One of those nights

On Tuesday I symbolically went to Target and did lots of useful things. On Wednesday - I don't remember, actually, but let's assume I did more useful things. Yesterday Dash had a day off school so I didn't get much done with my two hours of free time, and today I think I'm just going to sit down with a book. Useful things can feck off with themselves. Though I may possibly take a moment to push a swiffer around the floor, because I think the dust bunnies are unionizing.

Last night was one of those nights that when you have a baby you think you won't have any more when you have big kids.

11:00 I go to bed.

12:20 Dash has a coughing fit. I get up to see if there's anything I can do. I can't give him a dose of cough medicine because he's not actually awake. I attempt a ritual laying-on-of-hands (i.e. putting my hand on his back for a few seconds), which was sometimes all it took to relax him enough to stop coughing when he was younger. Doesn't work. I climb into bed with him, which also sometimes works, though it's not exactly simple due to his loft bed, and the thought crosses my mind that I may be approaching creepy Love You Forever levels of mothering. It's  not creepy to get into bed with your seven-year-old, right? To stop them coughing? Oh well. It didn't work, anyway. Not for ages.

1:00 or thereabouts: I go back to my bed.

... some other time... I get out of bed again, I don't even remember why, maybe it was Mabel. Maybe it was more coughing.

... And again.

... And again.

All I know is that I returned to my own bed at 1, 2, 3, 5, and 5:30 this morning, with the intervening periods spent sleeping and/or not sleeping in one of my children's beds. Then my wonderful husband did all the morning stuff and didn't wake me till 8:30, when I had just enough time to stick my head under the shower, throw on some jeans (jeans! It's jeans weather! At least before 9am it is), and run Mabel to school.

New-obsessions week, day 3: Coconut oil

If you heard there was an all-natural product that had inbuilt antiseptic properties and was an amazing moisturizer, and so pure you could actually eat it (and it would do you good on the inside too), and that on top of all this it smelled amazing, well, you'd go out and buy some, wouldn't you?

Well, there is. It's coconut oil. Go and get some. (Trader Joe's does a good one for a great price, but they have it all over these days.)

There are a gazillion websites telling you all the bazillion things you can do with coconut oil, from using it as a coffee creamer to curing athlete's foot to a personal lubricant (ahem) to polishing your furniture, so I won't ennumerate them all. 

But so far I've been using it as a facial and body moisturizer, make-up remover and cleanser, and have put it on mosquito bites (sure, why not) and fried some chicken in it. (I scooped up about a third of the jar into a separate container to keep for cosmetic use, so that I'm not actually eating from the same jar that I'm slathering my cracked heels out of.) I have great plans to do some deep conditioning on my hair with it soon, and make a body scrub with sugar.

The interesting thing about this oil is that it's liquid at 76 F and higher, and solid (like lard, for instance, or butter) below that. Coincidentally, 76 F is just about where our air conditioning is set in the summer, and upstairs is usually a little warmer. So at the moment, the jar in my bathroom is usually liquid while the one in the kitchen vacillates from one state to the other depending on whether the oven is on. It doesn't matter; it can turn from solid to liquid and back multiple times daily without doing it any harm; though I do like the soft-butter consistency for a body moisturizer when I can get it.

But the best thing about it is the smell. Remember ages ago I was washing my face with olive oil? Well, that was nice and all, but I did get a little tired of smelling like a salad. No such problems here - unless you hate the scent of coconut, I suppose. Does anyone? Is that possible? Well, I don't hate it, and to be honest, I would probably buy anything that smelled this good, no matter what was in it. The lovely all-naturalness is just a bonus.

It was Emily at The Nest who first drew my attention to this wondrous stuff, and she keeps promising to do a big long post about it, so please do just consider this a mere preview of what the expert will tell us, just as soon as the expert is done taking five children to Germany and back, not to mention all the amazing crafting, painting, homeopathing, homeschooling, doll-making, and baking that she does on a daily basis. Go check out her lovely blog and tell her I sent you.

Judicious use of all caps

I was somewhat miffed to discover yesterday that we all needed dinner AGAIN, and that I would have to go back to the supermarket AGAIN to buy more milk and more bread and more frozen waffles and that I'd have to continue to make dinner ALL WEEK AGAIN because apparently throwing a big (-ish) party doesn't stop everything from just continuing to happen in exactly the same way as before.

So here I am putting on laundry AGAIN and tripping over toys AS ALWAYS and wondering when I'm going to sort out all those maternity clothes in the box that need to be laundered and ironed before I can consign them (IRONED? Come on!) and realising that I STILL haven't applied for the passport, and now I get to plan Dash's birthday party YAY.

(I should point out that nobody in my family is demanding that I make dinner, and they would all be fine with takeout pizza or spagetti and sauce-from-a-jar all week. But at the very least we still need milk for our cereal and bread for the peanut-butter sandwiches. And apparently I show my love by cooking for people, NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.)

So now I will stop and give myself the rest of the morning off, perhaps. Because Spring Break starts on Thursday and then I'll have even more not-getting-stuff-done to complain about.

Motivation

Mabel has had two good nights in a row* and I have done at least half the things on that to-do list, which is pretty good going for me. Okay, so the pile of papers has been sorted through and moved to a new location but not actually put away yet, but things are in train. Shopping has been done for the party on Sunday, and I'm starting to feel as if it might actually all come to fruition in a timely manner.

The trouble with getting things done is that it's all about priorities. And I can't prioritise everything. So either I'm trying to exercise a few days a week, or I'm sorting out piles of paper. I'm writing a blog entry (or even something else) or cleaning the bathrooms. I'm planning a party or trying to figure out how to store our piles upon piles of soft toys or applying for a passport. But I can't do all those things, or even remember that I wanted to do them all, at the same time. No matter how much of a multitasking fool I am - and yesterday I was baking two types of bread, registering to vote, buying Dash a new coat**, filing, drinking a cup of tea, AND bragging about it all on Facebook - I can't hold in my mind the intention and urgency of getting everything done that has to be done.

So this week any notion of exercising went out the window and I skipped blogging a few days and as a result I have accomplished other things. I need a rotating cycle of prioritizing. Maybe I can make myself a star chart for that.

(We are knee-deep in star charts here. Mabel completed one, for good behaviour at school, got her new baby, and immediately demanded a new chart so she can buy all the baby's other sisters. So I concocted a huge new one that covers many aspects of her life, and then Dash wanted one too because if she gets something from Target when there he is in great need of a new light saber and with more than a month to go before his birthday, he should have one too. His is for getting ready in the morning and stopping playing computer games when his time is up. We'll see who gets their next trip to Target first.)

Watching TV with new Baby Belle. Baby Aurora is a little jealous.

So I could have a week for organizing, a week for cleaning, a week for writing, a week for exercising, a week for shopping, a week for baking, and then back to organizing. And if I get all my stars I can buy myself a babysitter, maybe.



*I am not blogging about this for fear of jinxing it. This does not count as blogging about it, okay?

**Long story, but I accidentally broke the zip on Dash's winter coat by closing the car door on it. That makes two coats two years in a row that I've buggered on him. At this rate he'll never wear a coat that fits him, because I keep ruining them before he's even grown into them. The new one is an age 8, and even though he's about to turn 7 he's only just growing out of his 5s. The sleeves will be down to his knees. Ah well. There's not much winter left*** and it'll fit better by next year.

***There'd better not be.

A very parenthetical list

So I thought if I put my to-do list here maybe it would shame me into getting something done. Something other than drinking cups of coffee and convincing myself that pie is a perfectly valid mid-morning snack. (It was apple pie. That's fruit.)

(We have an apple pie because I went to a bloggers' meetup last night and I felt so guilty about leaving B to get Mabel to sleep while simultaneously getting Dash to shut up and stay in his room and go to sleep that I made him a pie. Also because I'd intended to make it on Sunday but then I went shopping instead and bought lots of tops for me on clearance, and didn't even look at children's clothes, which is a thing of which I am very proud.)

(I have to give a shoutout to all the lovely DCMoms bloggers I met last night at the Mellow Mushroom in Adams Morgan where Jennifer and I went to break out of our comfort zones and meet new people and put not so much faces to names as heads on bodies. When you know people as a series of square headshots, it's always surprising to find that they're not all on the same level in real life - they're tall and short and narrow and wide and simultaneously older looking and younger looking and more gorgeous and more approachable and more real in real life than you could possibly imagine from photos. I met Sandie and Allison and Rebecca and Jessica and Jean and Aimee and Elaine and Michelle and Robin and other people too, who I am not managing to remember just now, sorry.  And we ate delicious pizza and the people at the restaurant were really nice to us because they're lovely people and you should check it out if you're downtown.)

So without further ado here is my to-do list:

• Make D's dentist appointment
• Fill in application to vote
• Make appointment at post office for passport application
• Make shopping list for the weekend's baking extravaganza*
• Clean house (but not too soon) (only downstairs)
• Get B a birthday present of some sort
• Bake something and freeze it to get a jump on the aforementioned baking extravaganza? 
• Make pumpkin bread or black-bean brownies for school-lunch desserts
• Bake bread for my insatiable carb-loving family
• Sort out that big pile of papers over there

*I have to explain about the baking extravaganza, and for that matter, why I only need to clean downstairs. It's not that upstairs stays magically sparkly all by itself, but more that nobody will be seeing it so it doesn't matter right now. We somehow have managed to schedule all our social events for the spring into this weekend - on Friday there's a block party potluck thingy, for which I have to make something (it'll be my old faithful kale and quinoa salad, because it's yummy, vegetarian (even vegan), and can be eaten at any temperature). Then on Saturday there's a house-party fundraiser for the nursery school, to which I said I'd bring a dessert - as yet undecided; what goes with delicious white sangria made by a real Spaniard? Something fruity . . . jello shots, maybe? And then on Sunday we're having a party here, hence the house-cleaning part.

Not a kids' party either. An honest-to-goodness real grown-up party, although it will essentially end up being like all the kids' parties with grownups that we've thrown in the past. But my my adored and much-put-upon husband is turning a significant multiple of ten (hint: more than 30, less than 50) on the 25th, and since I have no idea what to give him, I'm baking him a Guinness cake and making other things he likes and inviting over some of his friends and their children and hoping everyone will have a pretty nice time.

So I have to get plenty of sleep and not have any hangovers and be on top of my game for all that. Yup, that'll happen. Tell you what, you bribe Mabel to stay asleep all night, and I'll bake a cake for you as well.

Present disculpatory

Apparently I was a little distracted when putting Mabel to bed last night. She wrapped herself up in my big brown blanket and I totally forgot that we hadn't put a nighttime pullup on her. So at eleven thirty she woke up all wet and it took a long time to get her back to sleep.

My big brown blanket is now in the wash.

I'm busy. Which is good. I like to be busy when it's just the right amount - not overwhelming, not stressful, just busy enough to give me a sense of purpose and a good excuse when the children come wanting me to be a mommy cheetah. (I said "Miaow," but apparently cheetahs don't miaow. They don't roar either. They make a high-pitched chirping noise. I find this hard to believe. I am suspicious of my children's television-acquired knowledge.)

I'm busy getting us back to normal, whatever that is, but also trying to start exercising again - running and yoga, I've decided, this year/semester/term/week - and doing a small freelance job, as well as the writing course I'm taking from Alice Bradley (the wonderful, hilarious Finslippy, and I only partly said that because she might be reading). [Alice Bradley is reading my blog. Hyperventilate, hyperventilate, spend an hour browsing past posts to try to read them with a stranger's eye; fail.]

And then I had to restock our supplies of peanut-butter and tinned tomatoes and boxes upon boxes of Cheerios (they were on special offer), as well as trying to keep the house from falling into a state of absolute squalor (some squalor is fine, just not absolute), and have a cup of tea every now and then and eat a muffin (somebody's gotta do it) and also see above re laundry, and so that, what I'm trying to say, is why I didn't update the blog yesterday.

Duvet vous?

The baby has stolen my blanket.

By which I mean that the four-year-old has taken the supersoft espresso-brown blanket that lives at the foot of her parents' bed for the express purpose of keeping me, her longsuffering mother, warm at night - because I run about ten degrees colder than everyone else in this house, apparently - and is currently snuggling her tow-headed little self under it, fast asleep and away with the fairies to boot.

Not to mention the fact that she has a perfectly good duvet of her own, from Ikea, inside a very attractive duvet cover, also from Ikea, and additionally a big bright red fleece blanket purchased in Target not two months ago because she wouldn't wear her coat in Chicago. So she's sleeping on top of the red blanket, under the brown blanket, shunning the duvet, and sentencing me to another night of being just slightly not warm enough in bed. (This is the third night in a row.)

The things we put up with.

Meanwhile, in the parental bed - don't worry, I'm not going into any salacious details: this is about linens - the sheet war is being waged with all the silence and indignance two tired parents can muster over such things. See, there's a sheet under us, and a sheet over us, between us and the comforter. Raised as we were in a part of Europe that came late to duvets, but not as late as America, we're not entirely used to the top sheet - but I really like my down comforter, and I'm not going to wash it every week, so that's why the sheet is there. The sheet is turned down over the comforter when we sleep, but somehow - due no doubt to my inept bed-making skills - it doesn't want to stay there and tends to flip up over our faces. I can deal with this. I calmly flip it down again. But B gets all pissy with the sheet in his sleep and ends up with it mangled and twisted and generally not where it should be.

At some point in the night, inevitably, I come back to bed from my sojourn in Mabel's room, and, as I slip myself into the half-warm bed, I notice that the sheet on his side needs fixing. I pull it up and flip it neatly back where it should be. I suspect he thinks of me as the midnight sheet nazi. In turn, I grumpily wonder, every night, why he can do physics for the government but he can't work a simple bedsheet.

Luckily for all of us, there are more important things in life, and by morning we've forgotten it all again. This morning I dreamed that I tweeted to Mabel the fact that it was 5.15 when I left her bed, and then regretted it because it was bound to wake her up.

Happily, she didn't get my tweet because she stayed asleep for another hour, and all was right with the world.

My drawers (fnar, fnar)

A few bad nights for Mabel meant I mostly fell off the exercise and housework wagon this week, but I'm proud to announce that our winter clothes are more or less sorted out. (Not B's; he's not included. He wears the same thing all year, minus some shorts and plus some sweaters in the winter. And if he wants them organized he can do his own.)

But my closet looks like this now:

The box holds bags/purses, and the tops/sweaters are organized thus: short sleeved, 3/4 sleeved, long sleeved, wool. The chunky wool ones are on top or hanging. Three pairs of boots are to the right of the box. I don't use a lot of hanging space because it's mostly dresses, skirts, and jackets, and I don't have a lot of any of those. You can see from this that I will be wearing a palate of mostly greens and dark reds/purples this season. Just like every season, because that's what I like.

I didn't take a before picture of the closet, but this is what my pyjamas/stuff drawer still looks like, so you can extrapolate from that:

I'm not saying this is all I have: most of my days are spent in jeans (stuffed-full jeans/chinos drawer not pictured), and I have another of yoga pants and one of underwear and one of nicer clothes I might wear once in a blue moon, and a whole suitcase full of things that don't fit but I'm not ready to give up on, and some more odds and ends in an under-the-bed storage thingy; but the important part is this - this is all the stuff I'm getting rid of:

See? Even the stuff I'm getting rid of is greens and dark reds.

The trash bag holds six pairs of shoes, one of which dates from pre-emigration - that is, more than 10 years ago. The toppling pile has about twenty t-shirts, tops and sweaters, and one pair of jeans that I never liked much. This has now been joined by some summer clothes Dash and Mabel have grown out of (that aren't nice enough to pass on to friends), and a few shirts B is discarding. All this will go to the next yard sale we're involved in, or the thrift store.

I got Dash to try on about twenty pairs of trousers, took away a few, and ascertained that my six-and-a-half-year-old still has 5T-length legs, just about, though his hips have grown out of the slimmest-fitting pants. Since he also refuses to wear any shirts that come below about mid-fly (because they might look like dresses and people might think he's a girl, yaknow), he doesn't need anything new.

(No photo because his room is dark like a man-cave, and his stuff is all stashed in drawers that don't make nice pictures.)

And then, I sorted out my box of things that might fit Mabel this season and reorganized her shelves. She can't reach everything herself, but she's getting more inclined to choose her own clothes, and I'm trying hard to hold my tongue if her choice is reasonable. At least I've put away the high-summer stuff so she'll be less tempted to try to wear a sundress or short shorts on a morning when it's 49 degrees outside. (That's about 9 celcius.)

Her clothes are in IKEA dividers (like this) that are supposed to separate things within drawers. When we moved in here, I had no dresser for Mabel and wasn't using these metal shelves for anything, so we stuck them in her closet and I found the dividers handy (since her clothes were still practically baby things that took up so little space). But her clothes still don't take up much space individually, and though I'm always on the lookout for a small white chest of drawers for her room, this system works fine for now. From the top, L-R, they hold pyjamas, socks, leggings, long-sleeved tops, capris/long shorts, t-shirts, underpants, bottoms/pants, and skirts/dresses that aren't hanging up. There are some chunky sweaters in the basket at the very bottom. The top shelf is a mess of hand-me-down shoes that don't fit yet and summer clothes awaiting sorting.

I could do with another box for the tights stashed on the top left, and I should think about bringing all the upper stuff down so that she can reach it more easily. She needs more dresses, especially since she's lately become very partial to them; I'm working on that and have enlisted e-Bay. I was very disappointed to miss a really good local used-children's-clothing sale last weekend, and I'll miss our local clothing swap next weekend, so my opportunities for snagging the perfect thing are reduced to the thrift store (always there) and the nursery-school yard sale in a few more weeks' time. And the clearance racks at Old Navy, Target, and Gap, of course.

In case you were wondering, this is what the other side of Mabel's closet looks like:

I wouldn't bother showing you, except for my genius sorting system comprising those two boxes. The brown one says "Too big; next season" and now holds summer things from this year that might still fit next, and any summer age 4 stuff I have. The Pampers box says: "Too big; distant future" and contains everything else I've amassed for her that will fit at some point when she's bigger That way I don't have to re-mark the boxes every year when they're no longer holding 4s but now 5s and 6s (Mabel, fitting age 6 clothes? Inconceivable!), and so on. 

Personally, I'm just pleased that I'm the sort of person who uses a semicolon when labelling a box of clothes. I think it says something about me, don't you? Yes. Well.

Seasonal produce

I am here to tell you that if you didn't think you liked eggplant (or aubergine, because we're fancy like that in Ireland) it's because you were doing it wrong. Specifically, like me, you may have never bothered to salt and drain it, because who has time for that sort of thing? People who know how delicious it makes eggplant, that's who. I just recently bothered, for the first time, to take my eggplant out a bit ahead of time - an hour is good, in the morning is great - slice it thickly, and spread the slices out on some kitchen paper. Then I shake salt all over them, both sides, top with more kitchen paper (paper towels, whatever you call 'em), and weigh it all down with a few hefty cookbooks. I just did it now while my waffle popped out of the toaster, and the butter still melted by the time I was done.

Later on, when you put the eggplant into whatever you want - this, perhaps, or just ratatouille, or vegetarian lasagne, which is what I'm planning today - it will turn out to be both chewy and creamy, and a most wonderful vehicle for the garlic that I exhort you to use liberally. If I was Nigella Lawson, the word unctuous would be bursting forth right about now, but I'm not, so I won't go quite that far.

The other thing I've been doing lately is massaging my kale. (I told Facebook about it and got a few entertainingly salacious comments. My work there is done.) From being a person who never even thought about kale to one who decided she didn't like it, I have lately come down heavily in favour of the curly dark-green leaves. It started with this recipe for quinoa salad with kale and cranberries, which I ate for most of the summer. A little fiddly what with the roasting of the walnuts, but totally addictive. You can leave out the shallot (or even the onion) if that's too much trouble, and you won't miss it.

But then I got even lazier, and decided cooking the kale was too much trouble for a salad. And I remembered something a friend had said once, in my pre-kale-eating days (when I was offloading a bunch of donated kale onto her, actually, because I didn't think I'd use it) about massaging kale. How ridiculous, I thought. Maybe you and your kale are on those sort of terms, but I prefer to keep mine at fork's length, thank you. But about a week ago, I googled "massaged kale" and came up with all sorts of perfectly reasonable suggestions. Basically, you put your (washed and de-stemmed) leaves in a bowl with a shake of salt and a sprinkle of oil, and you work it with your hands until the fibres break down, turning this tough saute-only veg into a perfectly nice wilted salad leaf. (I have been told that you can also just leave it alone for an hour or so and the dressing will do the work on its own, but I like instant gratification.)

Then you can put a bit of what you fancy on top and call it salad. Some dried cranberries and a shake of roasted sunflower seeds with a drizzle of red wine vinegar or avocado and lemon juice are two versions I tried last week, but there are a ton of options. I think you need something a little sweet to counterbalance the leaves, but probably just a pinch of sugar or a drop of honey in your dressing would do the trick quite well.

Unfortunately, I have yet to figure out how to stop getting hungry again at 2pm when I've had a big bowl of kale salad for lunch at midday. When I find out, I'll let you know, because otherwise it seems like an ideal way to counteract the effects of the muffins.

You are here

Don't think I'm not writing. I am writing. You're just not seeing it. I have no fewer than four posts at the draft stage that just aren't coming out of it, because they're not working for one reason or another. Too boring, too uninteresting, too irrelevant, too not-quite-saying-what-I'm-trying-to-say.

I know Mabel is tired today because she's spent an indordinate amount of time rolling round on the floor and chewing on non-food objects. Also because it's only 1.20 and it feels like it should be much later. As early as 9.30 this morning she had installed herself on the sofa with all the cusions, numerous blankets, a bath towel and a dragon doorstop (from IKEA; you probably have one too) and asked me to turn on the TV because she was tiiiiiired.

She's tired because I went to a meeting last night and even though she was well ready to fall asleep at 7pm, because I wasn't there with the magic boobies, she was still wide awake at 8.45 when I got home. She'd had the books, she'd had the stories, she'd been lain down with, she'd been left alone ... she has no idea how to go to sleep without the magic boobies. Not yesterday, anyway, even though she's done it before, and she goes back to sleep in the middle of the night very well these days. (I DIDN'T SAY THAT STOP LOOKING AT ME FATE HERE'S A CHICKEN I SACRIFICED EARLIER.)

It's lovely having Dash back at school now that we're used to it and the homework gets started straight away. I've even cleaned a couple of things and baked a couple of things, so it looks like I'm getting out of my doldrums and back to normal.

It will be even more lovely next week when Mabel is back at school too, at least until the existential angst starts to get me. In between, we have the local Labor Day Festival (that's "festible" to my children) to get through/enjoy, with duties to be discharged for both the nursery school and the elementary school as well as many rides to be ridden on and oh look it's going to be 90 degrees on Saturday. Lovely.

So that's where we are. Where are you?

Productivity

This is the pile of schoolwork and artwork that Dash brought home from school in the Spring, more or less, with a few things of Mabel's thrown in. It's been sitting there all summer, leering at me. (I leered back.)

This morning, Dash went to school and in ten minutes of concentrated activity, while Mabel watched some nice educational My Little Pony (ahem), I turned the pile into this:

Yes, I could have done it at any point during the past two months - though not with Dash in the room telling me that every single worksheet had sentimental value - but somehow I was never inspired to. It's now sorted into (mostly) recycling as well as a few folders containing some representative pieces of writing or artwork from his kindergarten year, a couple of stray school reports I should have put  elsewhere in the first place, and about fifteen love notes to me, his father, and even his sister. (Awww.)

If you were here last year, you might remember that Dash took a while to settle in to elementary school. Let's just say he fears change. On the first morning he clung to me piteously, and I left the classroom with him crying under his desk, where he remained for two hours until the teacher told him it was against the rules to be under the desks.

Today, I was pretty confident that he'd be fine. He took the new room and the new teacher in his stride, and wasn't fazed by the fact that none of his particular friends from kindergarten or nursery school are in his class this year.

And he looked just as happy at the end of the day. His teacher gave him a candy ("a sugarfree candy") for walking the right way, and she taught them a song about keeping their hands by their sides and their feet straight ahead, and he ate all his lunch, and there was a fire drill at recess but he still found his old best friend from last year in the playground.

So first grade is looking good on all fronts.

This and that

I'm not going to tell you any more about how Mabel's nights are going until they've settled down a bit and formed a - dare I say it? - pattern of some sort. Besides, I don't want to spoil the suspense.

I happened to look up the school website to see which day Dash starts back, and it turns out there's only three weeks of vacation left. How can that be? I almost (almost) feel sad about it, except for all the reasons it's a good thing. But he and his sister have learned to play together again this summer, in recent days she has come out of her hate phase and been heard to say "I love you" to not just me but everyone in the family, and things are delightful - at least around breakfast time when everyone's at their most happy and polite. (I'm pretty catatonic until I've had a bowl of cereal, but the kids are good.)

And I will miss Dash when he's back at school all day. These summers really are (barf, sorry) precious, because every one that goes by sees him demonstrably more grown up, more grown away, doing more and exploring further, and in no time at all we'll be at the summer where he goes off to Europe inter-railing for two months. Or whatever the kids are doing then.

Our guests get here tomorrow, and though they are the most low-key guests imaginable - my good friend and her six-year-old son, just for two nights - it's a good excuse to clean some things that never get cleaned, and throw out some things that have been waiting all summer to be thrown out, and organize just a tiny bit. Of course, it's a constant uphill battle against the children who know hilarity lies in throwing toys around for fun, but just maybe the floor will be vacuumed tomorrow morning.

This weekend, many people are going to BlogHer in New York. I think I might just make a resolution to go next year, assuming it's either there or in DC again - I don't imagine I'd fly further afield for it at this stage. But for the first time, I know some people (okay, one for sure) in real life who are attending, and it makes it feel like not such a ridiculous thing for me to want to do. I do blog, I am a blogger, I qualify, right?

Are you going to BlogHer? Would you go with me next year?

Ashes

Yesterday, I was on fire, domestically speaking. I had felt the urge to do some housework creeping up on me, and yesterday it burst forth in a glorious bevy of industry. While Mabel was at school, I did two loads of laundry, hung one on the line and put one in the dryer, swept the downstairs floors, cleaned the bathrooms (oh so horribly overdue), cleaned the mirrors, and started on some yeast bread. By pre-dinnertime, I was juggling the two loaves of bread, a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and some quite delicious from-scratch pseudo-Indian stuff that would do two nights' worth of grown-up dinners, as well as a corn on the cob in the microwave for Mabel.

So today, I'd probably have been all tapped out anyway, but the fact that then it turned out one ear of corn (is it an ear? a cob?) and a cookie do not a sufficient dinner make for my daughter, so that she was awake half the night gnawing on me, meant that this morning I was pretty much toast. Fried toast. Toast that is also fried, and burnt, and has had the burnt bits scraped off. The sort of toast you should probably just toss and make anew.

Then, in spite of a morning spent jumping on trampolines and playing with other people's toys, followed by a total needle-stuck-on-record meltdown on the way home ("I don't want to take the short cut, I don't waaaant to taaaake the short cut, I don't... I didn't waaaant to taaaake the short cut," etc), Mabel did not nap. So we got up again and made banana pancakes, she ate five, and the afternoon progressed. She had to be shepherded gently through the hazardous waters of four to six pm, and probably didn't eat enough dinner again, but the upside was that she was fast asleep at five minutes past seven.

I'm going to bed early.

Where are my bonbons?

I have been thinking it's Friday since Tuesday, and it's still only Thursday.

It's not even as if we've had a particularly arduous week, or that last weekend was in any way weekday-like, but this particular five-day set seems to be dragging its heels, at least in my head.

My house is a mess, because I can do (partially) clean or somewhat tidy, but not both at the same time. I can keep the kitchen clean, the fridge somewhat stocked, and the laundry up to date, but not the bathrooms scrubbed too.

(When we arrived in the first of our three hotels on our recent California trip and looked in the bathroom, Mabel marvelled at how shiny and white everything was. A girl could get used to that sort of thing, if she never had to keep it shiny and white herself. When I got back into our own car at the airport, I have to admit it looked awfully dusty compared to the enormous rental vehicle we'd been driving for the previous few days. And then the added exertion of having to lift one's foot to the clutch and actually change gear... sigh. But I digress.)

Mabel was amusing herself nicely this morning, and at one point I found her lying on her tummy on the hardwood floor.

"I'm just blowing a dead bug across the floor," she told me.

Time to sweep downstairs too, maybe.

Priorities

I have approximately one hour, and I'm going to spend it with my laptop, briefly, and then a book, and possibly a coffee and a homemade cookie. I am not going to tidy up, clean the kitchen, put on a load of washing, make pumpkin bread, or start making Christmas lists. Doing any of those things might make me feel efficient and that I have accomplished something useful, but I'd still harbour a boatload (harbour, boats, gettit?) of residual resentment at not having got to just sit down and do nothing.

So instead, I'll go back to my original mantra of doing nothing with this time that I could do when the kid(s) are at home. I can always put on the washing after Mabel gets back, and whip up a loaf of pumpkin bread while she's napping.

In the car this morning, Mabel and I had an interesting discussion:

Mabel: Mummy, you know, I think now I can go to the top of the big climbing frame in the playground, because I'm older.
Me: Really? Maybe so. You know, I think now you can wear underpants and use the toilet, because you're older.
Mabel: No, I'm not going to do that.
Me: Well, I think after Christmas you'll start wearing underpants.
Mabel: Will I be older after Christmas?
Me: Oh yes, definitely.
Mabel: Well, that would be okay.
[...]
Mabel: Why are you laughing? I don't want you to laugh at me.
Me: I love you, that's why I'm laughing.
Mabel, grumpy: Well, I love you, and I don't laugh at you.

Touché.

Just say no - to housework

This morning has been one of those accidental housework days. I thought to myself "Ugh, should clean the downstairs toilet," and "Maybe I'll hoover the stairs too," and now I've spent an hour and a half noticing things like grimy baseboards and sticky fingers on doors and - here's the kicker - doing something about them instead of shrugging and deciding to leave it to the housework fairies, as I usually do. And now the stairs still haven't been hoovered and I've doomed myself to do the shopping with two children in tow because I have no more free mornings this week, but a girl's gotta blog. And those darned housework fairies, they keep cancelling on me. It's so hard to find good help nowadays.

I walked to school with Dash this morning; possibly the first time I've brought him to school without Mabel, and therefore on foot. It was nice to chat uninterrupted - we get far too little one-to-one time these days. And I took the opportunity to talk to him about drugs.

Yes, he's five, and I don't think he's getting into bad company just yet. (Five-and-a-half today, actually.) But according to a notice that came home from school on Friday and I found this morning as I rooted for his lunchbox, this is Red Ribbon Week, and we will celebrate not taking drugs this week (I paraphrase) by wearing a team jersey on Monday (don't have one, Batman will have to do - Go Team Gotham!), crazy socks on Tuesday, something red on Wednesday, sweats on Thursday, and the costume you were going to wear anyway for the storybook parade, which is the school's "not Halloween" (I see through their cunning scheme) on Friday. How this helps beat drugs I'm not sure, and I really have no idea if the kindergarteners will be participating in anything about it, but I thought I should give him some warning in case someone comes along to tell the five-year-olds not to do drugs.

Seriously though, it's probably another of those things, like sex, and bullies, and religion, that you should mention to your children early and often, so that it's something we talk about at home, not something that's never mentioned and therefore (a) your parents have never heard of or (b) totally tabboo. And actually, the subject has come up before, earlier this year when a friend's husband was mugged and I was trying, with difficulty, to explain something about people's motivations for crime, to Dash.

The kids know about cigarettes and how they're bad for you but adults are allowed smoke them if they want to. I tried to extrapolate from there to illegal drugs, first mentioning other sorts of drugs that are fine, like medicine the doctor gives you to make you better. It went something like this:

Me: ... but there are other sorts of drugs that some people like to take because they make them feel good...
Dash: Oh yes, like an inahler.
Me: No, not like an inhaler. An inhaler for asthma?
Dash: Yes.
Me: No, not that. These drugs make people feel good but they're bad for their bodies. And it's against the law to take them.
Dash: Oh.
Me: So I don't think your teacher will talk to you about this at school, but just in case she does, I thought we should first.
Dash: Right. ... I saw a punknin!

... and that was that. Another parenting triumph.

Steve Miller

Balls in the air. (Hey, get your mind out of the sewer, you.) I mean, I'm juggling. No, not even juggling so much as just doing a few things I should do as a matter of course, but never get around to. Last week I had a routine physical at my GP (such as I have basically never done) and my six-months-overdue girly-bits exam. Today I got my flu shot at Safeway and booked a haircut for tomorrow. I would have requested Mabel's passport forms (her Irish passport will expire soon), but the embassy phone is out of order. Not my fault. The only other major thing is a dental checkup, which I promise to book for myself (and Mabel, come to think of it) when we take Monkey to his appointment next Tuesday. I even hemmed my cords so I can wear them with my boots. I'm so smug I'm practically incandescent.

But this comes at a price. The bathroom needs cleaning (when does it not?) and I'm neglecting my blog. I decide what to make for dinner twenty minutes before dinnertime. I haven't made muffins in ages. (Okay. About a week. And I did make zucchini bread, but I prefer muffins.)

I'll probably fall off this efficiency wagon any day now, but once the phonecalls are made and the appointments written on the calendar, most of it just proceeds as scheduled. I'll throw some new balls up - birthday-party planning, trip-to-New-York planning, housework, even - and juggle them for a while instead, and bit by bit things will happen, or not happen, and we'll all totter onwards regardless.

My son might think that time is an infititely large elastic band that stretches to encompass whatever it is he's doing, and then springs back to get us where we need to be at the appointed moment - but I know better. It just keeps on slipping into the future.

Doing it all. Well, doing some of it and faking the rest.

Okay. So. I was asked, presumably as a result of my five seconds of fame on the BlogHer site last week, to participate in a Blog Carnival hosted at Mom Generations, and sponsored by Eversave. And in return for letting them link to the words of wisdom that I will set out here below for you in one moment, I get to give away a Special Deal from Eversave, which is $50 for a a Mani/Pedi/Fish-y Cure at Yvonne’s Day Spa. 

In fact, the winner gets a package of two, so that they and a friend can go and enjoy being nibbled by fish while their nails are painted for a bargain price. I don't know if you even want to win this, but here we are, and I have to let you know that just by leaving a simple comment, you too can be entered. Yvonne's has three locations in Washington DC, so if you're further afield this might not be much good to you. But hey, comment anyway. Tell me what sort of fish you'd most like to be nibbled by.

And now, without further ado, let me tell you - because apparently Sarah Jessica Parker can do it all in her new movie, to which this whole thing is somehow linked, (and lookee, Pierce Brosnan's in it too; did you know he's Irish? and handsome?) - exactly how I, myself, personally, manage to Do It All.

Well, obviously, I don't. Nobody does. If you think they do, they're just very clever with the sleight of hand and the misdirection and the prioritising. Something is always falling off the end, but that's okay, because so long as you keep your wits about you to some extent, the something is not a small child and the end is not the end of the high-diving board. Doing it all, to me, just means Staying Sane While Staying At Home.

However, I have a couple of tips, if you'd like to hear them:

1. Never do anything at naptime that you could do when the baby's awake. Unloading the dishwasher is out, because that might wake her. Same goes for vacuuming, or cleaning the upstairs bathroom. If this means all you do at naptime is sit down and read a book, that's a really good thing.

2. Invite people over now and then, so that sometimes you have to tidy up a bit.

3. Don't invite people you feel you have to clean the whole house for. People with kids are always a good bet.

4. When having people without kids over, remember to clean the bathroom, if nothing else. It's the only place they're alone and will pay attention. (I read that one in a magazine. It's a Genuine Tip.)

5. Put a drop of vanilla essence in a low oven to make the house smell good.

6. Sorry, wrong list.

7. Believe in karma. What goes around comes around. Especially if it involves snot.

8. Get a good haircut. There's nothing more depressing than going weeks convinced that your hair looks horrible.

9. Don't draw attention to your weak points. Nobody will notice them if you can just manage to keep your big mouth shut. I learned this yesterday, here, and it's a great lesson.

But really, this is the most important one:

10. Have a great team. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, let alone Do It All, without my husband. I also have a team of co-parents at the playground who watch my kid when I'm too busy gossiping, and a team of cheerleaders inside the computer on whom I can rely for good suggestions, moral support, and space to whinge when necessary.

Now: comments. Go win that fishy spa deal! I'll pick a winner at random on Friday.

Procrastinatio... ah, I'll finish that word later

I wonder when my credit card statements will file themselves? They're mostly on the shelf beside where my laptop lives, and every now and then I look at them and muse on when they'll shuffle themselves off to the filing cabinet in the basement where they're supposed to be. I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later.

It's always easier, I find, to leave the house and go and do something new, than to stay at home and do something boring and old. I think that's why we're such a nation of consumers - a world of consumers, really: it's so much nicer to go into a shop and find something shiny and new and pay for it and bring it home and use it than to go rooting around in a box or a suitcase or on a shelf you can't reach or wherever you might have put it to find that item you already own which would work just as well in this circumstance. 

And it's definitely nicer to go out and get something new than to stay in and clean the house, or put away your credit-card statements, or make the doctor's appointment that's been hanging over your head for just a few months now, or any of the other things I've been avoiding doing.

It's also much easier to contemplate that misty time in the future when you will have the impetus and the energy and the peace and quiet to do such things while you sit down and surf the web or read a book or blog (even), than to just take advantage of these exact five minutes of peace that you have right now to go and do it straight away. Because then it would be done and you'd have to move something else to the top of your procrastination list, and that would just be a new thing to feel vaguely stressed over, so why not just leave things as they are, when everyone's perfectly satisfied with the status quo?

Get along, little credit-card statements. You can do it. I'm just going to sit here for another minute...

Detritus

I've just made another batch of chocolate ricotta muffins, to put in the freezer, to take out of the freezer, to bring to school next Tuesday, which will be the day we celebrate Monkey's birthday at school (being the first day back after Spring Break); and which is also a day I'm co-opping, so I won't be able to just whip them up after he goes in and bring them down at snack time. How prepared am I? (That was rhetorical. In fact, I'm only a tiny bit prepared. I still have to check I have all the ingredients for the birthday-party cupcakes and probably plan to make a cake the day of the birthday as well, which just so happens to be Easter Sunday. Which is why we have no plans for Easter whatsoever. It has been totally overshadowed by The Birthday, much as dinners have been totally overshadowed by Cake.)

Anyway, as I wait for the muffins and gaze around my - beautiful, gorgeous, lovely - kitchen, I am struck by the amount of sheer crap that takes up a square foot of real estate at the end of the counter. Here is a quick rundown of some of what's there right now:

• One giant water pistol, courtesy of last week's trip to the thrift store with Daddy (he's the expert on super soakers, having spent many useful hours playing Assassin as a grad student; which if you didn't know is a long-drawn-out game in which, over the course of several weeks, you try to sneak up on your unsuspecting friends in the Assassin league table and ambush them with a soaking before someone does the same to you; it's like being a secret agent, only wetter).
• One clean tea towel, ostensibly on its way to being put away; in reality will probably sit there until called into active duty.
• One pink water bottle.
• One children's library book.
• One sheet of stickers, mostly used.
• One tiny skateboard, with associated tiny screwdriver and highly swallowable tiny wheels.
• One mini-tub of pink playdough.
• One roll-up plastic eye-shield thingy from Monkey's first ever visit to the dentist, about two and a half years ago. Despite its ultra-disposable nature, this may never be thrown out, as it is vital to his superhero costuming. It frequently goes missing, for months at a time, due to its small size and transparent nature, and is always re-found with delight.
• A picture of someone else's children, from a Christmas card. This sort of thing paralyses me: I can't put it in the album, but it seems rude to throw it away. But I probably should. I'm sure their mother wouldn't hold it against me now that it's Easter.
• A "chick" in an "egg" in a "nest" that Monkey made at school. On its way to trash as soon as I'm sure he doesn't care too much.
• Three lip glosses, either on their way upstairs to my bathroom or in the other direction to be put into a handbag, therefore realistically just living there near the mirror so I can use one before I go out.
• The prescription eye-drops from the last time someone had pinkeye, which was at least a month ago now. On its way upstairs to the medecine cabinet in case we need it again before its best-before date.
• A pile of pebbles rescued from Monkey's jeans before they went into the laundry basket last night. On their way back outside. I hope.
• Sundry receipts, thank-you cards, duplicate photos, coupons, and instruction leaflets, none of which I can throw out because B might be keeping them for something. 

So I'll just square them up into a nice neat pile, put the bowl of "things the kids can't reach" on top (except Monkey can, so now it's the "bowl of things for Monkey to comb through and find treasures in") move the book and the water pistol, put the pebbles outside, and call it tidy.