Speaking My Language

You know how sometimes you read something that really, completely changes the way you think or do things? And then, if you're me, you know how you immediately forget who the brilliant person was who presented you with this particular ephiphany?

Well, some years back, I read something somewhere by someone..and it changed my life. In a small way, but very much for the better. Said someone somewhere was talking about decluttering and cleaning, and basically suggested that you were better off working within your habits than trying to change them, especially if they were ingrained. So, for instance, if everyone in your family drops their coat on the floor right inside the front door, put a coat rack there. Maybe you don't want a coat rack there...but wouldn't that be better than constantly fighting the battle to get people to not drop their coats there in the first place?

It is for that reason that I put a wicker basket by the front door, which leads out to the garage, where the laundry room is. When someone pulls their socks off in the living room, they just toss 'em toward the basket by the front door. When I notice that a dishtowel has gotten dirty, I put it in that basket. Then when I walk out the front door, I see those bits and pieces sitting there, and I will either add them to the laundry basket I'm carrying out, or toss them into the garage as I go past. I no longer have to yell about clothes laying all over the house; there's a quick, easy and obvious place for them now.

Similarly, that's why I bought a coffee table with a shelf under it. Baroy and the kids always take their shoes off while sitting on the couch. The coffee table is right there. So they just place their shoes on the shelf, and voila. They're not scattered all over the living room.

I, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of taking off my shoes in the kitchen and piling them all up right at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to my and Baroy's bedroom. When I come down the stairs in the morning, I just step into the shoes of my choice, and I'm good to go.

But having a pile of shoes in the kitchen--even in a relatively out-0f-the-way part of the kitchen--can be unsightly, and I've been fighting my own tendencies for years now. (Why I never think to solve my own problems the way I solve my family's is an entirely different psychoanalytic session.) Invariably, this means that, the day after I've dragged all the shoes back upstairs, I'll come down and realize I was expecting them to be in their regular kitchen spot. Going up and down stairs seventeen times each morning? Makes me pretty cranky.

All of which is prelude to this, which I found sitting in the usual pile-place by the stairs when I came home from work last night:

Baroy made it for me out of scrap wood in the garage, and leftover paint from the wall behind where I stood to take that picture.

I almost literally swooned. If I have a "love language," this is it. Something cheap and simple that solves a problem for me. Just like that. And at a time when my stress levels are so high that any release of the pressure feels like a new lease on life.

He's a keeper. And so is that shoe rack.

Short-Attention-Span Post

1. I've been using club soda as a glass cleaner ever since reading up on ways to reduce my use of harsh chemicals. I picked up a liter of the stuff today, to refill the spray bottles upstairs and downstairs. I have more than half a liter left, so I poured a glass of it over some ice and am sipping it. All I keep thinking is, "I'm drinking glass cleaner. Something's wrong here."

2. It's time, we've decided, to start taking N's golf to the next level. The first step is to ask the director at the golf academy where he takes his weekly lessons what that next level is. The next step is for me to get over this feeling that I'm becoming "one of those moms" by actively trying to see how far he might be able to take this. (He's good; he's probably very good. We just can't objectively determine HOW good he is. But if the amount of interest he's garnered from the folks at the academy is any indication, it's something worth pursuing with him.) So far, I've tried to counteract my natural desire not to 'push' by reminding myself that if there's any kid out there who needs to have an area in which he legitimately excels, it's N. If getting him there takes some shoving to move him past his fears and anxieties about trying new things and competing and following rules? I'll have to learn how to shove. Or I'll make Baroy shove.

3. I started the weekend by making a list of about a dozen very specific chores I wanted to accomplish: Making a batch of iced coffee so I don't end up buying it at Starbucks all the time. Working with N to clean off the top of his dresser, which we haven't had all cleared off probably in several years. Washing the windows in his room. Making broth out of the chicken carcass from dinner a few days ago. Cleaning out the fridge. Doing laundry. Washing down the kitchen chairs. Returning library books. Trimming the lemon and tangerine trees. Clearing the dead stuff out of our front garden. Clearing off my desk. Organizing my files.

N's dresser is clear, his windows washed, his curtains in the laundry (which is about a third done). I made the iced coffee yesterday, and the chicken broth is in the oven not-quite-bubbling right now. The trees are trimmed. The library book is returned.

The fact that I completed almost half the items on my list? I am calling this weekend a Huge Success.

Like Regular People

There are entire weeks that go by in great rushes of activity, so fast that when I look back on them, I feel like I never got a chance to do anything 'regular.' You know, like clean the house. Or cook a full meal. Or sit down. Or breathe.

This past week was juuuuust this side of ridiculous, which meant that there were these tiny swatches of regular time mixed in with the rushing times. Not that I cleaned, or anything--perish the thought!--but Baroy did find the time to replace a very yucky toilet seat (little boy+bad aim) with a shiny new one, and even to repaint the bathroom cabinets, which were peeling a bit. (OK, more than a bit. They were peeling in huge sheets of peelingness, if you must know. But 'a bit' makes me feel less bad about how long it took us to do something about it.)

Also, on Saturday, I had to return an overdue book to the library, and I took the kids with me and let them wander around for a while and take a few books out. Like regular people who have time for such things. (N took out a book called 'Caring for Your Pet Fish.' Out of all the books in the library...this is what he chose. No, we do not have a pet fish. He doesn't even really want a pet fish. And that, ladies and gentlemen, defines my son in a way no IEP writeup ever could.) Turns out, it was comic-book-giveaway day (at the library? Why? Because REAL BOOKS would be too appropriate?) which thrilled both kids to no end. So we left with books and comics and all the info we'll ever need about pet fish. Score!

But, hold on...it gets even more regular. Yesterday, on the way home from Religious School and the much-anticipated First Flush ceremony (new bathrooms...don't ask...), Em mentioned that she needed new sneakers, since the soles on the ones she has are getting pretty thin. I have done a full 180 in my mall-readiness (I used to practically live there, now I would rather drive 50 miles to a stand-alone store than try to find parking at the Galleria), so I tried to push her off with comments about needing to take N home because it wasn't fair to drag him around shopping...fully intending to convince Baroy to take her later in the day. But then N said, putting his foot up on the seat next to me, "I need new shoes, too, Mommy." And lo and behold, there was a hole in the sole of his sneakers wide enough for me to stick three fingers all the way through.

"How long have these been that way?" I asked, aghast.

"I don't know. A while."

Really, there are times when I'm THIS CLOSE to calling the Department of Child and Family Services on MYSELF. This was one of them.

So we stopped at the Galleria, and I cursed a lot about the traffic and the stupidity of people in a parking garage, and we went to Payless and found shoes for both kids. Well, after finding out the STUPIDEST THING EVER about how kids' sizing goes. Did you guys know this? Am I the only one just finding out? See, Em found the kids' shoes in her sizes to be just too young for her, and looking at them, I had to agree. She likes things plain and/or funky, not sequined and pink and with hearts on them. But she's a kid's size 4.5, and women's shoes don't really start until 5 or 6. So we were about to leave without buying her anything when she pointed to a display in the window near the cashier, saying, "See? THOSE are the kinds of sneakers I'd like!" And the girl at the register said, "Well, what size are you?" Em told her, and the girl replied, "OK...That makes you a 6 or a 6 and a half in women's."

WTF???

And, indeed, when we went back to the women's section, we found the shoes she liked. And, indeed, she needed a size 6.5, despite being a 4.5 in kids' sizes. How that translation makes ANY SENSE I'll never know. But there you have it. I had no idea. Maybe regular people do, but not me.

In any case, both kids were thrilled to have new shoes. N, especially, was glad to actually have a sole between his foot and the ground. Sigh.

Then we went home, and I made an excellent dinner (if I do say so myself) of shrimp and spinach picked fresh from my garden five minutes earlier (the spinach, not the shrimp) and sauteed in garlic and olive oil, served with rice pilaf. N, who would rather STARVE than eat shrimp OR spinach, had leftover fried chicken. We ate outside...because we could, and because Em loves eating outside...and thus we ended our semi-regular weekend.

Ta dah.

Hey, I said it was REGULAR. I didn't say it was INTERESTING.

Details, Details

Things are insane. That's become the norm, but still. They are. My house is a wreck, and the parts of it that are the wreckiest are my parts. I am behind in my work work, my freelance work, my house work. I literally can't use my desk any more for the piles of stuff on it...and on my chair, and on the floor spaces that surround my chair.

And so, when I have a spare 15 or 20 minutes, what do I do? I take a toothpick and scrape around the edges of the stovetop, to see if I can get that thin line of grease to go away. I take a toothbrush and try to scrub around and between the hinges of the toilet seat in the kids' bathroom to see if I can make that SMELL go away. (Little boy + Bad aim = Dear GOD it's like living in a frickin' ZOO.) I grab a Magic Eraser and try to scrub away the probably-decades-old rust stains around the faucet handles in the kids' shower...the shower nobody uses because it's too small and the pipes are rusty (hence the stains) and the hot water goes from nonexistent to scalding when you breathe in the direction of the hot-water handle.

I try to do something that can be done. That can be finished in those rare, spare 15 minutes. That can make me feel like I've accomplished something.

And I have. The grease is gone. The smell has abated (at least until the next time N uses the bathroom and gets distracted). The rust stains are incrementally less obvious.

But the piles are still there, the work still undone, the desk still unusable, and the chaos still beyond overwhelming. Funny, that. Funny how the lack of grease around the stovetop's edges didn't change everything, didn't somehow subdue the insanity that surrounds me.

Funny. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Homemade

In general, my working from home hasn't been quite the boon to the kids and the homefront that I'd thought it would. Because there is no outside-the-home office that I have to go to, there is also no inside-the-home place to get away from work. As I've complained about before, I'm always at the computer, always putting the kids off. And housekeeping? Even worse. Because if I'm going to take time away from working, I'm CERTAINLY not going to spend it vacuuming or dusting.

But every now and then, I pull myself away from the computer for a moment to give my brain a break, and I do something that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise. And that helps make me feel a little better about this whole enterprise, however tenuous is may be.

All of which is to say that, today, when my kids get home from school, they will each get to have a slice of fresh-from-the-oven, made-from-scratch banana bread for a snack. As they chow down, my inner Martha will smile, pleased with what she accomplished this morning while also answering emails and templating articles for the not-yet-relaunched website and compiling a Religious School PTA Parent Handbook.

And so, for jsut a few moments, all will be well...so long as Inner Martha keeps her eyes on the kids, and doesn't look at the stack of plates in the sink and the dirt-splattered floor and the dog hair piling up against the baseboards and...