale.

Fact: we are fast approaching the years when Tim and I are going to need more privacy. He would argue we're already there, but I think we probably have another year or two before it's critical. Right now we have one full bath that we share among the 5 of us. I can't remember the last time I showered without an audience of some kind.

Fact: I have a kick-butt garden and nobody feels its loss but me.

Fact: we have too much stuff and moving is going to really help us pare down and get rid of things. I was at a girfriend's the other day and in her linen closet were 4 towels and some washcloths. She actually had empty shelves. In my linen closet, you can't remove a hand towel without several other things falling out. As I looked in that nearly empty closet, I had a moment of clarity about what my life would be like without so much stuff.

I would feel better if we could just move and be done with it. Waiting around for the closing and having to deal with selling this house is too upsetting. I need to just rip the bandaid off.

And now we resume your regularly scheduled panic attack...

I don't know why I am feeling tight and clammy again, but there we are. It would make more sense if there were a nice predator around, you know: grizzly bear, man-eating shark, Mitt Romney campaigners. Then the panic would have a purpose. A nice, let's-get-the-heck-out-of-here-NOW purpose. Instead, it seems only to rob me of sleep. And of course, it's occurring because I am moving into a larger, nicer house. Oh, yes, it's all coming clear to me now... I AM AN IDIOT.

I've had a day in which I could not get motivated to do anything. I basically drove kids to school, put the baby down for a nap and proceeded to lie on the couch for nearly 2 hours. I slept a little, thought a lot, read for a bit. Could have been packing boxes, could have been making lists of things we need to do tomorrow during the do-or-die work day, but didn't.

And Tim is now on the couch with a migraine, so I will be single parenting tonight. How dare he have a genuine illness which prevents me from being the basket case? How am I going to have my panic attack later if he's writhing and moaning in pain? I guess it's an hour on the treadmill and a 12-hour antihistimine instead. I hate having to be the bigger person.

Coping

I have turned the corner on my grief, I think. I feel more optimistic, at least. It helps that I did some stuff in the garden this weekend to try to ensure I'll have at least some of the stuff in my new place. I am having to reconcile myself to the fact that I will have to purchase a number of plants -- like all the clematis, which don't transplant well -- but I started some rose cuttings, and the roses would be the most expensive to replace. I moved pieces of my grandma's peonies, though whether they'll make it is anybody's guess, and I lifted a few hostas.

I must have had a premonition about this move, because I actually took some rose cuttings about 3 weeks ago, before we even thought we'd be able to make an offer. I was really encouraged to find that fully 80% of them have already begun to root. I am using the baggie method, which can sometimes be dicey, but since they're going to have to live in my mom's sunroom for the winter, I needed to be sure they'd have enough moisture without constant attention. The closed environment of the baggie will give them that. Here's what I rooted:

Abraham Darby
Kathryn Morley
Ambridge Rose
Sharifa Asma
The Prince
Heritage
Eglantine
Mary Rose
Falstaff

I did not take cuttings from The Pilgrim, Jacqueline DuPre, Comte du Chambord, Winchester Cathedral or Sydonie, either because they had no ripe wood, or because what they had was covered with blackspot and unlikely to survive. Jacqueline DuPre has always been miserable in my garden,stunted and stingy with bloom. Wouldn't you know it, she had a banner year this year. Grew to 2.5 feet and bloomed 3 times. Stupid plant. I am not buying her tricks, although I love her wild rose look. If she throws another bloom before frost I might be tempted to take a cutting.

The Pilgrim is one that I saw in a garden in England where it was utterly stunning -- an ethereal pale yellow with a darker center. Here it just fades to nearly white after about 30 minutes in the sun. If I got up at 5 a.m. routinely, I could see it as I remembered it from England, but I'd rather just sleep. Also it throws out 7 foot canes and then blooms right at the top, which looks dumb. I could peg it, but since I'm not all that thrilled with it, I don't bother.

The Comte is another one that has never done well in my garden. The plant itself is fine, but the blooms always ball if it's even a little wet and it is a thrips magnet. I have always considered myself lucky to get a handful of unmaimed bloom over the course of the season. Of course, it's had its best year ever in my garden, blooming often and beautifully with no balling and no thrips. Whatever. I'm leaving it behind.

Winchester Cathedral performs well, but I am just not that into white roses. It does occasionally sport to blush pink and even to bright pink (not really a sport, that. It's reverting back to Mary Rose, of which it is itself a sport). Not interesting enough to take along, though.

Sydonie I like very much. An old Damask Perpetual and tough as nails, it throws tons of bloom in the spring and sort of pegs itself -- the canes bend outward and it breaks along the length for even more bloom. Unfortunately it is awash in blackspot. I may buy this one again. It's really big, though, so I'll have to see if I have room for it at the new place.

Planning makes me feel better.

Internal Struggle

This is one of the things I am going to miss most. And the thought of not having my garden around me is so painful, I almost can't face it at all.

Since the kids came along, I admit I haven't had the time to devote to it that I once did, but this has probably made me healthier since I wasn't obsessing about every blip and burble of change. But not slaving over it and not caring about it are not the same thing.

I realize with a whole new clarity how much I need to see those first shoots poking out of the earth in spring, how necessary to my psyche are those little buds forming on the rose canes, the first flash of blue when the cranesbills bloom, the cheery, nodding heads of the daffodils, the clouds of crabapple blossoms raining onto the green, green grass.

I am in mourning.

Yes, I can probably make a new garden. It might even be a better garden in some respects, but it will never be this garden again. And I have no assurance than anyone moving in will care two straws for what I've created here. In fact, the reverse is more likely. When my grandma's house was sold, her huge, beautiful flowerbed was tilled under by the new owner. Twenty-five years of work and love and creativity, gone under the plow blade. Henry Mitchell was all too right when he said the garden rarely outlives the gardener.

I will make a new garden -- how can I not? -- but this one, this first garden, the one that has given me so much joy in the design and planting, this one will be imprinted on my heart.

When God Opens a Door

sometimes He kicks your butt right through it.

The owners received our offer and said they want to accept it, but their builder for their new house has offered to buy their current house by October 5th if it hasn't sold. If they accept a contingent offer (like ours) their builder is off the hook. Then if our house doesn't sell and the contract becomes null and void, they are in a pickle. Sooooo....they said if we make it a hard offer and take out a bridge loan, they'll drop the price a further $5,000. That makes the selling price of the house ridiculous.

All this hit the fan last night and I went to bed telling Tim that NO WAY was I doing a bridge loan. Too risky, too risky, too risky. You have to make 2 mortgage payments until your first house sells and if it doesn't, you still have the balloon payment at the end of 6 months. Not a chance am I agreeing to that.

Fast forward to this morning. Just got off the phone with my dad, who said the bridge loan thing wasn't a bad idea. It certainly wouldn't cost us five grand in interest and it would take all the pressure off trying to keep this place in sellable condition with three little mess-makers running around. We'd have time to do a little painting in the new house and make the necessary repairs to this one. When I expressed my vast distaste for the bridge loan, my dad said "We'll just buy your house and then list it ourselves. That will probably be best anyway." My mom said, "I think this is a God thing, dear," to which I replied, "I'm not sure I like the God thing..."

This sounds sacreligious, but what I really mean is that we always say we want the neon sign, the handwriting on the wall, the obvious path pointed out to us. But sometimes, if your heart is a little rebellious, if the path isn't quite the one you might have chosen, the neon sign isn't exactly a welcome event.

This is where trust comes in. I am not very good at trust. I am much better at control. Well, that's really to say I am much more comfortable with control, because Trust is really the opposite of control. It's more or less saying that I relinquish control. And that is scary stuff. I am trying to let go of the control here, but it's hard to pry my fingers off the handlebars, even when the bike is going in circles.

I like circles; they're round and comfortable and don't take you anywhere you haven't been before.

Fun For Everyone

The house we've been circling around for 2 months went down in price by $15,000 and as a result it became an offer we couldn't refuse. So we made the offer. After that I had a panic attack that lasted approximately 15 hours.

Really, it went beyond panic attack to something approaching a psychotic break.

I am much better now, though I will admit to an undercurrent of anxiety which my exhausted body can no longer channel. I am simply too tired to hyperventhilate and weep uncontrollably anymore. Not to mention too tired to pace for hours without stopping.

I wish I knew where all this crazy comes from. I have had panic attacks off and on throughout my adult life, though the first one that I could identify as a full-blown panic attack didn't hit me until I was 26, when I got laid off from my job, was on the rocks with my long-term boyfriend and informed by my landlady that she was selling my apartment all in the same month. That made for some panic.

I had panic attacks after my 2nd and 3rd children were born, and I had a lovely one right after we'd spent 3 days painting our living room. We sat in the newly reconstructed room watching tv and out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing the tan paint, which in the incandescent light looked green. Really green. The more it intruded on my consciousness, the more internally frantic I became until I suddenly burst out crying, clutching my chest because I couldn't breathe properly.

Small wonder my husband is totally flummoxed at times like this.

He is, however, bery bery good to me, in spite of his complete inability to help me at all. He stayed up with me Friday night until I fell asleep at 2 a.m. and wisely told me to call my mother when the panic overwhelmed me again the following day. He was eyeing me warily throughout the offer process, I think because he was afraid I might do something that would seem truly crazy in front of the realtor. I did have to pace a lot, and at one point I picked up Grant and carried him around for a bit, purely because I needed his 48 pounds to tether me to something solid.

I felt nauseous for the duration of the attack, which made it impossible to eat. I slept a grand total of 2 1/2 hours and was so manic I couldn't stop pacing. Worst of all, I could not shut off my brain, which ran down all sorts of paranoid paths without check. I can confidently say that I have a very good idea of what it feels like to be a meth addict.

What pulled me back from the abyss? Several things were helpful. My mother is expert at talking me down and has a very calming aura (and although I hate that word -- aura -- it's pretty acurate; she does radiate a certain peacefulness that's very soothing). My children were exquisitely sweet. Grant, when I told him I was sad about leaving my garden said, "we could cut your flowers and move them with love to the new house!" My beautiful Abby Kate walked in on me sobbing, put her little arms around me, brought me tissues and then made me a card to help me feel better. Maggie chipped in by only pooping on her dad's watch. Several people were praying for me -- my sister, my mother in law, my mom, some really great friends of my parents who happened to be visiting during all of this (and who got my case history from Abby Kate "Mommy doesn't like change very much."). I think other people praying for you wraps you in a protective bubble, very nice when you are too keyed up to pray for yourself.

So here we are. We made the offer, we're waiting to see if they accept. I am off my ledge for the time being and am trying to 'be still and know that He is God' (thanks, Steven Curtis Chapman). Now we'll see what we will see.

Retributive Kharma

Why is it that on the night we stay up late having An Important Discussion About Our Future, our four year old wanders in at 4:45 a.m. and proceeds to disrupt sleep for us until Tim's alarm goes off? Some sort of bizarre synergy -- you know, like "I'll push, you pull; you free-fall into space and I'll land on you like a trampoline" -- that sort of thing.

Or possibly the feral instincts of small children who know when you are most vulnerable and choose that time to set the seal on your complete inability to form coherent thought for the day. You could argue that their self-preservation instincts are woefully underdeveloped, since this sort of disruption in my already deprived sleep cycle greatly increases the chances that I will sell them later on ebay.

Wow, am I knackered today.

We met with our realtor last night and are both encouraged and vastly nervous. We think we can get what we need to out of this house, we also think we can make a good (for us) offer on the dream house without seeming insulting. We also learned that houses in our price range are selling well, despite all the media propaganda explaining how the housing bubble has burst and the market is dead.

Now that we are really on the brink of a serious decision, we are trying hard to go into everything with eyes wide open. Can we deal with the shortcomings that house has? The lot's rather small, the driveway is sloped, the tile is not a fave, there are way too many trees in the backyard, the basement is large, but not laid out in the most functional configuration for our family. Can we cope with all this? With the things that are basically not changeable?

Not sure. We're going to try to decide something this weekend, so we can at least move forward.

On the up-side, I did find a houseplan that is almost identical in size and style, though much nicer in elevation, so if we could find a sweet lot, we could build more or less the same house. Something else to think about.

Cheap Psychotherapy

So in light of my ulcer-creating anxiety about our might-be-happening move, I have been plumbing the depths of my psyche trying to figure out why I have such trouble with change and why I would cling, barnacle-like, to a house that we have clearly outgrown and which gives me fits on a daily basis. All I can come up with is this:

We moved a lot when I was a kid.

I'm not going to throw my hat in the ring with Army brats and migrant workers -- we didn't move that much -- but we did move around a bit and often at crucial times in my life when not moving would have been preferable. We moved twice before I was 6, both times within the same city. Then we moved to a different city in the same state when I was 7. Then at age 13 we changed school districts, though not houses. The real whopper was between my junior and senior years of high school when we moved halfway across the country. Then my parents moved again (old state, new city) between my junior and senior year of college, so my last summer home was one in which I had absolutely no social life whatsoever because I flat out didn't know a single soul and couldn't see a lot of point in getting to know anyone since I was only going to be there 2 1/2 months. In retrospect, I probably should have stayed in Minneapolis, where I was in school, but since I was coming off a semester abroad and had no money, going home seemed like the best (cheapest) option. Also, my parents insisted. I had a couple of forced-moves after college, both times because my duplex was sold. And then I got laid off in the Great Teacher Layoff of 1994 and ended up moving states yet again to find work.

I don't really like moving.

I think this is at the root of my problem. That, and the fact that I have worked for 10 years on this house and feel like I have finally achieved a sense of my own style (however obscured by clutter that style may be) and I am reluctant in the extreme to a)start over on a new house and b) live in a house redolent of someone else's taste.

And yes, I am a picky little twink, as I'm sure my husband would tell you if I ever let him touch my blog. Which I won't. Ever.

I worry, too, about my garden. No one moving in to this house is going to know what I know about it, or care like I do about all my goofy plants. I mention this to Tim and he gives one of those snorts -- the snorts that mean "too damn right, no one's gonna care!" -- and then he says "and don't think you're having a garden like this in any new house. It's too big and flowers cost money." Which of course makes me want to smack him. What if the shoe were on the other foot? It might look something like this:

"And don't think there'll be any football in the new house. Football is right off the menu."
"What? You don't mean that."
"I most certainly do. Look what a mess it's made of things. Too much of it and no time to get it all watched. No more. I'm not having it."
"But that's not fair! You can't just say 'No football.' You're not God, you know. It makes me happy. How can you not want me to be happy?"
"Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the family. Football's a luxury."
"Not college football, that's practically free."
"No way. I know how this goes. One little college game here, then it's a little NFL behind my back, then we're knee deep in Fox Sports and ESPN. Forget it."
"I just need to see the uniforms, the bright colors, the mascots. Just a few mascots and some halftime analysis"
"I don't see it happening. I mean, you've got enough to do without that complicating things. Let it go."
"You bastard! You selfish bastard!"

Or something like that. I'm just guessing.

Wow, did I get off the point. But here's the real thing. If I don't start sleeping soon, I'm going to have to call the whole thing off just so I can stop being so crazy.

Day Two...

of my extended panic attack.

I think if we would just make an actual decision here, I would feel better. Right now I am overwhelmed with the what ifs. Also I haven't eaten today which is making me shaky and I am sleeping poorly, which is making me the Wicked Witch of the West.

What if we buy this huge house (and that's huge by my standards, not by anyone else's. It's only the size of one floor of my parents' house) and I am still the disorganized moron I am here? Who am I kidding...I will definitely be disorganized, only I will no longer have the excuse of Not Enough Space.

A thwacking big tranquilizer would not come amiss right now, just to stop my brain.

Feeling Ill

Why am I like this? Any change -- even any prospect of change -- makes me nauseous. Not only that, but so keyed up I can't seem to sit still (and yet manage to be utterly unproductive at the same time. I know, it's a gift). House anxiety is overwhelming me. If we move, I'll be unhappy for Reasons, Set A. If we don't move, I'll be unhappy for Reasons, Set B. Worst of all, I am caught in a nether-hell of indecision.

My husband, he of the not-terribly-helpful school of Get Over It thinks I am certifiable. How could I not be happy with the new house? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? He wonders in completely unsubtle tones. He is very fond of a little philosophy he calls "Losing by Less," the idea being that you're going to lose one way or the other, so try to minimize your loss by taking the less (albeit slightly) obnoxious path. So looking at this through his eyes, I should jump on the chance to move because it trumps the losing by less game (he would argue that it's not even losing by less -- it's actually winning).

But it doesn't feel like winning. It feels scary and unfamiliar and uncomfortable and a lot like losing.

How I would love to be like Tim's buddy, Dan. Dan, as far as I can tell, never gets fussed about anything. Anything. I would love to be on that sort of even keel. Okay, so maybe you never feel spectacularly elated, but neither does your stomach devour itself with worry. Then again, I would still be me and I am often able to get worked into a positive frenzy over things that are complete non-events for other people. Again, it's a gift. And it should be noted that I live with Tim, who has a real talent for making me feel backed into a corner (like saying -- "If we buy this house, we won't ever have to move again. We could live here until we die." What? No exit clause? That makes me want to hyperventhilate.)

So here I am, in what probably qualifies as the stupidest quandry in the free world. I feel like I'm between the rock and the hard place. Seen with a little perspective, I'm really between the comfy chair and the sofa. Just how much do I really want to stretch out?

Sometimes it is really hard to be me.

Gaps in My Childhood

Was driving home from the mall this morning when Maggie started melting down due to complete and utter starvation. Stupid Mommy once again left the house without a scrap of food and all three of us were perishing. To soothe screaming baby, I started singing children's songs -- you know, the songs you learned as a kid. I sang the ABC song and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (did anyone else notice that these are the same tune?) then moved on to Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Frere Jacques (which I can sing in English, French and German -- ha!) and then I stalled out. Surely there are more kid songs than this, surely we sang lots of other stuff in the pre-Raffi days, didn't we? But the question, for me, remains: what did we sing?

Beats me. I know my mom made us listen to a lot of Barry Manilow, but I'm certainly not inflicting Copa Cabana on my kids, or worse yet, Mandy. I get nauseous just thinking about it.

When my kids were tiny babies I mostly sang Christmas carols to them, because that's all my sleep-starved brain could remember. I might not have known my own social security number, but I could sing Good Christian Men, Rejoice with only four functioning brain cells.

Sure wish I remembered my childhood a little better.

And it all came crashing down

Not having a good day.

Called the school and discovered Abby Kate had been placed with the teacher we least wanted her to have. Short of moving, we don't have much recourse here unless the teacher does something overtly awful. I am uptight, worried that this woman will grind the love of learning out of my daughter before she finishes first grade.

Went to dentist and came home to message explaining that my carpooling arrangement for Grant's preschool had blown up. Mother #1 had to go back to work full time, essentially because her husband is a great twonk. Twonky husband is going to take their son to school but is evidently afraid of all the Women and cannot therefore do carpool. Mother # 2 still wants to carpool, but we conversed and it transpires that she wants me to do the more complicated pick up run. When I suggested that we could split it and each do it for half the year, she said she'd rather not do that as it would mean altering her baby's schedule midway through the year. I told her I'd have to think about it, but I already know what I think. I'm trying to be fair and she's not having it. Objective opinion from other, non-involved girlfriend confirms that I am being reasonable and she is not.

Daughter found caterpillar in garden and was elated. Son accidentally killed said caterpillar and daughter has been utterly devastated for about an hour now. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Baby is going on 8th straight day of diarrhea.

I am going to take some motrin and try for some Zen.

To House or Not To House?

And that really is the question. We went and looked at the House of Houses again and it was a good look-through. This time, instead of being dazzled by the sheer size of it, we were able to see past that to some of the (admittedly small) warts. Liiiiikkke....
there's no bathroom in the finished basement (although there's a bar -- like we care about that. Bathrooms are a lot more critical than bars when you have children under 6). There's not a ton of storage in the basement, though what there is is probably adequate. You could certainly make the argument that if we have too much for that storage area, we probably have too much stuff.

The yard is rather boring, with too many trees and really over-trimmed shrubs. It's fenced with chainlink (yuck). I think I can do something with it (like rip out nearly all the shrubs), but it will never be the wild, fascinating tangle we have now. And there's really no place I can have a flowerbed like I do now. There is wallpaper in the master and kids' bathrooms, neither of which I am all that wild about. I am, however, experienced in wallpaper stripping, so I could change it if I had to. I am not so keen on ceramic tile, which is all through the entryway and kitchen. The carpet throughout the house probably has about 5-7 more years in it before it needs to be replaced. The lot is small. It's actually the same size as our current lot, only with a house nearly double the footprint on it.

The driveway and front yard are sloped -- very sloped. That bothers me, mainly because I know how much our kids play on our driveway now and enjoy doing that. There'd be no more biking, scootering, etc. on that drive. They'd roll right out into the street. This is kind of problematic, because they're going to lose interest in that yard pretty quickly and then there's nowhere else for them to go. Then there's the money. They're asking a fair price, and they're not messing around: they clearly want to sell. But even if we sank all our savings and had a brilliant offer for our current home, we are still about 50,000 short what we'd need to put down so our payments won't overwhelm us.

So here we are. Frustrated, jittery, indecisive. Part of me says, chuck it...let's just find a good lot and build our dream house. Another part of me says that one more winter with all these kids in 725 sq feet is going to send me to the loony bin. What to do, what to do...the readiness is all.

Papa Goes House Hunting

They went to the house. The house was large. The house was large in a way that was big. They walked in the big house. It was so large. It had white appliances. The wife did not like the white appliances. The basement was large. It was large and also finished. The man liked the basement. The man wants a big screen tv. The children ran wild. The mother could not hear the children upstairs. The children were nada. The carpet was neutral. The walls were neutral. The children were nada, nada y pues nada. The rooms were big and also large.

Oh yeah, we may have found a house. I don't know whether to be happy or petrified. It's way more than we hoped to pay (but I am starting to think that we aren't going to get anything decent for what we'd hoped to pay), but it's way nicer than we expected. The rooms are spacious without being ostentatious, the master is nicely sized with a huge closet and nice, but not ridiculously big, bathroom. Best of all, the three kids' rooms are good sized and except for one being a little larger than the other two, they're pretty much equal. This is a big change from most of the houses we've seen, which either had huge master suites and smaaaaallllll kids's rooms, or two normal sized rooms and a third "room" that was basically a glorified walk-in closet. Great upstairs, brilliant main floor (except for the appliances) and a finished basement.

Either we're not going to get it or we're not going to be able to afford it.

Long Time No Blog

Isn't she lovely? She's one now. Immediately after this picture was taken, she tried to eat the daisy.

Other things that have happened since last I blathered uncontrollably in cyberspace: beautiful Maggie's birthday party(the theme was daisies), the release of the 7th Harry Potter, and the consequent total stoppage of all work so that we could read said book. Also, Grant learned to ride his bike without training wheels. Amazing, but true. There's a picture below of him doing just that.

Really amazing when you consider that he just turned four. This picture was taken about 3 weeks after his 4th birthday. We're pretty sure he could have done it before his birthday, but his father didn't want him to ride Abby Kate's old (very pink) bike. His mother (me), however, has no such scruples, and in full view of Dad, Dad's buddy Jon, and assorted neighbors, plopped the boy on the pink bike for a test run. On the first pass, Tim had to help him stop. On the second pass, he taught himself to stop. On the 3rd pass, he figured out how to start himself and that was that, lesson over. Twenty minutes later he was doing donuts in the neighbor's driveway. Since I can't take credit for teaching him, I am taking credit for mothering an athletic prodigy.

We are looking at another house today. I am mildly excited about it, only because it's not, so far as we can tell from the internet information, covered in either a)wallpaper or b)purple paint, nor does it appear to have the hull of a large fishing trawler poking through the ceiling in the basment (one house we looked at did -- it was actually a girder, but it looked more like a ship had run aground upstairs. That, or the house was collapsing. We had to duck to walk under it. The charm of the place -- you've no idea). Anyway, this one has a nice overall square footage, so we'll have to see what egregious flaws it's hiding in the rooms they don't show you on the realty website. I have learned not to expect too much on these little outings.

Abby Kate turns 6 this weekend and we're throwing a Tropical Minnie Mouse party (she comes up with these ideas and then I have to execute them somehow. Yeesh!). We're expecting 5 little girls here on Saturday. Pray it doesn't rain or they'll all have to be inside.

I Buy Books

I would buy more, but my husband insists that we have money for silly stuff like food and gas and house payments. Sheesh.

Right now, I've got a shopping cart full to the brim at Amazon.com with kids books. These are really my weak spot. I love full color illustrations -- some of the most brilliant artists are those working in children's lit. And I am a sucker for science-y sorts of books, the kinds of books where you learn a little something in the midst of all the great pictures. Books like Emperor's Egg, and One Night in the Coral Sea, and Actual Size, and Amazing Sharks. My goodness, I could go on and on about cool kids books.

I think I will.

Over in the Ocean, One Tiny Turtle (I'm on an ocean kick), Big Blue Whale, Sea Otter Inlet, Three Little Rigs, Sweet Dream Pie, The Great Gracie Chase, Rain, Rain, Rain Forest, One Nighttime Sea, the list is almost endless. So many wonderful books, it makes my head spin.

My children each have a bookshelf and all three shelf units are overflowing with books. I almost never refuse a request to buy a book -- Scholastic Book Orders is making a mint off our family. We have them in piles next to our beds, great tottering towers of books that we can't bear to put away or that we're meaning to get to as soon as we finish some other book that's grabbed our attention for the moment.

They are a huge source of clutter and they're a storage problem; if we weren't readers, the house would be a lot emptier, but then we would be a lot emptier, too. I love that my children feel they must own books. They like the library, but they love Barnes and Noble.

What would I take to a desert island? Ooooooo. Certainly I couldn't live without Pride and Prejudice and my other Jane Austens (Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion); likewise my Margaret of Ashbury novels A Vision of Light and The Search for the Green Lion. Then there's Harry Potter. And Narnia. And all my Georgette Heyer books. And The Little White Horse and Linnets and Valerians. Brother Cadfael too, I think. Wives and Daughters might have to go in there as well. Those are the ones I read over and over again; they're like stepping into other worlds, grown familiar and beloved from long experience.

New stuff I love: Gregor the Overlander, City of Ember, Holes (not really new but so dang good) The Goose Girl and Enna Burning. My nephew tells me the Alex Rider books are good, so I am adding them to my list of books to try. My 10 year old niece Elea recommended The Unicorn Chronicles and I liked it almost against my will. I mean really...Unicorns? I had flashbacks to a lot of bad decor from the early 80s, but it was actually a good read. More than that; a very good read. The first three Princess Diaries books cracked me up -- what a shame that the cigarrette-smoking, Sidecar-drinking, tatooed eyeliner Grandmere became Julie Andrews in the movie. Another great literary character left in the dust.

I love good young adult lit.

I have whittled my Amazon order down to about $70. Tim said, why don't you take that money and buy clothes? And he's right, I certainly need the clothes, especially since Maggie came along and blew my figure to smithereens. But books are just better than clothes. Hands down. I'll buy clothes next month.

Glow in the Dark Fish

What a great lesson today. We did bioluminescent fish in the deep ocean and the kids really enjoyed it. Grant worked on the letter L and Abby Kate worked on -ight words (sight, fight, etc.). They painted their own lanternfish with glow in the dark paint and then spent ages in the bathroom with the light off making them "swim" in the mirror. I served a dinner everyone likes, managed to get the kitchen mopped (gotta love moppin' monday!) and am in general feeling like I should resubmit my nomination for mother of the year. This could be my year...you never know.
No doubt it will all fall to pieces tomorrow, but I am revelling in success right now.

Revel, revel, revel!

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blog

Taking a break from lessons today. I am so tired, thanks to the dogs who get up at 5 a.m. that I can't make my brain focus. I know just what we're doing for our next lesson, but I think it will have to wait until Monday (we're going on a playdate tomorrow -- the best kind; one for the kids and Mommy).

I've now taken my older two to Target and Kohls a total of 3 times and ALL THREE TIMES THEY WERE GOOD. And yes, that merits a lot of caps. It's eerie; maybe they've been body snatched. Of course, Maggie screamed her way through Kohls, so nothing's perfect. You would think by the 3rd kid I would remember to pack some snack food for her, but apparently the brain damage they've inflicted on me is too extensive for that kind of recall.

On the upside, I've started planning Maggie's first birthday party. I am giving myself what I hope is plenty of lead time -- 22 days. I know that seems like a lot, but I also know how long it takes me to actually accomplish things, especially things that involve shopping (party ware, balloons) and cooking (cake). Also I am a huge procrastinator and I have learned that if I give myself a lot of time to do something, I can afford to put it off once or twice and still be okay.

Maggie is, right now, in her crib NOT sleeping. She is, instead, squeaking, chirping, and screaming at a pitch only dogs can hear. She should have been asleep 40 minutes ago, so I'm not sure what happened to sabotage her nap. Maybe the lack of loud and boisterous noise in the house right now is throwing her off.

Abby Kate and Grant are on the sidewalk in front of the house playing school field trip. They're on some sort of nature walk that involves them picking leaves and flowers off of everything they can reach. Lovely.

And I am going to post this and lie down for 15 minutes. That, of course, will be the signal for the other two to come in and a) ask for a snack, and b) tell me they're bored. Cheers.

Guardian Angels Abound

Right now Grant and Abby Kate are playing "Hospital" in which each of them suffers a series of ever more gruesome injuries that some doctor at the hospital is going to have to fix. Listening to them, you get a real sense of their sophistication -- Abby Kate just said she's going to need an emergency appendectomy, while Grant responded by saying "I got my head SLICED!!"

They are confined to the house this morning for getting into a container of DEET bug wipes and rubbing them all over themselves. Honestly, if they live through childhood without serious neurological injury, it will be a miracle. The fact that the bug wipes were within their reach I blame entirely on Tim.

Of course, keeping them in the house is also a bit of a punishment for Mom. Since Dad's the real culprit here, it would be more appropriate to send them to work with their daddy for the morning. That would teach him not to leave the wipes out.

Take A Deep Breath...

Today, this funny thought crawled across my brain: my life breaks down into chunks by decade. There's the decade in which I was born. Then the decade of elementary school. Then the decade of high school and college. Then the decade of career and marriage. And Now I'm in the decade of having kids (and I will have spent dang near the whole first decade of the new millennium paying for and changing diapers).

I arrived at this blinding insight (which, like so much that goes on in my head is of no interest to anyone but me) because we are going to look at some houses today and one house in particular has piqued our interest and it is the only house that had no pictures of the interior posted on line. So now I am further piqued: what will it look like inside? I'm betting it's a nightmare of wallpaper. It was built in the '80s, the decade of mauve carpet and wallpaper, so that's my best guess. The house we live in now was built in the '70s, the decade of mustard yellow appliances and avocado walls, but we bought it from some people who bought it in the '80s and immediately covered all the avocado with wallpaper. I spent 2 years stripping wallpaper. I know, deep down, that I can't do it again. That was some serious work without kids running around. This house would have to be kick-butt wonderful for me to even consider trying to do it with kids underfoot. And how wonderful can it be if it's covered with wallpaper?

It is a big house -- it would more than double our living space -- and it's in our price range, and it's in a nice neighborhood, so there must be something reeeeeaaaaallllllly wrong with it. Maybe they have a meth lab in the kitchen? Not sure. Honestly, if it was a choice between a meth lab and wallpaper, I think I'd take the meth lab. It would be easier to get those nice Haz-Mat people out in their little white suits to clean that up than it would be to rent a steamer and spend years scraping off sodden strips of flowered paper.

So, we go look. I am not holding out much hope, mainly because moving represents change and I am NOT GOOD WITH CHANGE. Not even a little bit. I have to keep telling myself, it's just looking. Looking is not buying. Looking is just looking. NOT BUYING.

Love Me, Love My House

I am having a very blue day. I can't seem to get on top of it and the least little thing just sends me into a tailspin. After the massive tidy we did this weekend to be ready for Grant's birthday party,the house has reverted to its natural, landfillesqe state. This is creating a tremendous amount of stress for me: though why I should complain about a lego-induced ankle sprain every time I walk through the living room is completely beyond the comprehension of the little perpetrators.
I feel trapped in this house, and the fact that the house is too small, and has been too small for some time now, is not making the claustrophobic feeling any better. Maggie woke us at 5:55 this morning -- that, thanks to one of my parents' dogs, who is staying with us for 10 days while they're on vacation. Barking at a quarter to 6 does tend to wake sleeping babies. It also wakes sleeping husbands, who then threaten to strangle said dog if it wakes him on any subsequent mornings. It is going to be a long 10 days. As if that weren't enough, my sister called and asked if we'd keep their hamster while they go on vacation for 10 days. Honestly, I could just see the veins bulging on Tim's forehead at the mere suggestion. Fortunately, she found someone else after I told her that I couldn't guarantee the hamster's safety (heck, I couldn't even guarantee I'd remember to feed it).
Now I am left feeling like I just can't get it all together. I can't seem to get on top of the house for more than a few hours and although it isn't an extension of my identity, it sure feels like one. So this is me: shabby, cramped, messy, frankly grimy in spots, perpetually disorganized and badly in need of repair/renovation.
Somewhere along the line I have lost something, some essential, critical part of myself. Somehow I've lost myself in the morass of laundry, mopping, dusting, bathroom-scrubbing and cooking.

A Breakfast of Doritos

I hate PMS. I have had almost no appetite today except for an odd assortment of totally unhealthy stuff: Doritos, rye chips, chocolate-dipped macaroons, etc.

Not a speck of healthy food has passed my lips today yet, unless you count the milk I put in my coffee this morning.

Worse than that, I have walked around all day feeling like my head is going to explode. I have zero patience with the kids, and even less with all the household minutiae that demands my consant attention. And, true to form, I have taken on one of those futile organizing tasks that make me feel like the hamster on the wheel...all week I've been trying to clean off the part of the kitchen counter where everybody dumps their stuff and I still can't see the actual countertop. In fact, you can't tell I've done anything at all, even though I have physically cleared it THREE TIMES since Saturday.

The learning experiment continues. It has been less enchanting for me this week. I enjoy the lessons, enjoy that the kids want to do it, but it's frankly difficult to do the prep and the research necessary to do it right. I am having a heck of a time getting anything else done during the day and I am having to spend nearly 2 hours designing activities, researching, printing, etc. to be ready for the following day.

A cleaning lady would be a tremendous help right now.

And Another Thing...

It just hit me that the kids watched almost no television this week, except for the odd Veggie Tale in the a.m. and Curious George/Clifford while I showered. They probably reduced their overall tv consumption by about 2 hours. Holy crackers; they've been watching waaaaay too much boob tube.

Maybe, just maybe, the improvement in their behaviour is tied to less tv? Could it be? I remember about 15 years ago I babysat for two different families when they went on vacations sans kids. One family had kids who never watched tv. Never. The other had kids who rolled out of bed watching videos. The no-tv kids were soooo much better behaved than the tv kids. Coincidence? Not sure. Seems unlikely, especially after watching my own kids this week.

A Week of Surprises

And the biggest one so far has been Grant.

My little boybarian, the one who frequently destroys things by the simple expedient of picking them up, the one who finds more trouble to get into than a sackful of chimps, this wonderful, difficult, awesome boy of mine absolutely thrived this week.

He wanted to do activities, he asked for paper to practice writing his name. He proudly taped his work to the living room wall. For the last year he has driven me right out of my tree with his inadvertant naughtiness and all he needed was a semi-bastardized pseudo-homeschooling program. Who knew?

I have to admit, my children have fought less with each other this week; Abby Kate has even shown signs of latent maturity by helping her brother with his work. I, who am so structured myself, totally missed this crucial principle: kids do well with structure.

One of the best things about the week was actually the scheduled cleaning activities. Over the course of the week we mopped, cleaned the bathrooms, put away laundry, dusted and tidied the living room...for the first week it went much better than I'd expected. Abby Kate totally took initiative and put her own laundry away after watching me explain to Grant how to sort his clean stuff in stacks and put in his drawers. That made me immensely proud. Some stuff was longer and more drawn out than if I'd done it myself and certainly their least favorite activity was tidying the living room, but when do they ever do that except under protest? The house still looks like 3 messy kids live in it, but it's progress.

We learned a lot of cool stuff about the ocean this week, worked on patterns and addition and odd/even numbers, practiced following directions, made models of jellyfish, made a jello aquarium with sharks in it, watched the coolest video of an octopus fighting a shark and generally expanded our understanding of the natural world. Kinda neat.

I have total respect for people who do this all the time. And I am profoundly grateful that I live in a community with excellent public schools.

Day Two

went pretty well, though not as smoothly as yesterday. I am enjoying the planning and prep so far, but not enough to want to homeschool on a permanent basis. Today we talked about sea turtles, which was fun for me and they had a good time with the on-line games I found (who knew there'd be sea turtle-related games out there for the asking? I guess you really can find everything on the internet).

I am trying to make things a little looser and more fun around here. Certainly the instructional stuff helps with that, but I am finding that it's hard to get other stuff done at the same time...stuff like laundry and cooking. Hmmm. That's a drawback, of course.

Two more keys to my success are going to be a) earlier bedtime (10 p.m. vs. 11 p.m.) and b) a judicious use of caffeine in the afternoon. Those two things coupled with the planning and prep are what's going to see me through. Tonight I have to double plan for Wednesday and Thursday since I'm out with Angie tomorrow night.

Day One...

of the Great Homeschooling Experiment is over and I think it went pretty well.

Some of the materials I wanted to use are being shipped, so I had to scramble around a little to find some stuff to do today, but once I decided on dolphins (mainly because I have a great Level 2 reader called Amazing Dolphins that I thought I could build on) things came together nicely. The afternoon looked like this:

1:00 Maggie went down for nap
1:00-1:30 Kids and I mopped kitchen, half bath and front entryway
1:35-1:40 Quick snack
1:40-2:45 Dolphins -- read dolphin book; Abby Kate read 5 pages aloud; played dolphin memory game; Kids made dolphins out of Floam; Abby Kate did writing practice with dolphin body parts and freewrote a sentence about dolphins, Grant circled the correct body parts when directed; kids did coloring sheet about dolphins as a listening exercise; observation of differences/similarities with plastic dolphins, whales and sharks.
2:50 Maggie woke up

I could not have asked for a better timetable. We had a few hairy moments with the kid mops, mainly because G wanted to mop the walls, doors, counters...but a time out later he decided he'd rather toe the party line than give up his mopping privileges. They loved learning about dolphins. Heck, I think they just loved being busy in a purposeful way, rather than shoved in front of the tv. We did a little learning, a little art (Floam: what is that stuff?), a little cleaning. Just what I'd hoped.

It's all going to hinge on my preparation. If I am lax, it won't work. And, as I remember so well from my teaching days, it never hurts to be overprepared with more than you think you can actually get done. I really wasn't sure we'd finish everything today, but we did and it gives me a good gauge for what I need to come up with each day.

My biggest fear is that I will get pooped out pretty quickly, having to prep so much, but if I build in some days off -- like for library visits and playdates (and whole weeks off, like during zoo camp) -- and if I am consistent about planning and printing what I need, I think I can pull it off. It seems logical to make my summer revolve around Habitat as a theme, rather than more discrete subjects like rainforest, desert, ocean. Habitat is specific, yet general enough to encompass a lot of stuff, and it lends itself to a wide variety of activities in all the disciplines.

Tomorrow will be different; Maggie's morning nap will be our cleaning time, so the instructional time in the afternoon will be longer. Not sure yet how this is going to play out, but I am encouraged after today.

June Came in With Rainclouds

Oh my, has it rained. I am sick of it.

So I am posting a non-rainy picture to boost my morale. Abby Kate went from "Don't let go, Daddy!" to figure eights in the driveway in just a week's time. I am so impressed. That face just says it all. Her dad calls her Pink Speed, and now it's truer than ever.

Okay, so summer is starting in 3 days. When I ran my ideas by Tim last night, he said "So you're basically going to homeschool them for the summer." That gave me pause for thought. I guess that's more or less what I'm proposing, but I always think of homeschooling as a very neat, orderly, quiet sort of thing -- all the stuff my kids aren't. They're loud, boisterous, and messy, so when I visualize these activities I picture a certain amount of arguing, a lot of jockeying for position, several attemps at going off half-cocked, and me needing a handful of Motrin at the end of it. Still, I'm going to give it the old college try. Win one for the team and all that.

One thing I have to commit to is pre-planning, to the extent that I lay out materials the night before and write up a lesson plan just as I did when I was teaching real school a hundred years ago (of course, I taught high school, so I spent a portion of my classes trying to wake people up, rather than trying to calm them down as I do at home). Trying to organize this stuff is half the battle. I realized this morning that I don't have anything even remotely resembling a planner -- which, although not strictly necessary, would make me feel spiffy.

I was working on "Improving the body" last night and came up with this list:

• water balloon fight


• dancercize


• bike ride


• hopscotch


• go for a walk


• swimming lessons


• wash van


• play tag


• p.m. at the pool


• Rookies Class -- a 4 week sports exploratory, 1x/week

I'm pleased that I, the consummate couch potato, was able to come up with some good stuff.

Under "Improving the Mind" I have:

• zoo camp


• individual reading time


• writing/alphabet practice


• kid science


• library visits..and the coup d'etat:


• Spanish lessons

This really is a coup. My sister, who is an elementary Spanish teacher and general foreign language goddess has agreed to do Spanish with my kids once a week, all summer long. Sweet.

For "improving the soul/spirit" I have:

• painting class (Abby Kate 1x/week for 4 weeks)


• rubber stamping


• card making


• paper punches and glue stick


• watercolor painting


• working with stencils


• sidewalk chalk


• playdoh


• scrapbooking


• Vacation Bible School


• photo safari/photo scavenger hunt


• making placemats

This is more unfocused. I have posted before about my hate/hate relationship with crafts, so the fact that I have trouble figuring out what to do here is not a huge surprise. Still, if I keep the activities focused on my themes -- oceans, rainforest, desert -- maybe they won't be so scattershot. I, personally, love to do crafts, but supervising children doing crafts gives me a stomachache. We shall see about this area of my plan...

Next post I am going to map out what I think a typical day will look like.

Trying to Avoid Chaos

She is just so beautiful. And she is fine -- no ill effects from the Weekend of Disasters.

I am looking ahead to the summer, which is going to be here in just 5 days. I have been mulling over this for about a week...how to provide a sense of structure to our days without running myself ragged or relying on countless hours of PBS Kids.

I think simple is probably best. I want the day to have some structure, but not be overwhelming for me or the kids. My ideas are kind of embryonic right now, but the bare bones look like this:

Every day we will do 1) something to improve our environment 2) something to improve the mind 3) something to improve the spirit 4) something to improve the body 5) something for fun.

Sounds ambitious, but improving our environment is my fancy way of saying "cleaning." The spirit refers to something of an artistic nature and also to Vacation Bible School; the mind is just something academic -- reading practice, reading time, alphabet practice, zoo camp (which the kids are signed up for in July) or something sciency from a cool book I found. Improving the body is where I'll slot activities like swimming lessons or time at the pool. And doing something fun is really so that I remember to play with my kids. I am going to expand on these in a later post, just so I can work out what I want them to look like, but just under "improve our environment" my general drift is something like this:

• Monday we mop & take out trash
• Tuesday we tidy (living room and bedrooms)
• Wednesday we dust
• Thursday we clean bathrooms
• Friday we put away laundry

In theory, these are all things the kids can either do or help with in a substantial way. I think I'm going to pick up some kid-sized mops at ToysRUs so they can really help with the mopping. I am in the process of making lists of activities for the other things on my master plan.

I'm also thinking about integrating mind, spirit and body activities in some simple thematic units like oceans, rainforest, gardening. I think the activities will be more meaningful if we have a loose, exploratory framework to guide them. Not at all sure how this will play out...still working on it.

I don't want the summer to be frittered away on TV and videos. There'll be time enough for that when the weather keeps us indoors again.

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As if I needed another one.

It didn't start out badly; the kids all slept until 7, which is fairly abnormal for them, so we woke up more rested than usual. It pretty much went downhill from there.

Maggie woke up with one eye totally crusted over. A phone call to my pediatric nurse MIL confirmed our suspicions -- she probably had an ear infection. So Tim got the big ones ready for church while I threw on some clothes and took Maggie to the (thankfully open) peds clinic for a quick ear check. Diagnosis: double ear infection. No wonder she's been napping so poorly all week and acting crabby as all get-out when she's awake.

After church, we were trying to get some little chores done around the house before heading to my parents' house -- getting the laundry up from the basement, putting recycling in the bin, that sort of thing. The two older children found some glass jars from the bin and were banging them together to make "music" until two of them shattered in Abby Kate's hands and glass shards went everywhere. She was, mercifully, not cut at all. Grant got a small glass sliver in one finger because he just couldn't resist touching the broken bits, but that was our only casualty.

After we'd dealt with all that, Tim and Iwere standing in the kitchen when we heard a muffled sort of thump thump thump sound. We wheeled around, realizing two things simultaneously: Maggie was missing and the basement door was open. I dashed to the stairs just in time to see her tumble the final half-dozen steps to the concrete floor below.

Two things, I think, saved her from serious injury. One was that she went down sideways instead of end-over-end and that meant she took the brunt of the fall on her torso rather than her head. The other is that she appears to be made out of rubber. She ended up with a bruise on one cheek, another on her forehead and a small scrape on her shoulder. When I think how badly she could have been hurt, it seems clear that God was watching out for her yesterday. And for her stupid parents.

We were pretty badly shaken by that, but since Maggie seemed to be OK, we went over to my parents' for dinner. A baby gate fell over on Maggie while we were there, not hurting her but definitely scaring her and requiring us to carry her around for most of the afternoon -- fine by us. We were just settling into dessert, when we couldn't locate Grant.

The kids had finished dinner long before everyone else and had gone outside to play. Abby Kate came back in to go to the bathroom, but when we called G in for dessert, we couldn't find him anywhere. After a few minutes of slightly panicked shouting, we found him in the downstairs bathroom. He'd been so busy playing outside that he'd ignored the urge to "go" and by the time he actually made it indoors his sneakers were full of pee.

Worse than that, he'd pooped his pants -- something he hasn't done since he was 2 1/2. He'd tried to take care of it himself, which meant there was pretty much poop everywhere. I can't even begin to describe how gross it was. YUCK. He had to be thrown in the tub and his clothes had to be bagged up to take home. Except for the Lightning McQueen underwear. That we sacrificed to the Poo gods. Sayonara, little undies.

Since we had no other clothes for him, he ended up wearing one of my mom's t-shirts -- one that said "Maui Christmas" on it -- and going totally commando under it all.

We got home and put everyone to bed and then just sat, sort of looking at each other. I think we have never been so glad for a day to be over.

Bad Tuesday

Not to be confused with Fat Tuesday, though we do have a lot of cheap, shiny necklaces laying around.

Maggie won't sleep today. This is a continuation of Maggie Won't Sleep Monday and Maggie Won't Sleep Sunday. It's a trilogy of sleeplessness and I lay it all at the doorstep of church.

Were I an atheist or a pagan, I suppose I would stay home Sunday morning watching real estate shows and NASCAR on TV. Instead, we haul our little brood to church each week, where the littlest one refuses to sleep. Church occurs about 30 minutes into when she would normally be napping, and that nap is usually 90 minutes long, so this is a pretty big interruption of sleep for her. Generally she takes 3 naps a day, but on Sunday she only takes 2, an early afternoon and a late afternoon one. She has been taking 3 naps for quite some time now, but this week she finally decided to give up that 3rd nap, so on this particular Sunday she took only one nap. ONE. This was not enough and despite my rigid adherance to her nap schedule on Monday, she is now veeerrrrrry overtired and napping like caca. It will take until Wednesday, at least, to get her back on track, and she won't really be back in her groove until Friday. Just in time for church to roll around again on Sunday.

This is where I would like to address the people who told me that the third baby is so mellow, so 'along for the ride.' Bull. She is the least flexible baby I've ever produced; not especially tolerant, not happy to be carted around wherever we go. She naps in her crib -- that's it. Nowhere else. She hates being along for the ride, i.e. in the van, and since she has recently discovered screaming, we are all aware of her displeasure. Three quarters of any car trip involve cringing as the screaming crescendos to almost unbearable decible levels.

The only place she has shown any degree of flexibility is in the church nursery, where she is delighted to be left. We think this is because the kids there are gentler than her siblings and she probably feels safer there than in our living room.

Of course, since she was in the nursery 48 hours ago, she now has a cold.

I am typing this, listening to her howl through the monitor because she's had so little sleep today. I am also periodically telling my other two to be quiet, be quiet! BE QUIET!!. It's not really a relaxing place to be today, our house. Thank God they've finally agreed to watch Peter Pan and give me 77 minutes of peace.

How come, if God wants us to go to Church, He doesn't make the way there smoother?

Hair Today, Goon Tomorrow

I am having a bad hair day. A real one, where my hair looks just awful, though I meant it to look much better. This is because I am in the frustrating process of growing out my bangs and I have reached the no-man's land of hair growth where I can't do a dang thing with it. It's too long to style and too short to blend. In a word, it's blech.

I've had bangs my entire life. The rest of my hair has gone from Little Dutch Boy to Mullet to Marcia Brady, but the bangs remain eternal. Until now. This is my first concerted effort at growing them out and they are now just at the base of my nose. My husband mentioned that he thought I should see what my face looked like without the lovely squared-off fringe that has defined it for so long, so I am gritting my teeth and pushing on, though I itch to just whack them off with the scissors.

Secretly I am afraid (and at least partially convinced) that I am one of those people who can't really wear bang-less hair. Even now, at this length, my part looks a little Alfalfa-esque and if I try to part more to the side I get a curtain of hair falling in my eyes about 5 minutes after I leave the bathroom, no matter how much hairspray I use. I can leave the lavvy with bulletproof hair and it still falls gently down in little stuck-together clumps. I am experiementing with clippies, but so far I look like Early Trailer Court. Yummy. I just need a cigarette and a houserobe to compete the effect.

I have made a deal with myself that I'll wait 'til they're down to my mouth before I do anything drastic. If they're still driving me loony by then, it's sayonara.

Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge, Say No More..

My hubby dropped off his fifth "test" sample today, in hopes of finally being declared sperm-free after his vasectomy. A vasectomy which occurred more than a year ago. A vasectomy which was supposed to make our lives more carefree -- or at least as carefree as we can be with 3 kids all sleeping within 12 feet of our bedroom.

The first few times he was tested, the paperwork necessary for dropping off the sample brought him up short. Particularly the little space on the form which asked "How was the sample obtained?"

What are you supposed to write there? As if standing there with a cup of semen isn't humiliating enough, now you have to discuss how you got it? The only thing I can compare this to is when I was having one of my c-sections and the nurse made me carry around a cup of my own urine for 10 minutes before deciding that they did not, in fact, need it at all. Then they just left it sitting on a table top in my room for about 5 hours. It did add a certain je ne sais quoi to the otherwise boring hospital room, but it didn't improve my mood one bit.

So this time, magic number 5, I told him to go right up to the desk and boldly write "PORN" in that little space and then wink at the clerk when he hands over the cup.

'How was the sample obtained', indeed. Sheesh.

Go get 'em baby!

Out of Contention

I am having one of those days.

The kind of day that really started last night, when I didn't get to bed until midnight and am now paying for it.

In a burst of the purely retributive kharma that accompanies child-rearing, the children always wake up earlier on the morning after you go to bed late. Even if you had a good, totally legitimate, responsible reason for staying up.

So everyone was pretty much awake by 6:30. Except me. I don't officially wake up until at least half of my morning coffee has been consumed. I am actually reaching a sort of zen stage with early rising, wherein I can make breakfast for the kids without being strictly conscious, per se. But not this morning. This morning I had yelled at everyone by 6:45 and by 7 was wondering whether it was possible to actually drown myself in my coffee mug or whether the heat would make me pull out prematurely.

I opted to drink it instead and the caffeine rush carried me through lunch. But now it's what Douglas Adams used to call the "long dark tea time of the soul"-- those last 2 hours before Daddy gets home and I am no longer a single parent. And Tim just called to tell me he might be late, so my personal twilight zone may last longer than anticipated.

This was not welcome news.

It doesn't really help to know that if I'd just gone to bed earlier, I'd be in a lot better shape than I am now.

I'm gonna write and withdraw my nomination for MOTY later today. At least I won't have that pressure hanging over me.

Overheard...

Dad: What did you do at Grandma's today?

Grant: Had a 'nack.

Dad: What did you have for snack?

Grant: Not doughnut holes.

Dad: Why didn't Grandma give you doughnut holes?

Grant: She not payin' attention.

Brace Yourself

Today, I visited an orthodontist. An orthodontist. I haven't seen one since I was sixteen, so that's about....well, a long time ago. I experienced a mild sensation of recoil watching a few teenagers get their braces adjusted, but on the whole it was less intimidating than I remembered. And the actual orthodontist was vastly different from old Dr. S---, who perpetuated untold tortures on my poor mouth.

Dr. S--- was a Big Game Hunter and his waiting room was filled with the stuffed heads of his various trophies. He had obviously been on safari a time or two, and judging by the giant moose head on the wall, the Great White North wasn't unknown to him either. Everyone in his family drove a Mercedes and he sported a wristwatch made of little nuggets of gold. Doncha wonder how he paid for all that? Hmmmmmm.

Worst of all, in the middle of the treatment area, clearly in violation of some health code somewhere, was a big, wrought-iron cage with a scarlet macaw inside. An unhappy scarlet macaw. A macaw that felt the need to shriek its displeasure periodically in a way that made the orthodontic assistants jump. Since this often happened while they were tightening my braces, the macaw wasn't the only one who was unhappy.

Why today's visit didn't give me flashbacks of my last gruesome experience with braces, I'll never know, but Dr. M--- might have been the reason. She was nice; she spoke to me instead of around me, and she didn't charge me for a consultation, which I thought was jolly decent of her.

Unfortunately, she did use the "B" word, and that made me go all crawly inside. Yes, it would be short term, yes, it would be only a partial set, but braces are braces and I don't know if I can face them again.

Certainly there are worse things than mildly crooked teeth. Being trapped in a cage in an orthodontist's office springs to mind.

I guess this is where I decide how vain I really am.

Drowning in Laundry

I managed to hurt my back a couple weeks ago when I rather stupidly tried to lift two laundry baskets at the same time. As a result, I couldn't bend or lift for more than a week, which meant I couldn't do the laundry even if I'd wanted to (I didn't). While I was out of action, the laundry accumulated to tsunami-like proportions and I am still trying to wade through it two weeks later. Sadly, nobody gives you pain medication for excess laundry. But they should.

When my kids grow up, I think they're going to remember that I was always doing laundry. There are 5 of us, so the fact that we have a lot of laundry isn't exactly breaking news, but I am so swamped with it right now, I'm starting to wonder if the kids cloned themselves when I wasn't looking.

It certainly doesn't help that one kid wet the bed 2 days ago, soaking the sheet, quilt, and pad, so that bedding had to be added to the backlog. And my eldest has a nasty dust mite allergy, so all of her bedding has to be washed every week -- including the quilt and the Hello Kitty pillow she can't live without. Any time bedding is in the mix, the laundry queue slows way down. At least it does at my house. Then there's the baby who can't finish a meal without smearing Gerbers all over whatever isn't covered by bib, and there's the boy who goes outside and rolls in the mud (and if he can't find mud, he makes his own), and there's the 5-year-old diva who needs a complete costume change 3 times a day or her psyche will be irrevocably shattered. Add to that the husband who wears one outfit to work and changes into another for the evening and the piles really start growing.

I remember with a certain amount of incredulity the days when I really liked doing laundry. When I bought my first place -- a little condo with its own laundry alcove-- I was tickled to bits to be able to do the wash without leaving my house. No more laundromats! When Tim and I were engaged, I actually volunteered to do his laundry. I must have been in love, 'cause now I regard that as a period of temporary insanity. I would never under any circumstances volunteer to do someone else's wash now. Heck, I wouldn't do my own wash if I could find a way to get out of it that didn't involve me either a) paying someone, or b) going naked.

The really awful thing about it, though, is that while you're doing it, people are wearing clothes and getting them dirty. It's an unbroken stream of dirty shirts, jeans, onesies...the Mount Never Rest of being a mom.

That Warm, Peaceful Glow

Here's what I got done this weekend:

1. Mopped the kitchen


2. Tidied the living room so Tim could vacuum (kids helped with this)


3. Bought new frames and hung them the same day


4. New quilt came (thanks UPS!) and I got the exquisite pleasure of making my bed. Now it looks like this:
   
5. Finished fleshing out Grant's summer wardrobe (except for sandals -- need to add that to the list)


6. Bought and watched hubby assemble new BBQ grill; grilled steaks for the first time in almost 2 years. YUM.


7. Put away 3 large baskets of laundry


8. Planned meals and then grocery shopped for the week


9. Reorganized Tim's dresser so that I can put clothes in it, as opposed to the charming, devil-may-care, stuff-hanging-out-of-it look it used to have.

My kitchen is still a mess, neither bathroom is clean and the upstairs one is so gross it has to constitute a health hazard. I still have 3 small baskets of kid laundry to put away, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's amazing how much more I feel like doing stuff when the sun is shining. I even played (read:refereed) a game of Chutes and Ladders with Grant and Abby Kate and managed to get a 20 minute nap on Sunday. Mother of the Year, baby. Mother of the Year.

TGIF

It's Friday. Sweet Friday when my in-laws come take my older two children away for the afternoon and I can actually accomplish tasks. Accomplish tasks. You know, where you start something and finish it all in the same day.

This happens so rarely, that when it does, when I actually manage to finish something, I have such a sense of well-being, of peace and warmth, I hardly know what to do with myself. And I'm talking, here, about things outside the normal, have-to-get-done chores like laundry and cooking and cleaning. I'm talking about things like painting, hanging pictures, washing baseboards, organizing the Christmas decorations, sorting through clothes and dropping them off at Goodwill on the same day -- that kind of stuff.

And lest this makes me sound like some kind of hyper-clean, ultra-neat, organizational prodigy, let me state right here that I am none of these things. Even before I had kids I was cleaning-challenged, and 3 children later I have in large measure given up. Let me illustrate.

We have a wall between our living and dining rooms which is made of columns -- three columns on a 3-foot half-wall and then a full row of little columns that stretches all the way across the room. These little columns are near the ceiling. After my first child was born, my mom came over to clean for me and she dusted the little columns on their little ledge. She commented on how dusty they were and explained to me how to use my vacuum cleaner attachments to clean them. Two years later she came to clean after my second child was born and dusted the columns again. Two years after that, I dusted them because we were getting ready to paint them and even I know paint doesn't stick all that well to dust. So in the 10 years we've lived in this house, the columns have now been dusted a total of 3 times.

See? I am not going to make the cover of Clean Home anytime soon.

A lot of cleaning around here happens on a priority basis: closets get cleaned if people are moving to a new room or if we can't actually wedge any more clothes into the available space; floors get mopped when I can see smudges; massive cleaning occurs only if we've been foolish enough to invite people over for dinner. When my youngest was baptized, we had a houseful of people and this place absolutely sparkled. That was 5 months ago and there's been very little sparkle since.

Some cleaning occurs for mental health reasons, as in "Mommy is going to burst a blood vessel unless these toys are put away right now." This happens more than I am comfortable with.

So today is a day for me to get some stuff done. I'm not sure what that stuff will be. It will certainly be less than I hope to accomplish and it may be derailed by something more pressing, like putting away laundry or clearing off a portion of the kitchen counter so I can remember what color it is. But it will be quiet, and peaceful, and something, however small, will be finished at the end of the day.