Fun Kid's Citrus Shake-up Drink!

When the weather warms up and the kids clamor for lemonade, we have come up with a way of fixing lemonade that is fun for them!

Requirements:

• Mason jar with tight-fitting lid, quart size is good. If we run out of these, we use old pasta sauce jars, just so long as that lid fits well!!
  

• Citrus fruit, any kinds, cut into quarters. Our favorite mix is: one half of a lemon, one half of a lime, and one quarter of a tangerine. You can use whatever you have lying around, however.
• Sugar, appx 1/2 cup. Demerara or turbinado is excellent because of the larger crystals, they cut the fruit better and taste amazing!
• Ice
• Water!

Start by putting the citrus and the sugar, dry, into the Mason jar. Works best if you kinda squeeze the citrus just a little first, but you don't really have to. Screw the lid down tight and let your kids take turns shaking the heck outta that jar. The harder they shake, the better tasting the drink will be!



When the sugar looks saturated, run some warm water, about a cup's worth, into the jar and let the kids shake again. My three year-old can handle it even at this weight, I just have her stand on the kitchen sink rug in case it slips out of her grip.

When the sugar is dissolved, run some cold water in that jar, and shake it just a bit more. You now have somewhat concentrated citrus-ade! Pour it over ice and enjoy!!

Try adding interesting things, like mint, fresh lavendar, a sprig of thyme, or whatever you can think up.

This method makes the tastiest drink not only because it is fun (and fun always tastes better) but because the sharp edges of the sugar crystals gently pierce the actual rind of the citrus skin, adding a finite amount of citrus oil to your drink. We all know how lovely lemon zest tastes- adding that in tiny increments to your standard lemonade is utterly divine!

Payback

I have a theory.
I know that not every woman is going to be rational when picking a tiny LEGO brick out of her foot, but bear with me here...

LEGO: Causing foot pain to millions of parents worldwide.

Our kids are just payback. Remember the times you dragged out all of your mom's steel pots and banged away for hours? Now your own kids have a heavy wooden spoon and have figured out that the stair railing has unique harmonics. It's payback time.

When I was a kid, we didn't have a lot of toys, but we made good use of what we had. There was this toy in our house- I've never seen anything quite like it- that made a glorious noise. It was about ten inches long, had three wheels set into the peach plastic body, and an ugly animal sticker below the handle. The wheels- hideous primary colored melamine- would make a tinkly sound when spun gently. Spin faster, and the pitch rose. Spin all three at once, and you have your own little orchestra going on!
We would spin that thing for hours, and I distinctly remember my mom's voice, cracking from the pressure, yelling upstairs: "Enough!!"
Sorry, mom.

But now, you see, I have this wonderful mother-in-law. And she loves to gives my kids presents. For Christmas a few years back, she found these little kid keyboards. You know the kind- electric, with various beats and loops and 'demos'. When you turn this particular kind of keyboard on, it defaults to LOUD, running the scales a few times, before making a weird 'duhn.' sound.

She bought three.Children's Electric Keyboards: "No, sorry honey, we're out of batteries..."

Yup, one for each kid.

Payback.

Tinkertoys: Besides the undeniable quality of getting lost in the house,
they can also make good weapons.
I have fond memories of being smacked
in the head with a setup much like this.

For every Tinkertoy my mom stepped on, I have a LEGO wedged between my toes.

For every piece of crud I dropped downstairs through the post-and-beam assembly of our house, I find a piece of string tied to a doorknob.

For every marble out of our Chinese Checkers game that went rolling down the hall, I have... a marble out of our own Chinese Checkers game that winds up in my garbage disposal.

Marbles: Not sounding so good in the garbage disposal.

Looking through my children's toys yesterday, I realized just how many noise toys that we've received from parents. People who have lived this life of shattered concentration, staccato noise, and random toybox outbursts in the middle of the night!

I used to think it was treachery, now I see it for what it is.
They, too have put up with us, they are no stranger to finding the screwdriver and removing all of the batteries from a hiccuping speaker system. They, too, have limped and hobbled on bruised feet after stepping on tiny sharp-edged blocks and game components.

It's just payback time.

Wait until my kids grow up, I bet they have some nice noisemakers by then...

Turnips & Cinnamon

Kid #1 is, like many other young girls, enamored of the American Girls books. In one book, some WWII kid doesn't want to eat her mashed turnips (who would?). Someone- obviously desperate or evil- dresses them up with cinnamon and sugar, and the kid is transported to happy eating once again.

This uncanny combination struck my oldest child as so completely novel that she had to try it. She would no relent until we had some cinnamoned-and-sugared mashed turnips ourselves. Having only eaten turnips in things such as stews and pasties, Kid #1 really had no idea how they tasted on their own.

Being the control freak that I am, I tried explaining to her that turnips are bitter, cabbagey, and not conducive to sweet. She was undeterred. So we traipsed out to Meijer tonight and purchased some turnips. Kid #1 was enthralled at the lovely purple gradient on the side, the interesting scales where the leaves had been trimmed, and the perfect firmness of the tuber.

"Do you have cinnamon and sugar at home, mom, or do we need to buy it?" Kid asked.

"Oh, I always have cinnamon and sugar in my house." I replied flippantly, "It makes everything better."

"Which is why it will be perfect on mashed turnips!!" Kid crowed, actually clasping her hands in glee. That's what I get for my flippancy.

We straggled home after leaving a pretty sum of money at the grocery store, and Kid #1 immediately began searching for a peeler. We boiled water, chopped the blarmy rigid things without incident, and tossed them in, excitement building among the little ones. Michael and I looked over their heads at one another, shrugged, and hoped for the best.

Twenty minutes later, we were far from the best. Mashed turnips look bad and taste awful, even with butter and milk. Add something that normally belongs on yummy toast, and you have a complete assualt on your senses. I made faces, but Kid #1 was crowing,

"Isn't it wonderful, mom? It's such a different taste!"

For all of my doubts, all of my silly groundless worries, it didn't even matter. She loved them, although I noticed a mostly-uneaten bowl sitting on the counter just now. Turnips are ridiculously cheap, I had maybe two dollars invested into the entire project- less than I would have spent on a movie. We got to learn about various root plants, and she got to actually try something that she had read about.

At the age of nine, she is going to be wanting to do a lot more of these things. I have always thought that I would have an easy time letting go of them, but I find it to not be so now. The maturity is fine- but worrying about burns and cuts and kitchen messes and wasted food gets to me. Most of all, I worry that they will be disappointed with the things they want to try.

These are needless worries! Of course all three kids will recieve burns and cuts and stitches! And I think that they will survive these things.
There will be messes and disasters and the occasional wasted food or destroyed pan- but they will leave my house knowing how to fend for themselves!

And disappointment- the only disappointment they will know is not having been allowed in the kitchen, if I keep up my current pace. But I will not. I know that it is time to start slowly letting go, gradually releasing my iron grip on these children and their minds and wills and imaginations.

There came a time when my own mom had to let me in the kitchen- and she grimly withstood burned hamburgers, clumpy rice, spicy potatoes, and watery eggs. I am ready to soldier up now and withstand my share of these, all the while teaching my children the science of cooking, the value of a dollar, and the importance of a happy kitchen. I hope I'm up for the task.

And I hope I don't run out of cinnamon.


We might try it on rutabegas next.

Pre-Computer: Art Existed

We moved to Michigan in August, and we have a dozen boxes yet to unpack. Every now and then I make a half-hearted attempt to unpack some, but wind up getting distracted with whatever inane stuff is inside.

Recently, Kid #1 and I were sifting through a box of papers. Not just any papers, these were drawings, sketches, and paintings of mine from time past, some over fourteen years old! Yellowed, crumbling at the edges where acidic tape has eaten into the sides, these trivial works of art represent my growth as a person and an artist.
I've never given them much thought, in fact I have discarded dozens of my works throughout the years. Michael, however, will not allow me to pitch any more art. He feels it is worth much more than the trash bin. So it sits, aging, in an underbed storage bin. So when Kid #1 was leafing through the sheets, I busied myself with organizing screwdrivers.

"Mom!!" Kid yelled, "Who did this drawing? These butterflies?"
"Uh, me. Who else?"
She made a disbelieving tongue-clicking sound and waved the ancient paper in front of me,
"It's so beautiful!" She gushes, "This one butterfly looks like it has all fall colors."
I glance at the drawing in question. Sure enough, it is titled 'Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall'. Four butterflies in various stages of flight, each done in colors of the season- Spring is pastel and light, Winter has gray edges and brown and white accents. I can remember vividly the day that I sketched this, lovingly sharpening my Prismacolor pencils in order to fill in the details better.

That was so long ago that the memories feel like they aren't even mine. I haven't even touched a colored pencil in years, let alone brought beauty like this out of one. What killed that inside of me? What took the art out of my hands, my mind, my soul, and filled the void with angst and frustration?
I used to withdraw into my world of music and art to escape the sorrows of life with my father. I'd lock myself in my room, line up my pencils in a perfect color gradient, turn on the little nail polish-encrusted clock radio by my bed, and draw for hours. I would sketch circles, laying them out in perfect symmetry, disciplining my mind to divide each tiny section of the circle into shards of shape, color, and form. Then I'd fill in each little triangle, each tiny sliver of design, all around the circle. I destroyed most of these after staring at them for a few months, but some of them survived.
I sketched aliens faces, peering out from underbrush with glowing eyes. Butterflies, my sister's feet, desert wrens in our front yard, and more intricate circles took shape under my hand. The art wasn't stellar, but it was good.

So why did I stop? Life came and got it in the way, for one thing. My art took a new direction with my design career, and I learned to put structure to the shapes that I saw in my head. I lost the ability, slowly, to sketch, replacing it with the ability to sculpt. I lost the whirling circle patterns and replaced them with intricate Celtic knot wedding bands- things that our family could sell instead of just things that I could hang on the wall.
I lost the brilliant dance of color in my head, gave away the treasured (and expensive!) Prismacolor set to my little sister, and focused on churning out jewelry for our cases.

Then marriage came along, and with it an introduction to the wonderful world of computers. Kids followed soon after- way too soon after- and my art was lost completely in a world of spit-up and diapers and never-ending bills. I indulged occasionally in something artsy-craftsy: wreaths for my living room wall, flower arrangements to make the house look pretty, window treatments... but the art was always saved for the sculpting table. And even then- more often than not it was within constraints- is it saleable, is it functional, is it doable?
I learned to do a little bit of Photoshop work, and remembered my days of filling in color by hand.
Why, who had to struggle with compass, ruler, protractor, and pencil now? Not when you have mask, shape, copy, paste, transform, flip horizontal!
Why bother carefully outlining a shape with Vert Printemps (the French translations always sounded much more 'arty'), then carefully coloring it in, then going over it once more until the color hazed over, ready for a rubdown with the bottom of my tee-shirt? Not when you have paintbucket!

I buy colored pencils for my kids, but I never just sit still with them and color! There are always so many other things to do- dishes, laundry, bills, this bloody blog, the other bloody blog, yardwork, cooking, Civilization III, and more dishes.

Life has stolen my soul.

Art was my soul's song.

I had that butterfly drawing framed. It hangs in Kid #1's room now, perfect because she is dainty and fragile like a butterfly, and there is a butterfly meaning tied up in her middle name. The framers had to work around the missing patches and masking tape stains, because I never regarded my art enough to preserve it. The huge missing chunk out of the corner serves to remind me of the piece of my spirit that left when I gave away my colors.

I'm going to buy myself another set of colors, as soon as I have the money and I can get to a town that has supplies.

Then, I'm going to pull out the protractor, compass, ruler, pencils, eraser, and paper.
I'm going to draw a huge circle, and it is going to give me my breath back.
I'm going to measure out the center and mark off graduated spaces: one inch, three-quarters of an inch, five eighths... and as I mark these off the years will fall off my shoulders and I'll sit up straight.
I'll begin laying out lines- at hard angles and soft- and my jaw will unclench and maybe the eternal headache will go away.
I'll trace the important lines in marker and erase the dividing lines, and my gray hairs will not show quite so much.
I'll color in the shapes- yellow, spring green, peridot green, leaf green, green, teal, turquoise, blue, violet. I'll use so many gradient colors in between that the rainbow will start to roll off my desk, and I'll stoop to pick them up and maybe find that old nail polish-encrusted clock radio. If I'm lucky enough, it will still be tuned to the oldies station and I'll switch it on and listen to Chantilly Lace and wish that I could have lived in that era. I'll color hard in between the lines, remembering always Mrs. Vandreese telling us to use 'singing colors'... color so hard that the wax in the pencil makes a haze over the top of the green pencil.
Then I'll stoop down and rub, ever so gently, the haze with the bottom of my tee-shirt. The wax will squeak a tiny bit, leave a thin trace on my shirt that will never wash off, but will reveal a vivid, thick layer of color. Color that was put there with a human hand, color that you can dig at with your fingernail.

And when I'm done, I'm going to hang it up on the wall. With proper hardware, soul intact. And then...

I'm going to draw another one.

To Everything There is a Season... Under Heaven

It's nighttime and I'm walking around the house, making sure all of the windows are open enough to let the cool air in. Today the interior of our house hit nearly 80˚, and we were reduced to the least amount of clothing we could get away with.

Not three weeks ago, our furnace was running full blast and Michael was scraping snow off the car. Now, with our winter gas bill not even in the mailbox yet, we're pulling out the fans and shorts and ice water.

Welcome to Michigan, land of extremes.

I smile and shake my head, but it reminds me of life in general. We often live a life of extremes, don't we? I am reminded of December 2006, when we were so bloody poor that we built a Christmas tree out of trash. We had nothing but time, anyhow.

Fast forward two months, Michael working so many hours that his skin grew sallow from lack of rest and sunshine. But we had money, oh boy, did we have money! We bought new laptops and clothes and perfume and stocked our pantry and gave huge checks to charity. Life was good, we were on top, and it was all going to be this way for a while!

Or, not...

Fast forward another several months and the contracts have dried up, the perfume is gone, the laptops are still useful, if scratched a bit, and the pantry stock has been eaten. We find ourselves digging in the coin jar for a pizza and calling our bank to delay a car payment one more week.

Life brings you extremes- success, love, finances, family, health. Our family is kind of middling it out right now, neither too poor nor too rich, nothing in abundance, but nothing truly lacking, either. It is a slight relief from the roller coaster of the past few years, but I almost miss the heady excitement of the dips and turns. Now I have time, finally, to focus on my children and my home and career... not too much time, mind you, but I am trying to portion it properly.

How do we handle the extremes that life sends our way? Do we scream and moan at the frigid winter, complaining as we pay our gas bill, oblivious to people in other lands shivering without the benefit of a gas heater and insulation?
When the harsh summer sun bakes the interior of our car, do we curse it or thank our Benefactor for the gift of having a vehicle? How about the gift of sunshine! After months of wretched cloudy skies, the fit of sun is welcome, but so quickly forgotten as we rush to acquire air conditioners and window fans.

When we have lived our life to the fullest, enjoying health and vitality, do we stop to think of what it might be like to be ill? Seldom. But when illness strikes, it can be crippling just from the sheer depression of it all.

Boredom used to be Enemy #1 when I was a child, even in recent years. Now, with the website & store, this blog, three growing kids, our expanding commitment to live more 'green', church, my writing, and every other tiny thing that has to be done every day under the sun... I begin to miss boredom, miss a day with absolutely nothing to do but poke sticks at things in the yard.

I have had days where my floor is covered in toys, crayons, tiny clothes, spit-up, dirty socks, and wet towels. I begin to wonder why I ever brought any child into this world, let alone three! But then I see friends who are not even able to conceive a child and I am filled with remorse for my thoughts, and my frustration with the mess is replaced by a warmth of love for the grubby pestilences. One extreme to another...

I have days when the march of money leaving my wallet- just for the kids- is endless. Birthday parties, decent schooling, books, clothes, shoes, more shoes, coats, boots, medical care, dental care, savings (who am I kidding?), a vehicle big enough to haul it all... I begin to wonder how sweet it might be when they are grown and on their own- no more noise in the house, no more early mornings, no more scrambled egg in my carpet and juice on my books... then I tuck in three fighting noisemakers and find this in my sink, perfect in its innocent simplicity, and all is well again. This is just my season of busy-ness, and surprise roses planted in my bathroom sink.

Just because.

Motherhood is one of the longer extremes that I need to weather, and one I certainly was not cut out for, but I think I can handle it for a few more years.

Let me know about your extremes, and how you've dealt with them...

Ecclesiastes 3:1: There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven.
Ecc 3:2	A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.
Ecc 3:3	A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to rebuild.
Ecc 3:4	A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.
Ecc 3:5	A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
Ecc 3:6	A time to search and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away.
Ecc 3:7	A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak up.
Ecc 3:8	A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
Ecc 3:9	What do people really get for all their hard work?
Ecc 3:10	I have thought about this in connection with the various kinds of work God has given people to do.
Ecc 3:11	God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.
Ecc 3:12	So I concluded that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they can.

And a Child Shall Lead Them...

I bring my three-year old to work with me most days. This is, of course, slightly stressful for both myself and her, but somehow it works.
She has two little play stations in the jewelry store, with bins of LEGO blocks, books, toys, and crayons. I spend my lunch breaks reading books to her, and the other employees hang out with her as they can. Michael works with me, so the burden of childcare is seldom on my shoulders alone.
One or two days a week, Michael works from home, and Kid #3 stays with him, with the full run of the house until her sisters come tromping in from school. Soon I will be working from home one day a week as well, so Kid #3 will spend a maximum of 3-4 days in the store.
She's only three, so I don't really know if she is old enough to resent me for this. She seems happy enough, if a bit cooped up sometimes. She is a typical child for her age: energetic and imaginative, pushing her disciplinary boundaries and asserting her independence. She loves me to death, and I am giving her the best childhood that I can at this point in time.

So it came as a crushing blow to me the other day when someone said to me,
"I feel sorry for her."
This came from someone who has it pretty much together in the 'mom' department, and I look up to her. I spent the next couple of hours obsessing about my parenting choices, dealing with the inevitable guilt that comes when one feels like an incompetent mother.

But am I really an incompetent mother? Who writes the rules here? My children are loved, well-fed, clothed (more or less), and are getting a good education. They have periods of boredom: after school some days, odd times when they are stuck in the car or at work. But it isn't terminal. Boredom stretches the imagination and teaches patience and creativity. They invent games, dream up entire fantasy lands in their heads, and learn to occupy themselves.

Throughout history, children have played in fields while their parents plowed and gleaned, they have sat quietly through four-hour Puritan church sermons, and they have huddled in the dank underbellies of ships for months traveling to a refuge on foreign shores. Did this damage them beyond repair? No. In fact, some of our brightest contributors to the progress of the world have come from situations such as these.
Are we to bow to the slightest whim and imagined need of our offspring in order that they might grow up sheltered and pampered? Does the idyllic childhood produce perfectly adjusted adults?
I think not.

I think that children are a product of not only their environment, but of the attitude around them as well.
For example, we have moved an awful lot, as I've mentioned in previous postings. I hate doing this to our children, as well as myself, but it has always been to a better life, a brighter future for us all. On the times when my guilt really shows, the kids whine and get antsy. But on the times when Michael and I are excited, hopeful, positive- that attitude rubs off on the kids and they, in turn, are excited and positive. They have had more adventure than most kids their age, and it has grown their boundaries and broadened their horizons.

Kid #3 may not be in a structured pre-school with fingerpaints and primary colors all around her, but she learns the names of gemstones and helps me pull models out of silicon molds every Monday. She may not be with her peers, or safely tucked away in my living room, but she gets to talk to all sorts of people during the day. So, how is this going to harm her in the future? Now? As long as she gets an opportunity to run around now and then, as long as she is surrounded by love and intelligence and the ability to learn and think and grow- I think she will do just fine.

If our generation of parents continues to be enslaved to someone else's idea of how we are to raise our children, if we continue this trend of child-worship beyond practicality, we are headed for trouble.

The child who has had everything sacrificed for them their entire life will not know the value of his own sacrifice.

The child who has lived in a perfectly constructed and controlled environment will know only that which has surrounded her and will grow up stunted.

The child who rules the household will always rule. We are given our children to raise for eighteen years, and then they are on their own. Not that we cannot ever be a parent to them again, but they have to find their own way from there. Our culture is even now reaping the horrific consequences of a generation raised too self-centric: parents my own age are abandoning their children at an alarming rate while pursuing their own lives.

Tomorrow I'll get up and feed three kids, pack lunches, and drop the older two off at school. I'll drag Kid #3 into the store with me, try to keep her happy and occupied and fed and clean and out of trouble, carve some jewelry, wait on some customers, and somehow make it through the day.

Then I'll do it all over again on Thursday. And it's all going to be ok.

What's the Moratorium on Lost Mates?

There is an epidemic sweeping our nation- our world.

It is untouched by language barriers, economic status, and political beliefs. The facts should unite us as a people: every day in this world 27,375,618 mates are lost.

That's 1,140,650.75 per hour.

19,011 per minute.

317 per second.

I'm not talking about divorce.

These are the hard, cold facts of sock, shoe, and mitten separation. Staggering, isn't it? Especially staggering is the fact that I completely made that first statistic up, and then bothered to do accurate math from it for the rest of the numbers.

The elusive Sock Fairy, genus Canus Elusia

Here's something that is not an exaggeration: In my short 30 years of life, I have moved 36 times. Thirty-six. Northern Michigan, Arizona, Tennessee, Ohio, New Jersey, back and forth between a few of those... now back once more to Northern Michigan. I have become a pro at throwing everything I own into random boxes, mislabeling the contents, and never opening the box again.

I remember being a teenager, moving yearly between Arizona and Michigan. Each time we would unpack I would find odd mates: knee-high stockings, white crew socks, even the odd shoulder pad or two (this was the early nineties, remember, don't judge me). Each time I would save these little mementos of disorganization, hoping against hope that the mate would show up eventually.
They rarely did.
Eventually, losing faith in the system of all things returning to their point of origin, I would get discouraged and throw that navy blue trouser sock away. On a Wednesday. On Friday the trash would come, and on Saturday, inevitably, I would find the other navy blue trouser sock.

Now, fast forward to today. Three children, ranging in age from three to nine years of age- all girls. One husband, with various hobby interests, including the rare game of paintball. Myself, retail career back on track, with a collection of various stockings: thigh high hose with those silicon grippers, thigh highs without the silicon, knee highs for summer- thin and patterned, knee highs for winter- thick and textured... sport socks... plain socks... funky five foot long purple and white striped socks from my days working the Renaissance Faires... socks just to wear outside when it's extra cold...
Oh, and not just socks! We have shoes: rainboots, snowboots, plain boots... sandals, brown shoes, church shoes, tennis shoes... work shoes, shoes that only go with that one outfit that doesn't fit anymore, shoes with sentimental attachments (don't ask)...
Don't forget hands! Mittens, driving gloves, fuzzy warm gloves, gloves that velcro around a kid's wrist, mittens that button down to reveal fingertips, stretchy gloves with sparkly butterflies...

All between size 1 in baby to 9 in men's. Sure, I don't have a kid that fits into a 1 anymore, but I can't just get rid of the little bunny sock! It's cute! And I can't give it to my sister or my friend in Grand Rapids for her daughter, not just a single sock! So, if I hang onto it for just another year or two, unpack maybe one more box of junk, maybe the mate will turn up! Right?

Oh, did I mention the colors? When we dump out our box of mis-mates (this happens approximately once a month, when desperation sets in) it looks like an Affirmative Action handbook: black, white, tan, brown, navy, yellow, pink, blue, striped, dotted, argyle, short, long, thick, thin, holey, sparkly, splotchy where I spilled the bleach, flowered, stripes mixed with dots, and holiday themed.

We have those little lace-topped girls' socks that would do so well with an Easter dress, if we lived in a place where Easter didn't come with subzero temperatures and freezing rain.

We have socks with dingle balls on the back, so the ball kind of hangs out over the top of a canvas shoe. Note from experience: don't let your kid wear these socks with boots, no matter how much they beg. Especially if you're going to be walking a lot.

We have thick winter socks that my husband wears playing paintball. He has played paintball exactly twice in ten years, yet he has 5 pairs of socks for it. That's not a smart ratio, is it? I should just make him play more often.

We even have socks with jingle bells on them. Seriously. These were, of course, gifts from grandparents that don't have to hear the jingle bells walking past their bedroom door at 6 in the morning. On a weekend. In July.

Eight years ago, I bought a pair of denim high-heeled strappy sandals. They are completely and utterly sexy, and now that I have this cool tattoo on my ankle, go perfectly with it. Well, the left one does. The right one disappeared six years ago. But I tote the wretched thing around with me, from house to house to house, hoping against all hope that the right one will show up and I can wear the perfect ensemble once again. I'm not a packrat, but I cannot seem to let go of these lost mates! The box continues to grow- size 3 purples nesting next to size 6 purples of a similar, but not quite exact, shade. My kids don't care whether their socks match, and will grab any random pairing of length and color. But I cannot let them go out like this, fearing that people will judge me by the footwear on my children. There's a little bit of OCD in that, too- for I cannot wear two differing weights, tightnesses, or lengths on my own feet or I go nuts.

Or maybe I already am nuts. My sock collection is older than my marriage. Somebody help me.



PS: there are actually websites for lost socks. Who would have thought?

Mom Days

There’s a cloth doll lying facedown on the laundry room floor, looking vaguely like a crime scene. I wonder briefly if I should draw a chalk line around the poor thing, but then think better of it. The kids wouldn’t get the joke, and Mike only notices things in his immediate range of vision.
The canning funnel isn’t in the laundry room, either. I’ve been searching for it for nearly two weeks now. You see, I haven’t been able to afford a decent canister or Tupperware set, so I save every spaghetti sauce jar, washing them out for reuse. They make excellent storage, but present a slight challenge to fill. The blue wide-mouth funnel would be perfect, but I haven’t seen it since canning season. I’ve been using a rolled up paper plate for dry goods, but that won’t work quite as well for wet, gloopy chili.

“Mommy!” my 3 year-old calls from the dining room, “I have a cut on my fingew fwom the bad, bad icicle thing outside and then I fell and it huwted weally, weally bad and can you kiss it please?” Her words come out in a tumble, her face full of the innocent consternation the young possess.

Tripping over the menagerie of toys, books and clothes, I locate a bandage and duly wrap and kiss the tiny affliction.

Now, what was I doing? Oh, yes, the chili. Its only ten minutes until I have to get to work, there’s no time to keep looking. The chili will have to find its way into the recycled jar and I’ll just rinse off the edge. Running towards the crockpot, I spy a dirty dish I somehow missed last night, holding scant remnants of yesterday’s curry. I run water in it and fling open the dishwasher, hoping there is room for just one more bowl.

Oh yes, the chili. I grab a Barilla jar from my top shelf, cursing once again the kitchen designers who must have been eight feet tall. One of these days, I remind myself, I’ll have a kitchen made for the five foot four that I really am.

The chili has been made with free-range beef, and resents the confines of the glass jar. What smelled so good cooking all night now churns my stomach as it spills over the edge of the jar and onto my hand.

“Mommy!” a tiny bandaged finger is waving at about the three-foot mark “It still huwts!”
“Oh, honey, I must not have kissed it enough. Come here.” Kid #3 advances for the proffered lips, then recoils from the chili on my fingers,
“But, you’we diwty, mommy!”

So I am. Conveniently enough, the kitchen faucet is still running, filling and overflowing yesterday’s overlooked bowl. The moving water has filled and rinsed the curry away, except in the one corner angled away from the water, where lentils still cling stubbornly to the earthenware. Sighing in frustration, I flip the bowl around, rinse my fingers, and remember to turn the water off. Kid #3 gets her finger kissed again, (“It’s all bettew now!”) and then requests something completely unintelligible.

Mike returns from dropping the kids off at school, but there’s a bit of a problem- he still has the kids. Our school called a snow day, again, and forgot to call us. This is why normal people use TVs and radios, I suppose. Now we have two choices: drag all three kids to work with us, or let Mike work at home, again, with the tinkle of children’s voices all around him. I can’t stay home today because I have customers coming in to see me, and my wonderful husband knows that without asking. He looks at the kids, who are gleefully stripping off all vestiges of the indignities of a school day.
“Guess I’m staying here.” He sighs, unwrapping his scarf.

I guess so. I finish stuffing chili through the mouth of the jar and dig through the drawer for a matching Barilla lid. There is not one. I have four empty Barilla jars and not one single lid, whereas I own three Classico lids and not one jar. I slam the drawer shut, setting off a chain of protest from Kid #3, and wrap the jar opening in Press’n’Seal.
The dishwasher is ready to run, the dishwasher gel makes fart noises as it escapes the plastic container. My kids are just old enough to be completely devastated by this and fall over themselves in laughter,
“It farted!”
I grimace, but keep my mouth shut, remembering the days when I would torment my own mother with similar crudity. The dishwasher must be propped open with the spare table leg; otherwise it fills up and stops.
“Stupid rental house,” I mutter to myself, “one of these days, I’m going to own my own house, and then-“

And then what? Would I have had the extra money to replace or repair the dishwasher? Probably not. I un-curse the wretched machine and house, and realize that I have one minute now to get to work, and I’m not even all the way dressed- work slacks but a dirty tee-shirt. I trip over someone’s backpack on my mad dash to the stairs, then keep vigilantly to the right on my way up, because we have that silly habit of putting ‘things to go upstairs’ on the left, and they never quite make it up.
Upstairs, there is a mountain of clean laundry. I have been meaning to get it ALL put away for about five months now, but there is always something better to do- work, cook, play with the kids, run errands, write stories. Every time I get almost to the bottom, another 3 loads seem to get washed simultaneously, and the pile never ends! Somewhere on the bottom is probably that one black knee sock I’ve been missing since autumn.

Frustration with the perpetual mess boils over inside of me, and I storm downstairs, haranguing the kids with promises of money if laundry is folded, threats of death if it isn’t. With choices like these, I’m sure their childhood will turn out just fine, no?

Dressed, packed, car started finally, I kiss everyone goodbye and dash out the door, almost ready to wait on a never ending succession of people who need their watch batteries changed, their rings sized, or their junk jewelry ‘appraised’. Maybe, if we have a lucky day, we’ll sell something!
I glance back at my children, waving at me through the living room window. They are standing in the scattered detritus of a life lived fully. I didn’t want to raise my children in a messy house or a mad-dash life like this. I didn’t want to have this daily struggle over money, the never-ending march of errands and chores and juggling.

But they’re happy kids, and we all chose this lifestyle. In the end, I can either say I’ve had a clean house for fifty years, or I can have a body of literary work, a gallery of jewelry designs, and three children and a husband who are happy and well-fed.

I think I’ll pick the latter. It’s a good life.