"I better go through all my stuff..."

My family likes to hang onto stuff.  We went for an afternoon hike this week, and Monkey picked up these two large, flat river stones.  And wouldn't put them down when we left the riverbank and got back on the trail.

As we hiked farther and farther, and he went longer and longer without a nap, he began to whine and plead with us to carry him.  "I'm not going to carry you while you're holding those heavy rocks!" we told him.  But he wouldn't put them down, even as he was crying with fatigue, until we got to the next river stop and he forgot about them in the moment--and we neglected to remind him.

I admit to collecting wayyyyy more books and journals and art supplies and books than I know what to do with, but every so often it comes over me all in a rush, and I just want to drag everything out into the yard and set it on fire.

I remember how difficult it was to pack up my life and fit it into the trunk of my car (and sharing that with D. besides).  I remember having to choose--which books?  which journals?  could I manage without any paints?  Deciding how many pairs of shoes was necessary, and choosing the small objects that would make our tent into a home, like the mandala rug that belonged to D's parents.  It was a daunting task.

But today I woke up yearning for those days where every one of our possessions is in some way essential.  And also, where every one of our possessions has a specific place it can be tucked away when it's time to move on.

I wake up on a day like this, feeling weighted down by all this stuff.

So there it is--the results of a morning of feverish clawing through closets and drawers, shoving THE STUFF into bags and boxes.  All these old clothes and toys and diapers, goodbye!  And it's funny...it was just one room (I also made a significant dent in my office but that was more filing and shredding, a super exciting story for some other day, some other post...I promise!), but it made me feel so much better.  (Ask me if I still feel better one week from now when the stuff is still piled there by the door.  No, wait.  Don't.  We will ignore that pile if it is still there in one week.  We will pretend it never happened.)

Tomorrow:  we organize the camping gear!  or...we lounge about on the floor, gasping in the heat.  I mean, it could either way, really.  But I am NOT carrying the rocks, no matter what.

(Title is a quote from the poem, "Dream: Us Kids Swim off a Gray Pier" by Jack Kerouac.)

milestones

There are so many reasons not to write.

Sleep, for one. Last night I fell asleep at 7:30 and slept mostly straight through until 8:00 this morning. This, after a week or two or ten of getting no more than six hours of sleep each night and sometimes far less.

Cleaning, for another. My house...it drives me crazy. My floors go unswept, my mail unopened, my dishes unwashed in the sink or piled up on the counters. My laundry. Oh god, my laundry.

Rejection. I've gotten plenty of that, enough to--repeatedly--question my sanity. A lot of people think they can write. I think some of them are delusional. Obviously they are unaware that they are delusional. Well, I'm a rational person. I can connect these dots.

Still, I keep at it, delusional or not, and as a good friend and encourager and fellow-writer has (repeatedly, since I'm a slow learner) pointed out, I've made progress. I blogged earlier about becoming a writer, and since that time I've written four novels, quite a few stories, notebooks full of really annoying poetry, a whole secret deluge of angsty journal entries, and some sadly sporadic blog posts.

Each time I was ready to give up, to admit defeat, I've been given a little tiny step of forward progress that has kept me going. Slews of form rejections for my first novel are made less bitter by one precious phrase of personalized encouragement from an agent: "You have a lively writing voice." I keep writing.

Novel two and three get some personalized rejections. A request or two. And then...two agents express excitement and a desire to see revisions! Requests on the revised manuscript. Positive rejections! And finally...OFFERS.

In the meantime, it's not like the rejection stops...it's not like my house cleans itself or my children don't need me or teaching takes up less time. I can still find a lot of reasons not to write. But the progress--these tiny steps forward--this makes me continue on.

I've been promising writing news now for a while, hinting at excitement...and it's true! I have super news! I'm signing with an agent--Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency!

I'm so thrilled, and I hope you'll go to her terrific site and look around. The moment she requested my manuscript, I went over to her site and found myself sucked into her amazing blog, which is fascinating in what she says about the publishing industry and her own business but which also shows so much of her as a person and a thinker and an appreciator of all things in the literary world.

I'm so happy to reach this next step in the process. I know there's still a long road ahead, and I know there will be more reasons to stop, but as I pass each milestone in this path, I gain some resolve and some courage to keep going! And I'm certainly filled with hope about the eventual places this path could lead!

And...I've said this before, but this blog was born between novel number one and two, in a long gap in my writing when I wasn't really sure if I had the strength to put words out into the world anymore. I know my professed purpose has always been to share stories of my kids and have this record of the moments that pass so quickly in life, but what I've found in this outlet is so much more than that in regard to my writing life. Thanks so much to the people who read and follow my (mis)adventures in parenting and writing and life in general.

So thanks for hanging out with me here on this exciting road, and I hope I'll have more milestones to celebrate along the way! :)

infer what you will...

Jabber, coming home to find me sweeping the house,

(yes, sweetheart, we are expecting company, why do you ask?)

looks around excitedly.

"Where did you put all the new toys I haven't seen in forever?"

Little House in the Big Chaos

So I bought a number of new skirts on Friday (shopping downtown was a part of our Friday Date Afternoon), and this morning I had to hand wash them in the tub before I can wear them.

I admit, I do not always wash my clothing before wearing it (and in fact there may have been a time in my life where doing laundry was such a pain in the ass that I bought new underwear rather than wash the ones I had...yes, I know, I could have washed them in the sink, but if you haven't figured out by now how lazy I am when it comes to cleaning stuff, you're a lost cause), but this particular store has a very lovely smell that I can handle smelling for about twelve minutes before it makes my head feel like it has been violated by an ice auger.

(please do not make any wild assumptions about my writing ability based on that sentence, thx.)

Anyway. So I'm hunched over the tub, my hands ice cold and raw, my back straining under the weight of all that heavy, stinky fabric, and I'm reminded of the book the boys and I are reading--that lovely classic Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I started thinking about how Ma washed all their clothes in a couple of washtubs with water hauled up from the creek bottom all the way up to the prairie. How Pa had suggested that she go down and wash the clothes in the river like the Indians did, spreading them on the rocks to dry. How she had been offended and insisted she would do the wash like civilized people do. How much more work that seemed to Jabber and Monkey and me when we read about it.

(Incidentally, I'm very interested in any great non-fiction book suggestions on Native Americans, since this book is generating a lot of discussion among Curiouser and Curiouser...)

Yesterday afternoon Jabber and Monkey and I made cornbread, just like Ma. "Hey, Mama, let's play Little House," said Jabber.

"Little House onna Pare-Ee!" shouted Monkey, jumping all crazy on the top of the step-stool.

"Okay," I said. "I will be Ma." (I lack imagination.)

"Can I be Laura?" asked the Jabberwock, jumping too, though from a sensible floor-level.

"Sure," I said.

"Okay! I'll be Laura, and Monkey can be...." Jabber looked over at Monkey, who was sitting on the kitchen floor shaking his head from the fall off the step-stool--a little rattled but trying not to let it show. "Well, I guess I'm Mary, 'cause I'm the biggest. And Monkey can be...."

It all started to fall apart. He looked up at me. "Can Monkey be Mary but still I'm the biggest?"

"Laura's the most interesting, isn't she?" I said.

He nodded. "Mary isn't very much fun," he said.

"Yeah. Maybe Monkey could be Baby Carrie."

"Yeah. And then I can still boss him."

"Well--"

"MOOOOOONNNNNKEEEEY!" Jabber chased him into the next room. "YOU'RE BABY CARRIE AND YOU CAN'T WALK. YOU JUST LIE THERE AND BE BORING!"

to the washerwoman go the spoils

It's an unwritten rule, of course, that the person responsible for sorting and washing and hanging and folding and putting away the laundry gets to keep anything s/he finds in the pockets.

Last week I made $8.00, no lie. Not bad for fourteen hours of work.

Now, I suppose it's the difference between asking David to collect his dirty clothing for me like I did today and simply going into the bedroom and scooping up all of his clothing off the floor (even digging it out from under the bed!) like I did last time, but today the spoils of my labor consist only of one orange toy car, a dime, a rubber wheel, and a pink plastic drink sword.

I'm sorely disappointed.

up to our ears in hats...

We have a lot of hats.

Hats are awesome...they keep the sun off, they keep my ears warm, they keep the world from seeing that I still haven't washed my hair today. (Sadly, they cannot hide the fact that I'm not yet wearing actual pants...)

They also sort of drive me nuts, in that cluttery, never-to-be-found-in-the-same-place kind of way. Most mornings this school year, there's a distinct possibility of me actually getting to school on time, if only I had been able to locate all of the proper hats at the proper time. Our hat collection is impressive. Our organizational system for the hats is not.

In fact, it may be slightly telling to reveal that after that photo, I shoved the majority of those hats back on a shelf sandwiched in between a stray mukluk and a basket full of old batteries and pens that don't work.

I could have a hat storage area, maybe, like a hall closet or a mudroom. Except we don't have either of those, so the hats just sort of flutter down off of heads somewhere in the vicinity of the front door and then filter from there out into the home--landing on various hooks, chair backs, radiators, shelves, floors, and sometimes even toyboxes.

Truthfully, I'm sort of scared to store them too close to each other. What if they multiply?

shackin' up

We moved Monkey's bed into Jabber's room today, and both boys seemed to enjoy the idea of it. Monkey jumped into the bed and pretended to sleep right away, so we let him try it, but the two boys got so wound up that it didn't work. Tomorrow night our niece will be sleeping in there maybe, so Monkey just went to sleep in our bed, like usual.

But here is Jabber showing off his new room. He was so excited by it, he asked me if he could "just sit and look at his room for a while." Luckily he hasn't asked for any of the toys I threw away in the process of cleaning and reorganizing his room!


And here's proof that I did try to organize the bookshelf. The boys each have a treasure chest on top full of all their favorite things!

Everything in its Place

I’m organized, I swear!

This picture is proof for all the world that all of our new toys have a home.

Sadly, the home is in a corner of my dining room, taking up the space that, before children, was well-occupied by my own personal library. My books, and those of David, have been slowly but surely forced up onto higher shelves or even forced to move on to other accommodations entirely.

But here you can see: There is a bin for the Matchbox cars, a bin for non-Matchbox things with wheels, a bin for things without wheels, a bin for precious things that want to be kept separate, a bin for “Bad Guys,” a bin for art supplies.

There is a drawer for completed art projects, a drawer for eighteen different varieties of paper and forty-seven activity and/or coloring books. A drawer for Jabber’s treasures and a drawer for Monkey’s treasures.

There is a drawer set aside for playing cards.

There is another drawer which holds only purses, satchels, and other finery.

There are two bins of Little People. (Amy, I asked them if they would rather call their Little People “Chuckies,” as per your suggestion/plan for worldwide name change. They were enthusiastic about a name change; however, Jabber preferred the name “Robin Gobbins,” while Monkey was quite insistent that they should only be referred to as “Pee-Poo.”)

There is a toolbox for all tools and flashlights, including chainsaws, of which they have two.

There are bags, too, and hooks to hang them: for the train set, for the Legos, for the Knight Costume…

And of course, there are books.

So this moment, in this photo, there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. It will probably never happen again.

Holiday Down-Sizing

We’re having a discussion about taking down the Christmas tree so that we can roll up the old living room rug and replace it with the beautiful new living room rug David’s parents bought us.

“Jabber,” I say, trying out my latest tactic--playing up the “responsible big brother helper-type person” role, “would you like to use your new vacuum cleaner on the old rug before we roll it up?” My parents bought each of our children a small vacuum cleaner for Christmas, a sort of “for the love of God, will somebody clean something in that house?” move, I guess. So far I love it.

“Sure!” he says, full of enthusiasm for the job. “I will!”

Monkey very helpfully delivers “The Big Boss,” which is how we’re referring to the rug sweeper, versus “The Little Boss,” which is how we indicate the Dustbuster. I cringe as the handle very nearly misses several breakable entities around the house.

“Great! Now that Daddy took the Christmas tree down, we can get started."

“Wait.” Jabber fixes me with a serious look.

He stands up beside his spot at the table as though he is answering a question for an old-fashioned school-teacher. “What will you be doing to my Fort?” he asks.

The Fort has taken over the living room in the past few weeks. It started as the old play pen (that I’m not sure has ever, in the course of two boys, been successfully utilized in its intended manner) tipped on its side in front of the fireplace. In this capacity, it serves two purposes: with a couple of blankets draped over it and some pillows inside, it is a comfy little cubby for one or two boys to enjoy some quiet time, and also: it keeps the Monkey out of the fireplace.

Beneath the fort, an old yoga mat cut to fit covers the mess of the hearth, with the bricks that come loose under Monkey’s inquisitive fingers. A crate of books and a little table made out of a spool complete the little play area.

Except lately. It started with the addition of a sort of antechamber or perhaps just a mudroom. An old suitcase, tipped on its side, added a functional door. The rocking chair, along with the procuring of another old bed comforter, provided a separate wing for entertaining each other with feats of Monster Truck daring and other such amusements.

Two dining room chairs also occasionally sneak into the construction, forming "tunnels" with a private deck for each boy. On several occasions we have eaten dinner in shifts in order to preserve this fine architecture.

“You’re not going to take it apart, are you, Mom?” asks Jabber now, still standing earnestly beside his chair.

“Just a little down-sizing.”

“Down-sizing? What’s that?”

“Sizing down, basically,” offers David.

“It sounds like getting smaller!” says Jabber, his voice gaining volume. “I don’t like that sound! It sounds like you mean you’re going to take it apart! Are you taking my Fort apart???”

“Think of it as streamlining,” I say.

“WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” he shouts.

“Narrowing down your Fort to the bulk of peak efficiency.”

“MY FORT DOESN’T HAVE A PEAK EFFICIENCY! YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE IT APART!!!!”

“Well, only temporarily. A little post-holiday down-sizing.”

“A-HA! So you ARE going to take it apart!”

And he storms off to throw his little body in front of the bulldozers.

Lameness

GAH. Only reason I'm posting this? Because my kiddo erupted like Mt. Vesuvius last night (five times) and forced me to concoct a sub plan at 11:30 p.m. in between dashes up the stairs to try to catch some of the mess in a plastic mixing bowl lined with a dish towel and then the alternating dashes down to the basement to shuffle our bedding, towels, and several sets of clothing from washer to dryer and then back upstairs to the bed, ready to take the next round. Then back downstairs with the new load of ick. Rinse and repeat. Until 2 AM.

So when I started this blog, my goal was to get writing again. I had finished my first novel, spent a couple months querying it to agents (with no positive responses, frustrating because the rejections aren't even based on someone reading the novel!) and then got sucked into the bog of motherhood and teacherdom and, well, real life. So mired was I that I didn't write a single thing other than stuff for work. Maybe an email or two, I'll admit. Oh, and okay, fine, maybe a post or a thousand on a certain natural family living forum. But writing on a regular basis--something that has been a part of me since I was in elementary school--had virtually disappeared from my life since having children.

This blog was my resolve to keep a journal, something I had tried eight thousand times since Jabber was born, with very sporadic results. I decided to write once a week about my kids and their shenanigans, my thoughts on being a parent in this crazy world, my process of becoming a writer/remaining a writer/succeeding as a writer, random bits of creative writing that I hoped might trickle out of me, and maintain some kind of regularity to the whole thing. All last spring and summer I had the most terrific routine, too. I had a gym membership, and I would go work out after the boys went to bed (David included, since he works suuuuuuper early in the morning and goes to bed, ideally, right around the time that Jabber and Monkey do), and while I jogged around the track or slogged along on the elliptical machine, I would think of things to write about. Then I came home and made them happen.

At the end of summer, my gym membership ran out. There was no money for a renewal, sadly, since we are all tightening our belts (haha, yeah, try loosening the drawstring on my sweatpants now!) and stuff since apparently the economoy is awful and times are tough. (This, so far, is not any different from my life before the economic crisis, but whatever. I have lost exactly zero dollars on the stock market. :P Still, it is nice that David and I are still both employed...knock on wood.) Oh, dear, I digress.

Since school started, I've been terrible about this blog, even though I'm doing a nice job at writing itself. The kids...what could I write about them? I feel like I barely see them, to be honest.

The holidays themselves are always sort of an invitation for my soul to freak out. We start with "Deer Camp," the three weekends in November that we all go to the in-laws' so David can hunt. We have a great time, although I think my children have just about worn out their welcome after two weekends. They are certainly energetic, to say the least. That's three weekends in a row that I don't get laundry done, groceries shopped, toys picked up, whatever needs to be done. Then we have Thanksgiving, a family get-together the weekend after that, and wow! That brings us to the boys' birthdays. Wow, it's so nice to have their birthdays only one day away from each other. And just two weeks from Christmas!

*Elissa dies of overwhelmedness*

I've done my complaining about all of this...to anyone who will listen, honestly. But I haven't really come to terms with exactly how lame of a person I really feel at the moment. My mom, trying to reassure me over the telephone, said something like, "Well, you know, you need to let things slide. Who cares if the house doesn't get dusted today."

Uh, Mom? I don't think it's been dusted since 2005. That's the least of my worries.

There are so many things I should be getting done at any given time; I get lost in all the little details. I should be doing a craft project with my children to make little gifts so that they can give something nice to everyone in the family. Instead, I can't even manage to find time to give Jabber a haircut and search through the winter gear in the basement to find Monkey some boots before there's actually snow on the ground. I should be baking cookies with them, writing out greeting cards, shopping for Santa, and I dunno...buying a turkey for Thanksgiving, since I am pretty sure we somehow agreed to having the in-laws over here for Turkey Day? I can't even manage to get the checkbook balanced or buy toothpaste for the baby or change all my clocks over from daylight savings time.

So I'm lame. And my blog is lame. And my house is messy. And my bedroom smells like sick baby. And I haven't said even a little hello to any of my friends in over a month. (Hello, friends! I really do love you, honest!) And...I complain too much. I promise, the next entry will be either witty or endearing or, at the very least, mildly interesting. :)

On Being Inept At Life

I like telling stories. I like teaching people things, and I love writing about things...thinking about things. I like hiking at my own pace down a quiet woodsy trail all alone, and I like tramping along a woodsy trail at a child's pace, answering questions about erosion and evaporation and why we cannot put ants in our mouths.

I like reading books that captivate me. I like painting on nice canvass.

I do not like paying bills.

I do not like making phone calls, setting up appointments, writing things on a calendar.

Also, I do not like spending too much time each day on cleaning. Some people get a kick out of cleaning because they like the results they see, but to me it is just a lesson in futility.

I know it's part of being a grown-up to do things you don't want to do simply because they need to be done, so I try to keep up on the checkbook, do the dishes and clean the kitchen most nights, and generally be a good, responsible human. With moderate success.

Still, I have the hardest time with keeping up on the little details of life. Like making a dentist appointment. Getting a haircut more than twice a year. Keeping the house clean. Fixing stuff, hanging pictures, filing semi-important things like my teaching license or maybe the deed to our car. You know, dumb stuff like that.

Oh, well. I think right now I'll just spend a little while singing and dancing around the living room with Monkey, and I'll worry about that stuff later. Much later.

iPod Envy and Teacher Talk

I have iPod envy, I admit it. Tonight I was at the gym, working out extra hard because I haven't been there in over a week and my diet has been a pretty steady stream of pizza and candy, and everyone around me was plugged into one. Me, I don't even have a portable CD player. What is my problem. Also, I can't read on the elliptical--too bouncy. So instead of doing anything entertaining to my brain during that half hour (or forty-five minutes, if I can convince myself to keep going) I settle for watching the display on the machine and coveting my neighbors' technology.

Ooh, look, I burned another calorie! Only 17 minutes and 45 seconds left on this joyride. No, wait, 35 seconds. Hey, maybe I should see how many steps per minute I'm doing. Oh, 158. No, 144. No, 152. Huh. Fascinating. All right. Two more calories for the win! Ooh, Ooh, I should check my heartrate!

Yeah, I need some music, or a nice classic being read to me off of librivox.org, a podcast of This American Life, c'mon, anything but this. OOH, look! It said my workout was 10% complete! Wheeee!

So anyway, in the absence of entertainment, my brain uses this time to mull over ideas (when it's not watching digital numbers slowly flipping). Sometimes I write my blog post while pretend jogging away. Sometimes I work through a plot hole in my novel. Lately, I have also been spending quite a bit of time working over ways to increase my patience with the two little ones. With very little success, but you know. Last night I actually spent a good portion of my workout making a mental list of things that need to be cleaned in my home because they have surpassed my own low standards of disgustability. (So today I staged a mini-nervous-breakdown and asked my daycare provider to watch both boys for the morning while I cleaned my bathroom and organized all of the boys' clothes...damn, it's amazing how fast they outgrow stuff, and I've got to stay on top of the organizational system or I'll miss a whole box of second-hand clothing until it's too late and it's already too small!)

Tonight, though, something unprecedented for the summer happened, and although it made me a little bit excited, it also made me very much sad. While I was bouncing along, my brain landed on an idea for my 7th graders to do as a writing assignment. Can you believe it? SCHOOL THOUGHTS. And this wasn't only like, "Hey, I think when we read A Day No Pigs Would Die, I think I'll have them do this rite of passage assignment, only a little different than I did last year. NO. This was like, planning out groups and arranging for the use of the video editing iMacs, and putting together a faux reality television show in my classroom. This was true inspiration.

TOO BAD IT'S AUGUST!!!

Ugh. Oh, well. This is one of the stranger mysteries of summer vacation, I guess. Every year, well except my second year, when honestly I was still burned out from the first one, I find myself actually getting interested in the idea of education once again, even though I hardly believed it was possible a month ago. Inspiration creeps up on me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very loathe to go back to work right now. I am in the middle of a very exciting round of edits on my novel, feeling really happy about it, loving my routine of late nights and coffee in the morning, and mostly even enjoying being around my children and my husband. I am really, REALLY not looking forward to that part of teaching that leaves me constantly feeling like I'll never get caught up, always racing to get seven thousand things done in four minutes, standing half my life away in front of the copy machine, and grading those goddamn papers. My life is nice right now without homework.

BUT. It's nice to see that I do still like the thought of teaching. That I still have some of my old enthusiasm for the process of learning. That the creative teacher I like to think I am is starting to stir inside me. I'll let her out a little later next week, I think.

What does this say about me?

A couple of small observations from this morning.

First, I was sweeping the kitchen floor (which I do like three times a day, I swear!), and Jabber comes waltzing in (no, really, that's not just a fancy way of writing...he was waltzing...with a truck, I think) and says, "Mom, who's coming over today?"

"Well, I don't think anyone's coming over today, hon."

"Well, then why are you sweeping?"

I acted completely indignant and said, "What? I can't sweep the floor without expecting company? Maybe I just want to keep things from sticking to my feet when I walk."

He remained skeptical. "Are you sure nobody's coming over?"

A little later, he was walking around the house chatting on a pretend telephone. "Oh, these kids," he said, in an exasperated tone, "they're driving me up a wall. They're so full of wrestling today." At this point Monkey stole the broom I had propped up against the kitchen counter while I made a cup of coffee, and Jabber spent a few minutes chasing him down to retrieve the broom. He went back to his telephone conversation. "I'm so sorry about that," he said. "I just had to chase the kid around with a broom a little bit."

Summer!

Today was everything I love about summer as a mom, and only a little about what drives me crazy about summer as a mom. Jabberwock went to daycare for a couple of hours this morning so that Monkey and I could have some time to be a duo. We sat on the porch swing and read books together, fingerpainted on the front sidewalk, and then we actually followed through on my little plan to go to a gathering called Mothersong, a group of moms, dads, and kiddos who get together and sing fun songs, dance with Playsilks, play instruments, etc.

I am such an introvert that stepping into the completely unfamiliar like this is WAY outside of my comfort zone. I did not really know one thing that I could expect when walking into the room, except that people were going to be singing. I'm not a singer, really. I think my voice is actually okay, and I can stay on key, but my range is seriously like one octave. So any time the song goes up or down significantly, Elissa moves into stealth mode whispersong. But Monkey really likes music, likes to sing in this beautiful little croon, and likes to dance all the time. So we braved it. For the first forty-five minutes or so, Monkey sat on my lap all snuggled up, looking with awe and amazement at all of the kids dancing and shaking their maracas. Very uncharacteristically, he didn't even tap a toe until he decided to nurse a little bit; that seemed to fill him up with confidence and energy, and his little legs were bouncing so much it was difficult to keep him on my lap. Pretty soon he was investigating the room, and he even got a little rough with a couple of kids, pushing one down and snatching a couple of toys. Yeah, you thought this new kid was just a little introvert like his mama, but whoops! Looks like he's a little spitfire!

Jabber even got a chance to do his own fingerpainting and get his own one-on-one time with me, since Monkey fell asleep in the van, and we left him sleeping with the door open, right next to where we were painting.

Later on, went for a short walk with the kiddos, played some more catch in the backyard, even had a massive wrestling match with all four of us, and nobody got hurt. I'm like a Playful Parenting genius.

When we have a schedule, some creative plans, and I don't actually try to get a single thing done for myself or my house, being a stay-at-home-for-the-summer-mom works out okay for me. But I mean that part about not doing a single thing for me or the home. My house looks like an enormous puppy went through it and tugged and shook and knocked things over. At least I don't think there's any poop or pee to be discovered. Now that's something.

On the writing front, I am proud to say that yesterday I wrote a thousand words (pretty good ones, I think) on the short story I'm going to try to get published somewhere, somehow. I tried to work on my agent list, but something malfunctioned on my computer and I couldn't access any of my documents for a long enough time and through two restarts so that when it finally came up again I began to build my own computer over at the Dell website for a bit. I haven't ordered it yet, but then this evening all of a sudden the left mouse button on the laptop stopped working, and I went back over to my wish list and started adding things. We shall see.

I'll leave you this evening with one last image. A couple of evenings ago, the whole family was upstairs, and we noticed that we had lost the baby momentarily. We checked around the upstairs and came to the conclusion that he must have gone back downstairs. Here's what we found. I'm sure he was just getting one for Mama and Dad, right?

An Organizational Moment

There's something amazing about the end of the school year, the way it builds up from far away and crescendoes wildly into a whirl of stress and deadlines and craziness until you just don't know if the end will ever come. Some count the days, marking them off right along with the students, and others, like myself, try to ignore the next week and focus on making it through each and every minute with everything done that needs to get done. No matter which approach, the end does come. Goodbyes are said, some tears are shed, our 8th graders march across the platforms at graduation, and our sixth and seventh graders bubble over like a pot of water at a rolling boil until that last day---and suddenly they're all gone.

Today was called "DumpsterDay" at my school, and all of the teachers and professional staff worked to clean, organize, and throw out all of the junk we no longer need. All of the furniture was gone from my room, the floor bare, the posters removed from my walls. I filled the recycling bin with papers I no longer needed. I pulled odd conglomerations of items from my desk drawers and speculated on their possible uses: a wind-up dinosaur? confiscated laser pointers? a copious amount of Monopoly money? twelve small plastic containers of confetti? a tube of glow-in-the-dark face paint? Each new discovery met the test of usefulness and then was either tossed or carefully straightened on its way back into the drawer. I swept up an entire bottle of spilled gold glitter from the back closet and threw away a stack of dusty newsprint tablets that was dusty when I moved into this classroom six years ago. I went through all my files and thinned them out, putting them into an order that will make next year much easier.

Some people like to rush this process at the end of the year, especially back when this day was an optional day and everyone wanted to get out earlier. They shoved everything into the closet and smashed the door shut, willing to deal with it in the fall. I have always taken my time to put things away with care, knowing that once I am in the thick of teaching and living, I rarely have a chance to put things back just so or dust all of my bookshelves, for instance. I get so caught up in trying to keep my head above water with lesson planning, attending meetings, grading papers, doing observations, setting goals, (plus being a mother, a wife, a blogger, a housekeeper, a human), that I don't have a chance to step back and take a breather.

When my husband and I were not yet married, we spent a summer traveling across the country, living out of our car and backpacks and tent. Because of the economy of our possessions and space, we had a number of systems to keep everything organized and ship-shape, but every so often we would have to stop. Reset. Take what we called "an organizational moment."

I wish I could get one of those in my home life sometimes. A period of time (like a week, perhaps?) when everyone but me would go away and stop making messes, so I could clean, organize, put everything back where it's supposed to be. I could install those hooks by the front door for the kids to hang their backpacks on, and finish putting the pictures that are piled on the buffet into the photo album, and clean the oven so it would stop smelling like burnt sausage pizza, and finally catch up on the laundry (actually get all of the folded clothes into the drawers before they're dirty again!), and pick up all of the toys and have it stay neat for even ten minutes before it's trashed again. With two little boys, I feel like I'm running around cleaning in front of me while they destroy the place right behind me. I turn around and can't even see where I've been. This gets so frustrating, and it never stops.

Well, maybe next week, when I've got the kids going to daycare for a morning while I stay home. I'll have my own little dumpster day here at home, and get myself ready to face the summer vacation, so we can focus our attention on having fun instead of keeping afloat.