Item Number Four

Yesterday my to-do list looked like this:

1. Pay bills
2. Run M to stable
3. Target returns (buy wipes!)
4. write for 30 mins.
5. wash cleaning rags
6. call W. re: hockey tournament
7. email J. re: GS
8. email A. re: hockey tournament raffle

By the end of the day, each item had been crossed off my list-- save item number four. It was easy to push aside. After all, Wells Fargo would take a dim view of me skipping over item number one. And poor Willow, well, she's been on stall rest for about three weeks now, and she needed to get out and be ridden. And if I didn't make it to Target while Madeleine was riding then I would need to make a whole separate trip up on a different day when it would be less convenient. And on and on and on.

I am not a writer. I have no serious aspirations of book deals or bylines. My biggest ambition at this moment in time is to keep my house a comfortable, harmonious, and inspiring place to live and learn.

And yet, as evening threatened and I rightly prioritized washing dishes and making dinner over crossing out that last non-chore on my chore list, I admit I was a bit disappointed in not making time for something I enjoy, something that allows me to explore and connect the disjointed thoughts floating about my head.

And so, here I am. It is a new day with a shorter, more manageable to-do list. Writing, for me, doesn't mean blogging, necessarily, so I don't know if my newly found determination will translate into more blog posts (I suspect it will not) but, for today, I am here, spending thirty minutes of this lovely, snowy day with my MacBook in front of me and my cold cup of this morning's leftover coffee at my side, writing a post for my blog. I am happy to have made the time to cross this off my list today.

What Caroline is like

This movie will sort of give you and idea of what eighteen-month-old, high-energy Caroline is like.

We think she's a stitch.

Unspeakable

People, as a general rule, don't lead with their failings. We don't highlight them. Most people, I would say, hide those failings behind stories of success, stories of well-behaved children and academic and vocational accomplishment; we give others only a peek beneath the veneer upon close acquaintance.

Today I lost my temper. Hank delivered the final blow to a constitution that was already compromised due to two solid days of ill-behavior on the kids part. I gave Hank a chance. Go to your room. Now. It was an offer of escape. Temporary, yes, but doing so would have saved him forever, in this case, from me unleashing my anger in a torrent of ugly words.

He did not immediately go. He stood there, belligerently, and, ultimately, he stomped up to his room in dramatic fashion, meant to convey my wrongness and his rightness.

This should be an unspeakable event. I was wrong. I acted badly. He is eight, and I am not.

I forgave myself easily; this post is not wallowing. It is, for lack of a better explanation, reality. A moment all experience yet no one blogs about.

Behind the Scenes

Real life here today, folks. Dish washing, cleaning up, et cetera.

Take heart! There is joy in the mundane.

Take this, my laundry pile.

This is all our dirty laundry from this last week. Now, I know some of you are all, "Seriously?! That seems like an awful lot amount of laundry! "  While others of you are saying to yourselves, "Cate is a total amateur. A week's worth of laundry and that's all she has?"

Doesn't matter what you're thinking. Because whether it's a lot or a little, it has to get done. People around here seem to like having clean clothes to wear.

And I am taking joy in doing it.

Nope. That's not right. I still hate doing laundry. But, I find my joy in seeing the pile diminish. I take joy in tomorrow when (hopefully!) my laundry room floor will be empty again and I can close (and lock!) the laundry chute door and pretend there are no dirty clothes in the house until next Wednesday, when I'll do it all again.

Well, except I'm not sharing my laundry pile with you every week, because that would just be weird.

Stairs

Yep. It's a flight of stairs. Whoopdee-doo. That is all it is. I'm not going to try and assign some big meaning or anything to this post or picture.

I tried to write a blog post earlier. I've been writing and deleting and writing and deleting until I finally just said, "Screw it." But then I told myself that I could come up with something--anything-- if only I would look. And then I saw my staircase, and it happens to be one of the few areas in my home right now that doesn't have riding helmets, schoolwork, books, shoes and other annoying, unputaway things lying about.

And I like it. See that oil right up on the landing that my grandmother painted? Isn't it beautiful? And the prints I received as a Christmas gift running along the wall next to the stairs?

I walk up and down these stairs endlessly each day. Up and down. Up and down.

And yet it took searching for a blog post to remind me to sit back and appreciate the stairs and the landing, an area that I walk past every day without noticing yet, when I take the time, I remember that it contains lots of items that I know please my eye and elicit good memories. If only I would remember to slow down and look!

Birds

There are moments of unexpected perfection that, if you don't take time to slow down and look for, you may miss.

Consider.

It is the morning after Christmas. You could plunge back into the chaotic-ness of the everyday. Or you could sit with a cup of coffee and see this.

A cardinal, happily considering his breakfast.

Or his friend, some sort of woodpecker, taking his turn at the bird feeder.

If you left your post of relaxation and contemplation, you would miss these little guys who show up and search for what's fallen, uneaten and undiscovered.

Within moments, it seems, it's all over. Whether the birds are satiated or frightened by the appearance of a cat in their general vicinity is unclear. What is clear is that there isn't a feathered beast to be seen anywhere.

And to think it could be missed so easily and so quickly. 

Good Week

In my goal of blogging every day-- or every weekday, anyway-- I often fall short, and most frequently posts fail to come not as a result of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of time.



Take this week for instance. An outing with home-school friends. Days spent outside, basking in the warm, bright daylight hours. Weeds, which had staged a full-on assault on the flower borders, were staved off and, ultimately defeated. Garden conundrums were dealt with. (How does one provide enough produce for a family our size with two hurdles to jump: a small yard and a head gardener who insists on lots of flowers and color?) And, of course, amongst all of this everydayness was more everydayness: cooking, cleaning, errands.



My story is not unique. Thousands (millions?) of parents across the globe can relate. Parents of small children understand that a task that should take certain amount of time takes at least three times longer than alloted for with kids in tow. But-- and I'm sure other parents will say this too-- there is joy in the unforeseen. A tiny hand placing a pole bean in the dirt. A peaceful cuddle on a blanket in the grass with a giggling baby.

No, I didn't blog this week. But it was a good, good week.

How I Cook

I love cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food. -- Julia Child or W.C. Fields, depending on who you ask.



I love that quote. Most evenings find me in my kitchen, apron on, cutting board in front of me and a glass of wine near at hand. More often than not, that wine never finds its way into the food. For me, a glass of wine coupled with the familiar tasks of washing, slicing and sautéing are rather cathartic.

Tonight's pairing is a favorite Beaujolais and a fast, easy and delicious stand-by of roasting chicken sausage with whatever vegetables are at hand. For our large family, I cut up two packages of precooked chicken sausage into bite-size pieces and toss in a 9x12 pan with red potatoes, vegetables (tonight's line-up consists of various colored peppers and a red onion), olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook until fork tender.

Now, here is the really critical part: make sure you save some wine so that after you've thrown the pan in the oven you can sit back, relax and enjoy whatever variety of wine you've chosen with, if you're lucky, nothing but the heavenly aromas that will soon be escaping from your oven to keep you company.

A chorus of birds... and not much else

Quality, not quantity. That's what is important, no?

I agree. It's just that, when it comes to this blog, this stupid, absurd electronic thing that I, for whatever reason, feel the need to do, I hate skipping a day, even when I have nothing to say.

Today was spent outside and at the dentist (you try taking four kids, three of them patients, and yourself to the dentist and see how long you're there!), but this morning at drop off I was playing with my new video app for my iPhone. The video will make you dizzy because I was walking while filming and it shows; I never intended on sharing it. However, I love that you can hear the chorus of bird accompanying us on our walk up the path to Elisabeth's preschool. And I love how the kids are racing and yelling at each other. It's just...so... everydayish.

Distressed, but not in totality

I am at a crossroads today, blogging-wise. Since yesterday, most of my time has been consumed with the health care bill that just passed in Washington. The time that I haven't spent actively reading about the bill, or watching debate, I've been thinking about the bill and, more deeply, where this country and its population is heading (or arrived?), philosophically-speaking.

But I don't want to talk about that on my blog. It's not that I want to ignore important events, it's just that it's hard to discuss politics in any type of text-based forum; people become their internet handles and the breathing person, the one with real feelings and varying, nuanced opinions, is forgotten.

So, today, I offer this. I had a friend over for coffee this morning. Sadly, I don't see this friend much these days; I home-school, she does not and, as life travels along, our paths do not cross as much as they once did. My children cooperated, completing school work they're able to do on their own while she and I talked. We, as friends so often do, relied on comfortable rhythms of conversations past: politics, theology, literature and our children, all topics that have interested us in the past and offer varying conversations.

After a few cups of coffee she left. She drove back into her world of PTO meetings and work related obligations and I went back to fractions, Peter the Great, predicate pronouns and the health care bill fallout.

But talking to her made me appreciate the beautiful things in life: well-written blogs, good books, pretty clothes, appealing architecture and other things that stimulate our hearts and minds.

It would be easy for me to let myself become another conservative blogger who is somewhat frantic about yesterday's health care vote and to champion a small-government philosophy that I passionately embrace; I am that blogger. But I am not only that blogger, and in a digital world that creates caricatures based on electronic musings, I will not let myself become that blogger, even on days when when political thoughts are what consumes me for the day.

Distressed I am, but not it totality. Who could be on a day when the sun is shining? On a day when I was given time to verbally appreciate some of the many beautiful things life has to offer, not the least of which is, for a home-schooling mother, a silly four-year-old dressing her baby doll in a swimsuit in March?

A Perfect, Ordinary Day

Today has been productive. Unfortunately productive usually equates to boring. Shuttling Elisabeth to preschool. History, reading, grammar and math lessons. Lunch. Piano lesson. Sorting out old puzzles. Goodwill drop. Horseback riding. Hockey. Blah, blah, blah.

Days like today are not exciting, yet still, more than the exciting days, I value these days. I really do. This day will blur together with all the other nondescript days we've had this year and I will not be able to single it out individually, but so what? I feel good; as if I've accomplished something. My house is clean. The laundry is a manageable size. My dream of purging unused toys is slowly being realized. I was able to watch Dad and Hank put a puzzle together. I spent time chatting and laughing with Madeleine.

No, on the exciting scale, this day scores a big, fat zero. But these are the kinds of days I would repeat every day if I could.

Grocery Store Survival

Why is it that every time I exit a grocery store with all four kids in tow I exhale and feel like I've just survived some sort of horrific battle?

Is it because my four-year-old is trying to climb on top of the car cart while my seven-year-old whirls around to talk to me every other second while not paying a bit of attention to all the people he's about to whack with the basket he's carrying? Or maybe it's because all three of my older kids jam their hands in the hard roll box and touch the rolls while I am trying to load the cart with actual groceries. It could be the sounds of, "MOMCANWEBUYTHISMOMCANWEBUYTHISMOMCANWEBUYTHIS!" coming from three different directions that make me hate grocery shopping so very, very much.

Whatever the reason, I hate it. I do. I cannot stand taking all four of my kids inside a grocery store. I hate it with a passion beyond reason. Because of that, I don't do it very often. I grit my teeth when on days, like today, I've planned ahead poorly and I find myself needing to grocery shop with all of them in tow. The entire trip through Pick-n-Save was as horrible as I had anticipated and I inwardly berated myself for not figuring all our food needs out over the weekend so I could have avoided the trip.

And now we are home. Tonight I will definitely have a glass of wine.

For what it's worth, though, Madeleine is actually more of a help than anything now, so I really should whine too much. Oops, forgot that red onion over in produce? Madeleine can dash and get it. Elisabeth starting to wander away? Madeleine chases after her. Hmmm. Maybe I need to reevaluate why I whine about things like this when, when I I really think back on it, it wasn't as awful as I'm making it sound.

Oh well. Whatever. I'm still having a glass of wine.

It's All Gooey

Lately I have been thinking a lot lately about my life, my kids, what I do all day and how it all relates to each other. It's winter. It's February. February means introspection, doesn't it? And after too much time with myself and my kids I usually end up very frustrated and very annoyed, both with my kids and with myself. Too much self-reflection isn't always a good thing. Or maybe it's never a good thing. Who knows.

Anyway. I like things neat. Organized. This applies to the spaces I inhabit and to the life I live. Chaos in my home in the form of scattered books, toys and games makes me anxious and crazy, and I don't like who I am when I am anxious and crazy, so I make the kids clean up the messes. Or, if I'm really feeling manic, I clean up the messes.

Well, guess what. Chaos and a lack of a predictable routine in my everyday life bothers me just as much. I like relationships to be smooth and harmonious. I don't live well with discord or uncertainty. Life always has a certain amount of mystique about it, but once you have kid upon kid (upon kid upon kid!) the uncertainty involved in each new morning grows that much more.

Today Elisabeth asked to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and she wanted to put the jelly on the bread all by herself. I grudgingly handed over the knife, all the while thinking how much faster and less messy it would be if I just did it myself already. After she globbed on the jelly, Elisabeth handed me the knife and asked for help with the peanut butter. I reached out my large hand to make the exchange with her small one and guided the steel knife handle into my hand.

Oh! I blurted out. It's all gooey!

And it was. All sticky and messy and full of raspberry jelly and it was all over my hand.

And it hit me, right then in there in my kitchen as I washed off the knife's handle: kids are all gooey; they're messy and chaotic and they stick to you like Agrosik raspberry jelly.

The moral is, for me, I need to just relax. Embrace the routine and the organization when I can, but also remember kids are kids. Elisabeth didn't try to spread jelly all over the knife handle, it happened because she's four and can't yet wield a knife. She will learn because I will continue to let her rub jelly all over the knife handle until she gets it right and, in the future, maybe I will remember that it's not a big deal because I can, after all, just wipe off the handle.

Elisabeth, Creepy, Annie and Lucy

Many of you may have noticed that yesterday's pictures of Caroline were taken in my bathroom. Yes, that's right. My bathroom.

On sunny days the light in that room is just glorious; it spills in through the one, small window as if that window were of infinite size. The light warms the small space and flashes and shines off of every surface making it an ideal place to capture natural light for picture taking.

And, really, Elisabeth was taking a bath so I had to be in there anyway.

But while I was in there taking an absurd number of pictures of Caroline and playing around with shutter speeds, aperture settings, ISO settings and trying to figure out how they are interrelated, Elisabeth suggested that she might want the lens of my attention focused on her, and not her baby sister. I am nothing if not a dutiful mother, so I obliged.

I don't know why, but I really ended up liking this picture of Elisabeth. Maybe it's because I love how vibrant the yellow and pink ducks (pink ducks?!) look. Or maybe it's because I love the unmanageable knot of hair that was arranged so perfectly while sweet Elisabeth slept. Really, though, I think it's because in this picture Elisabeth is talking. Not to me, mind you, but to her ducks, Creepy, Annie and Lucy.

Whatever the reason, I like it. And because I do and because it's my blog, I share it, with you who graciously choose to read this blog.

Stupid Sears

This kitchen brought to you courtesy of the idiots at Sears who were supposed to haul away our old oven and install a new, working oven today but instead brought the wrong oven and then, when questioned about it, said it was our fault, not theirs.



Thank you, Sears. Unless the manager at the store where we bought our new stove (who hasn't even called me BACK yet!) is able to pull his head out of his you-know-what and get us our stove before next Wednesday or make this financially OK I have bought my last appliance from your store. Ever.

Office Tour

As much time as Joe spends at work, he and I realized a few weeks ago that Dad and Diana had never seen his office. It's fun to see someone where they work, so on New Year's Eve we arranged a tour.

Here is Joe at his desk, where all the magic happens.



Here are Dad and Diana enjoying my kids' favorite room-- the break room. There is hot chocolate and a TV in there.



Here is a picture of his firm's lobby, all decked out for Christmas. Isn't it pretty?



Here is Joe surveying the view from the window in his firm's lobby.



The next hard-nosed litigator in the family?



Or, maybe not.



The girls take their turn running a deposition.



Obviously they're so good they need no notes, no paperwork, nothin'. I'm quaking in my boots just looking at them.

Fun day. We all appreciated the tour whether it was our first or thirty-first trip.

Return to Routine

A break from the routine of life for too long makes getting back into the swing of things difficult. When you've been sleeping until 9 a.m. it's not easy to rouse yourself earlier. When your days have been spent humming Christmas carols and baking cookies, it's not fun to return to learning about topic sentences (Madeleine) and nouns (Hank).

We eased back in today. Grammar. Reading. Playing Cribbage for math. Reading aloud from our history text, but performing a play about King Charles I of England's beheading instead of writing a summary of the execution. Slow. Easy.

We are calling it quits now at 3:16 p.m. Only half of my to-do list for today is crossed out and yet, despite the more relaxed day of schoolwork, I feel good, as if we accomplished something, as if a today were a success, and not a failure. Sometimes success and failure can't be quantified from items ticked off a to-do list. Sometimes it's those intangibles, like the absence of weeping and hysterics when we started reading aloud from The Treasury of Daily Prayer this morning and the realization set in that today was, *shudder*, a school day. Or that when I got out of the shower this morning, yes, I tripped over the eight gazillion toys littering our stairwell, but Madeleine and Hank had also taken it upon themselves and start and watch the next lesson on their Latin DVD and were halfway done with the workbook assignment.

So, for today, we rest. I will straighten up. I will cook. I will run Hank to hockey practice. All the while I will acknowledge, happily, that the first day back from Christmas vacation was a lot less painful than I anticipated.

Distraction

Today I am thinking about distraction.

I had nine items on my to-do list yesterday and yet, somehow, only finishing seven of those items took me all day. Somehow item #6-- calling my dad about synching schedules and getting my car into his mechanic-- took fifteen minutes to complete. Item #7-- copying Hank's ice schedule onto my calendar-- ended up taking who knows how long because I kept getting distracted by my in-box pinging and telling me I had a new email. Item #9-- figure out food to take to a friend's house on Sunday-- took forever because I used it as an excuse to pour over my favorite cookbooks in a more leisurely manner than I usually allow myself and before I knew it, I had forgotten what I was supposed to be looking for and instead I was dog earring pages and tearing out recipes that had nothing to do with what I had set out to do.

I am OK with this. If I hadn't let myself become distracted I would have missed out on a few laughs in my inbox that came at opportune times. Or I would not have taken the time to discover some new recipes that look really yummy.

Right now I'm supposed to be looking at different homemade candy ideas. Hmm.

Relax

Laundry! Cooking! Grocery shopping! Order Christmas cards! More laundry! Email so-and-so back! Check your voicemail! Take someone somewhere!

Your to-do list probably looks different than mine, but we all have them, either on paper or in our heads. We all have things we need to do each day and sometimes the list grows too long and stress comes creeping in.

On days like today-- a busy yet good and productive day-- I am so thankful for the things I have in my life that help me relax. When I take the first sip of coffee in the morning or that first sip of wine in the evening I can feel all the tenseness leaving my body. I guard those sips jealously and usually devise a way to have those few moments alone by either getting up before the kids or by letting them watch some television program while I prepare dinner.

My to-do list for today is almost entirely checked off. I have told the kids to just be quiet already for ten minutes and I have a nice shiraz breathing in one of our Reidel wine glasses that Joe and I splurged on when we were first married and couldn't afford them. I am very much looking forward to that first sip.
.

Rhythm of Today

Some days start out well; they develop a certain rhythm and things just go right. Other days that rhythm is off and things spiral downward. It's hard to fight the cadence of a day. The kids are going to react to each other how they choose to do so and the weather will be what it is; things will go as they're meant to and all I can control is how I react to events and my surroundings. So, generally, I choose not to fight it. If the day is good, I enjoy it, if it's going poorly I just suck it up and muscle through. Those are the only options there are, really.

Today started out well. The sun was shining and the two youngest girls under my roof when I woke were happy. The rhythm of today has been good, and each event has only made it better. Not only is the sun shining, but it's a gorgeous, warm fall day. Elisabeth was treated to a typical day at preschool but a normal day there is an extraordinary morning for her. She embraced the crisp fall air and was treated with a hike down to the shores of Lake Michigan to see the waves crashing against the shore. Caroline and I ran errands. They were errands that I set out on being somewhat nervous about what I would be told as I ran them, but the men who helped me at Ace Hardware this morning were helpful and reassuring. It's amazing how much a simple, somewhat stupid, household task being completed can add such sunshine to my day.

True, it is only 1 p.m., and with hockey and book club still on the agenda for the day, the drumbeat could change. My kids and I may fall out of synch. Clouds may yet screen the sun. If they do, so what? We still had a great morning, and I am thankful.