Cheerful Abundance

The temperature finally crossed the freezing line and for the first time in six weeks I was able to get my car out of the garage. Oh, sweet freedom! I ran errands. But it still counts as freedom, right? I had a coffee I didn’t make in one hand, and for a few seconds in each parking lot I paused to enjoy the slightly-more-than-freezing temperatures.

I am counting it. March makes me want to spring clean. Today, the kids were goofing around on the floor while wearing black fleece track pants, and now they look like they rolled in a box of puppies and lint, and I can’t stop bookmarking all those crazy link-bait DIY homekeeping sites that keep popping up, promising me ten, twenty, thirty-five, fifty ways to Get Organized. It’s a hate-read, really. A self-hate read. The more tricks I see for perfect organization, the more pseudo-clever innovations, the more frustrated I get. There is a lot of privilege in being able to write a blog post about how you organized your dedicated craft room, your over-sized mudroom, your enormous kitchen pantry,  your three-car garage. After a while, I start adding the word ‘asshole’ to the end of every organizing tip I read, just to keep myself sane. I mean, really – I am all for being organized, and living in a clean home, but at some point we seem to have substituted ‘decanting everything into chalk-board label covered mason jars’ for ‘having a meaningful life’.

To store your quilt fabric in an organized fashion, fold in quarters and drape over hanging file dividers in a filing cabinet, asshole.

This weekend we went down to the lake with squirt bottles filled with food dye and water, and painted on the giant ice floes piled up on the beach, had lunch with another family and hung out at their house for awhile, and painted birdhouses in anticipation of spring. Tonight I am going to patch all the girls’ jeans, because they wear through the knees of everything they own, make a meatloaf for dinner, practice their sight words with them, figure out a grocery list for the week, update our calendar, and then have a cocktail. Its a perfectly ordinary weekend, only possible because we are out from the oppressive cold of the polar vortex.  It isn’t the end of winter, yet: my front walk is a skating rink so slick that the post office won’t deliver our mail to the house, and we still have flannel sheets on all the beds, but for the first time in months, I have a little hope that the end of the long freeze is coming, and with it, Spring.

If you have been following along this sad excuse for a blog, you know that I quit grad school, quit academia, and decided to take a year off to do some Good Works and maybe write a book. I blew up my life, and I have to say, the funniest (and funnest) part of this is how many other women I meet in my age bracket who are doing the same, or who aren’t, but really, really want to. It is like joining a secret sorority,  whose members are only recognizable to each other.  The other day I had coffee with a neighbour after bus drop off, and we were talking about how the life we have now, while much loved, isn’t the life we necessarily pictured for ourselves, a story I hear from a lot of my female friends. Its funny, this middle-age business, especially for women, how hitting that peri-menopausal window starts the reflection process, and how that reflection becomes realized (or avoided) in one’s life.

For me, I want to throw more parties, do more higher-level charity work, and write. Maybe start a rock band of like-minded women, and secretly rock out in the garage. I bet Lilly Pulitzer would do an electric guitar, if we asked. They’ve done bikes and jeeps; how hard could it be? Take up golf, again. Travel. Live a life with less stuff, and more experiences.

This weekend, an old friend died, completely unexpectedly. She was 41 years old, and I don’t even know what to say about it except that the last time we saw each other in person was just before the holidays, because, you know, so busy, and all. But I was just about to email her and set up a lunch date when I got the news, and now I can’t quite process the here/not here part of this situation. I don’t have some happy wrap up to this, or a great epiphany, or a fun dog story. I think the winter crushed me a bit this year, and I need some sustained sunlight and a warm wind to blow the blues away.

The kids have a four day weekend, thanks to President’s day, and they are having fun! Yesterday, their dad took them sledding for the first time, thanks to a lovely family who also has twins, and who knew of a secret sledding hill gentle enough for little kids, but steep enough to be a little scary. The girls had fun on their sledding playdate, and I got some quiet time to clean in, and I guess that is win-win? Not sure what sick path my life took that having the opportunity to clean house in peace became a fist-pumping moment of win, but there you go.

So I cleaned, in peace, and very slowly, because last week was rough. Thank G-d we could replicate last year’s valentines easily. Tuesday was the ’100 day’ celebration, and Thursday was the kids’ valentine’s parties, and Wednesday, my schedule looked like this: 3 hour IEP meeting at the school, 2 hour Good Works Meeting, evening funeral, then come home and finish valentines. You might think that day couldn’t get worse, and you would be wrong, because after I left my afternoon meeting to go home and make dinner and get dressed for the funeral, I was in a car accident. So, that day sucked. I am fine, I guess, and the other guy is fine, and it was 100% not my fault, and he was very apologetic, but damn, everything hurt for a few days. I had to call my husband at a meeting, though, and get him to do school pick-up, and tell him his car was smacked up, and that wasn’t fun. Then I called the police, and then I dropped my phone on the concrete, which triggered the music folder and made my phone start playing Lady Gaga’s Born This Way on full volume. The screen was black, I couldn’t turn it down or off, and so for a few minutes the guy that crashed into me and I stood awkwardly next to my car while Gaga belted out her best Madonna imitation. Finally, I got the bright idea to chuck it in my car and close the door, but we could still hear Gaga’s slightly racist lyrics and thumping base line. Here is a sentence nobody is every going to say about me: “She carried it off with aplomb”.

The kids are off sledding again today, because after a month of being stuck inside we are desperate for them to get some fresh air and have some fun. This polar vortex has made it impossible to just play outside, and it also meant no recess for a month, and everybody’s nerves are frayed at this point. And I am cleaning again, instead of lounging around or reading a good book, so obviously I don’t learn from my mistakes.

So, the “100 Days of School” celebration is apparently a real thing, and not just some elaborate Pinterest-inspired practical joke. Who knew? Since it falls in the same week as Valentine’s day, and a short school week, and because I only have so much patience in my bones for crafty shenanigans, I decided to go simple for the shirts, making them cute enough to double as pajama shirts or play out in the backyard in, but not so cute they would qualify as regular clothing. Fabric markers from Walmart, and boys’ undershirts, and there you go: 100 letters and numbers. G. was kind of  rock-star with this project, and wrote about 35 letters herself before giving up. In her defense, the fabric markers were a bit annoying on jersey. M, on the other hand, was in no mood to do a team project with specific instructions, and gave up, so we made her shirt for her. and then finished G’s shirt up. After a careful proofreading job to make sure we didn’t inadvertently write any good swears or inappropriate words, we were good to go.

I think they had fun at their school’s “100th Day of School” celebration, although it is funny to hear them describe their days, because what a kindergartner thinks is important information to share, and what I think I want to know, are two lines of inquiry that never intersect. I did hear about who cried because their shirt was so uncomfortable to wear (put away the glue gun, PinterestMommy), who wasn’t allowed to wear their shirt because it was so fragile, but did carry it around on a hangar all day, who used an unkind word, who had to go in time out for unkind hands, and who wet their pants. I get the ‘wet pants’ report every week, and I am happy to share with you that pretty much everyone in kindergarten has wet their pants at some point this year. Big surprise! I also learned that while discussing the number 100 in class, one of my girls shared that she wanted one hundred dollars, that her mother was 100 years old, and that our dog weighs 100 pounds. All of that is factual information. Given that she used to tell me I was 150, I am counting it as a win.

Next up, making valentines. 50 valentines. Do you know how much fun it is to do 50 of anything with two children, after a hard day of kindergartening? And I can’t just go buy a few boxes and call it a day, because we are deep into the IEP process, and if I know anything about the subjectivity of public education, it is that appearing like an engaged, screen-time-limiting, fun-project-doing, co-curricular-home-play kind of parent plays a big role in the kinds of services your children can be eligible for. And we need all the services, so…. off to the glitter table for me! If I glue my fingers shut, please wedge a highball glass into my clenched claw-hand so that I can still drink like a lady. Thanks!

It snowed again last night, and now we have about a foot and half of snow on the ground, drifting up over three feet everywhere I have to actually shovel. My husband, who is a blessed saint, bundled the kids up in winterwear, a half hour process that always includes giggling, crying, a fist fight, a reconciliation, and a dance, and took them to the park, to slide in the snow and generally burn off some of their restless energy before we all went crazy with Housebound Psychosis and killed each other. Now I think he is trying to bore them into taking accidental naps, a ninja parenting skill that I heartily endorse, while I get started on making Kielbasa, Kale,and Tortellini soup. I first had this at a friend’s house for lunch, and although I was there to conduct Adult Lady Business and plow through a pile of charity work, it was all I could do to keep from making those little happy mouth sounds kids make when they are eating something that they love. Our gracious hostess shared the recipe, and in my house we refer to it as her soup, and it is heaven on a cold day, with crusty bread.

This snow and cold makes me crave carbohydrates. I could eat an entire loaf of bread right now, preferably while lying in bed under 8 duvets, in between naps. This is winter in the Midwest, and I am done with it, mentally. My online shopping keeps turning to pretty things in pastel shades, impossibly thin cotton cardigans with embroidery around the cuffs and buttons shaped like seashells, cabochon earrings in palest blue. Playing with the Jack Rogers colour picker and designing sandals. Researching summer rentals on faraway beaches.

I am going to try to blog every day in February, however, that obviously doesn’t mean blogging well, or saying anything worth reading! Sorry, Internet: let’s pick this up tomorrow. I will try to have a fabulous adventure between now and then to write about. Or make the kids do something cute and/or funny. Or poke something with a stick.

Winter, you have won. You have killed me. A month of subzero temperatures, two little kids housebound, mainlining juice and out of their minds with the need to jump and run and be physically active, and I am calling it. I give up.

School was just cancelled for tomorrow, and likely Tuesday, and I can’t even deal. I just need five days in a row of the kids in school, nobody sick, me not being sick, to get my house in order and my head back in the game. Right now, everything is grimy, the laundry is stacked up (clean, but so much folding and putting away), the baseboards are dusty, and the floors need washing, and the dirt and constant mess of everything distracts me in ways that make it hard for me to deal with life. I am no clean freak, either. But we have been locked away, housebound, for a month now, and I want my days back, to get things done. I need some sustained quiet time to find my own thoughts again, and settle them. I need some sustained quiet to just let the world be, without commentary.

My FB feed is hilarious: a few sanctimommies, eager to remind us how they love, love, LOVE snow days, and getting more cuddle time in with their darling offspring, and then the moms like me, who are like, please, I really need to clean my house and drink a few cups of coffee in peace, without little people jumping up and down in front of me, asking me to help them wipe. Seasonal Affective Disorder, I think I have you. And I am starting to worry about how much my children have backslid academically from the long break and then the on again, off again school schedule.

I miss the sun.

My girls were in their first assembly last week, and sang three songs, one of which is a really cute ode to Martin Luther King, complete with hand gestures. They are so in to it, which is sweet to watch, but I mistakenly cracked a joke on Facebook about how happy I was to see the end result of all this speech therapy be the two of them singing about “Martha Loofah King”. Which someone in a transracial adoption group I belong(ed) to on Facebook took umbrage with, missing the point (that I was making fun of my kids) and deciding instead that I was being disrespectful of MLK. I pointed out that as a Pastor and a dad, I believe Dr. King probably had a sense of humour when it came to little kids and the ridiculous things they say, and the next thing you know, I had to start deleting mean comments from my Facebook wall, and got to watch my character be ripped to shreds on a message board normally filled with parents bemoaning the rude things people say to them, as white people raising black kids. So, yeah. That happened.

Since I try to keep Facebook completely drama-free, by following what I believe to be the basic tenets of online adult lady life (no vaguebooking, nothing passive-aggressive, stay positive, be self-deprecating, and don’t post more than 2-3 times a week), it was a bit of a shock, but honestly, most online adoption groups are just fueled by women itching to be insulted by something, and begging for a fight.

So, there you have it. I got thrown out of a private Facebook group, and now I guess the next step is Instagramming a bunch of morose-faced selfies with a lot of passive-aggressive hashtags. Or not. I am not even sure where this story is going, except that I think the phrase ‘Martha Loofah King’ is the funniest thing my kids have said all week, except for that other time they told me the milk was drunk (which is why they couldn’t get it off the shelf in the fridge. Drunkenness), and that other other time that one of them pointed out the difference between the two of us, by explaining that she is FIVE, and I am one HUNDRED and FIVE, and then I told her I was scratching her name out of my will and called her Froggy Fartsinpants, and she screamed with laughter while I tickled her into submission. How on earth do people find the time to get so riled up online when there is so much offline silliness to be had?

It seems crazy to finish recapping Xmas, what with it being the middle of January and all, but thanks to the polar vortex, our holiday was extended several days, and the kids just went back to school. Which I was pretending I was sad about, like all the other moms on my Facebook feed, but inside, I was jumping for joy. By the end of the holiday break, all screen time caps were lifted, and nobody was even trying to get out of their pajamas or eat regularly timed meals. It was not pretty.

Christmas morning, M. woke us up at 5:30AM, with a whisper. “I don’t think Santa came,” she told us, and her face about broke me. Our tree is upstairs, in our living room, but at our house, Santa delivered the goods to the den in the basement where the kids play and we watch TV.  I quickly told her that her father and I had heard Santa on the roof last night, and that we bet he had so many presents for her that he had to leave them downstairs, and asked her to go check. She scampered off, and a minute later that was a tiny little shriek of absolute joy from the basement below us, and then she ran so fast upstairs, pounding each stair tread, that the house shook  a little. It was, hands down, the very best sound I have ever heard, those loud, fast footsteps: the very essence of Christmas, as far as I am concerned.  “HE WAS HERE!” she kept yelling, waking her sister up, who then also went to check on the loot and report back.

Overall, Santa did a great job. Someone got a Barbie, and she isn’t a Barbie kid, but Santa also brought these adorable zippered pouch ‘wallets’ with superheros on them, and they had money in them, which was a big hit, at least several dollars worth of change and folding bills. The kids really wanted Mario Kart, after hearing about it at school, and I initially said that Santa doesn’t bring video games, but then I did some research and realized that you can get Mario Kart for Wii, and it will work on the old first generation Wii that we already had but had never hooked up in the new house (which means the kids had no idea it existed). So we bought the game, and splurged on 4 racing wheels for controllers, and it was their favourite present. We play every day, and when the cold snap hit and we couldn’t go out for days, Wii Mario Kart and Wii Bowling saved us. It warms my cheapskate soul, as well, to get some real use out of our old Wii, which is new to the kids, and to avoid outlaying major cash for a game system like XBox that they aren’t old enough to really enjoy.

We didn’t go anywhere for Christmas, and nobody came to us, so it was a day spent in our pajamas, playing Mario Kart and Charades, and napping, and then I roasted a big turkey and we ate like kings, still in our PJs, and it was ridiculous and fun. I wish we had written Santa letters this year, but getting sick derailed that. It’s too bad, though, because one of my girls had the Christmas wish list that I just loved: she wanted, “my own room, with a TV in it, and a new phone (iPhone) just for me, filled with games.” Alrighty then, Miss Five-Going-On-Twenty-One; we will get right on that for you!

And then a giant ice storm hit, then a snow storm, then record low temperatures, and we spent the next two weeks indoors, and even the dog was pretty peeved about the enforced ‘peeing outside’ rule. Thank G-d for the video games, which saved us, and also there was so much TV watching and some book reading, and we practiced our handwriting and did a little cooking. It was a pretty low-key holiday: no travel, no extended family. But it was also a great holiday. Onward and upward, though: much as I love Christmas, I also love the moment the kids go back to school and the holiday is in my rear view mirror, and I can be off to the next big set of plans.

Since we are going to be snowed in for a few days, this might be a good time to start recapping the holidays, mostly so I don’t forget they happened! After a rocky start to the holiday season, the Tamiflu kicked in, and I think we were able to pull together a pretty decent Xmas, even though we stayed at home in our Influenza-quarantined home.

It was a more stripped-down holiday than I would have liked, given that my kids are at the sweet-spot, age-wise, for all things Christmas. I was a little depressed that I wouldn’t be able to pull off my usual gingerbread-y cookie plate, which is one of my favourite traditions, but then it occurred to me that, if all four of us were sick, we could just make cookies for us and not share them. It doesn’t matter how germ-y our hands are, when we all have the same flu, right? And this way, I could practice letting go of my OCD obsession with perfectly decorated Christmas cookies, and just let the kids go to town with my rather impressive collection of sprinkles, sanding sugars, and other cookie decor. And so we did, on Christmas eve, no less. It is a lesson I find I have to learn over and over again as a parent, this letting go of the Platonic ideal of what a thing or an experience should be, and just allowing these moments in life to unfold imperfectly. Our cookies were deeply imperfect, but it was great fun to just let the kids sprinkle with abandon, over-ice everything, and make a huge mess. They were so proud of their cookies, several of which ended up being left out for Santa later that evening.

It is hard for me to reconcile it: the plate of cookies up top were last year’s holiday offering, and this tray is this year’s batch. But I wouldn’t trade the look of pride on their faces as they finished each cookie, after carefully contemplating the perfect icing colour/sprinkle combination.

And that was Christmas Eve: baking, decorating, and last minute cleaning. The kids ran to bed, eager to fall asleep fast so that Santa could come, and bed time was a breeze. Later, the mister and I eschewed these gingerbread in favour of some simpler versions, chocolate dipped without sprinkles or doodads, and we wrapped and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped, and fell into bed at 1AM, like parents everywhere, dosed up to the gills on flu medication and ready for Santa.

“Live on the edge? I was born on the edge, baby. This is what badass looks like, Suburban-style.” *** drops the mike.