Archives for September 2006

I shed a little this week. Okay, I shed a lot. Laylee said, “You look like somebody else’s mom.” I wasn’t sure I was happy with the result until I walked past a mirror yesterday. Staring back at me was my face with Fräulein Maria’s haircut. This I like.

I’m not Austrian. I can’t speak with a British accent. I prefer the name Dan to Georg. I only know four chords on the guitar. I never wanted to become a nun.

But I like the hair, and I adore bursting into song while Dan and I are making out in a solarium full of blue studio lighting meant to simulate moonlight. So, I’m pretty much Julie Andrews reincarnated. Is she deceased? If not, she probably wants her hair back.

I am relieved that I like the hair. You may remember the last time I drastically changed it and it wasn’t pretty.

On a random side note, I came into the living room the other day to find my guitar case laying on its side. I asked Laylee if she knocked it over. She said, “No, I didn’t. I was just jumping on it and singing a song.” I haven’t had the heart to open the case yet and survey the damage. Fräulein Maria probably wouldn’t confront Laylee openly either. She’d guilt her into bawling about it at dinner, causing a tremendous bout of indigestion.

reasons: crazy 8’s

Today’s topic is brought to you by Jessica of Sweet Mama Entropy, who gave some great tips on how to organize and store toys back in March. The toys truly do seem to multiply but I don’t see them doing much to replenish my home.

My number one favorite tip is to get rid of stuff. Consider happy meal toys and party favor novelties disposable. Once their charm has worn off, send them packing. If the charm has worn off for you but not your child, and if it’s within her field of vision, send it packing in the dead of night.

My mom used to go through our toys with us every few months and let us keep a certain number of stuffed animals. The rest had to be donated to Goodwill. We had a really great Christmas one year where we were heavily involved in a used teddy bear donation program. We gathered the bears and helped wash and brush them to be given to other children. It really helped us feel better about giving up our toys.

Integrate some toys into the decor of your home, rather than letting them become the decor of your home. Buy nice baskets or storage ottomans or even cover cardboard boxes with pretty fabric. If you can keep your entire house from looking like the Romper Room while still allowing your kids to feel like they can play somewhere besides their bedroom, I think you’re on the right track.

Then a tip for another day is getting your kids to clean up their toys. At this point, I am using the old “you clean it up or I’ll clean it up into a trash bag in the garage” shtick. I guess it works for lots of people. One 3-year-old in Laylee’s ballet class picked up a toy in the waiting room today and said, “We have this! Well… It’s in the trash. Well… Actually it’s out in the garage because we were in trouble of it.”

Hmmm…. So I’m not the only one to use this tactic? I once used it on a college roommate. No joke. We would put all of her stuff in a garbage bag in the laundry room. I don’t remember what we exactly thought gave us the right to do this or how she accepted it but I do remember that rather than clean up the stuff out of the laundry room, she would go in there and retrieve one item at a time as needed. Then she’d leave it on the floor, the kitchen counter, my bed, and I’d put it back in the garbage bag. Very strange.

Please share your tips for controlling toys, forcing your children to clean like slaves, or tormenting your college roommates.

I can’t explain why. I needed this boat to come back.

Picture of my favorite house between here and Seattle, nowhere near the water, taken through a dirty windshield while driving.

Where have you gone, little sailboat? Every day I would drive by your house, a small piece of wreckage, seemingly washed far ashore in our little section of suburbia. The tall grass lapped against the peeling paint of your ancient grey-blue mariner’s hideaway. There you floated on the sea of grass, next to an old colorless Impala, its soft top only visible above the waves.

There was a calmness about you, still among the commotion of grain. No one ever left the house. No one ever came. Your sea of grass was stopped abruptly by the road I traveled on and I knew you could never sail away.

One summer day you were gone. Perhaps you set sail at dawn on a patch of thick fog, searching for the ocean you’d left behind. Perhaps you were shattered on the rocks concealed beneath the dense blanket of vegetation surrounding you. Perhaps you were never there, an illusion I invented so the small sea shanty would make sense in the pastoral landscape we inhabited together.

You never said goodbye and I mourn your loss. The windows of the house seem to squint, blocking out your very existence. It is a sad house now, a house in denial. Will you ever return? Will you take me with you in the night?

So it’s Wednesday! What could be more fun than doing tips since I didn’t get to them yesterday? Scuba Diving maybe or laying completely alone in a flowered valley at the top of a lonely mountain while birds fly overhead and I am never ever woken up by a three-year-old asking me not to smell bad. By the way, she needs to get her nose examined as badly as Magoo needs a new tuning knob. I smell sweet as a peach.

And I belong to a book club.

Tess has asked for a Tip Tuesday where we discuss the ins and outs of setting up a successful book club. Here are a few things to focus on:

1. Who? Who are you gonna invite? If you are drowning in friends, are you going to limit membership to make the group more manageable? If you’re new to the area (notice I did not say you have no literate friends), how will you find like-minded readers to join you? Do you even want like-minded readers?

The group that I helped set up 2 years ago had an open enrollment. I emailed everyone I knew who I thought might be interested and told them to pass the word along. It was sort of a shotgun blast approach because it was more important to me that everyone felt included than to invite only my bestest friends. We ended up with a really nice variety of members and I got to know people with opinions vastly different from my own, something that I think makes a great book club.

You might want to consider handing out a flyer at your local moms group, church or bookstore.

2. What? What do you want your book club to be? Is it a social club with books on the side? A dinner group, where the book may or may not be mentioned? A 500-level graduate class in English literature where you must own a complete print copy of the OED to attend? Set clear expectations early on for what the book club will be.

Ours was about the book. We got together for 2 hours, eating and socializing for the first half hour and then once book discussion began, we got down to business. It was an escape from mommy life and a chance to stretch our brains. Personal anecdotes were shared only in relation to what we were reading. We decided to save the poop stories for play group.

3. Where? Do you have a church or school room where you can meet or do you prefer a more homey atmosphere? Should one person always host to maintain a sense of consistency or do you want to rotate houses?

We rotated on a volunteer basis. The person hosting was not necessarily the discussion leader.

4. When? How often? Do you meet weekly? Monthly? Bi-monthly? Annually? Everyday on the internet? When is enough? How busy are you?

We started out meeting every other month but went to a one-book-per-month format. We felt that most people were cram-reading the book during the last few days before the meeting anyway so we might as well have twice as many opportunities for people with scheduling conflicts. It worked nicely to pick a standard night so we always knew when it would be. 2nd Thursday of every month. Be there or be square.

5. How? Set up clear guidelines for the group so you know what to expect and someone doesn’t unknowingly violate some unspoken law, upsetting the tender feelings of Bertha the book club Nazi who thinks she knows exactly how things should go.

Our group chose the books together. At the beginning of the year, everyone would offer a couple of suggestions. We’d anonymously vote on them and assign them to a particular month. If your book was chosen, you were the discussion leader for that meeting.

We set up rules for how long the meeting would be, what type of books we wanted to read, what type of discussion we should have, how stringent we’d be on membership requirements. Basically we weren’t stringent. Our main rules were that every opinion needed to be heard with respect and that anyone could come whether they’d read or not, as long as the discussion stayed on the book.

Food was always low-key and potluck. The person whose home we met in would provide drinks, dishes and utensils.

What has worked for you in your book clubs?

I think you’ll enjoy this awesome talk on children and education if you have an interest in um…children or education.

Speaking of creativity, I have evidence of ballerina class. Please don’t look at these pictures unless you’re prepared to yorch from the cuteness. Please also bear in mind that these pictures were taken through a small dirty window using digital zoom, the window only made dirtier by my head pressed up against the glass. Thanks to the fabulous Kimbo for watching destructo-Magoo so I could enjoy the class.

 

Someone is so witty and fabulous on the phone that my family was late for our most recent class. Must not speak to Jeana on Ballerina day. Must not speak to Jeana on Ballerina day.

reasons: the man I fell in love with 5 years ago who has carried me through my hard times