Rearranging the furniture
Who’s house is that? We pushed the sofa away from the wall for a poetry book club a couple of weeks ago, and never pushed it back again. Furniture in the middle of the room … who knew? It makes for a cozy seating area with space for piano practice and the art table behind it. I still don’t have a decent location for the piano books, but someday. Someday.
I’m operating on a hopeful mission to sort out and tidy every drawer and surface in the house. And also to keep the bathrooms/kitchen clean. My strategy involves doing it when I see it needs doing. In practice that means I was cleaning out the bottom drawer of the fridge on Monday evening while unloading our Bailey’s food. The idea, borrowed from my friend Rebecca’s blog, is to ask: Do I have five minutes? Usually these minor cleaning tasks take only a few minutes. And I almost always have five minutes. I also found five minutes, which stretched to a few more, to scrub mold off the grout in the shower one evening last week. Just what one feels like doing after tucking the kids in, let me tell you, but that’s when I noticed the mold. Did I have five minutes? I did. We use baking soda and vinegar as cleaning agents, and as I scrubbed and scrubbed (using an old toothbrush) I found myself reminiscing about the Old Dutch cleanser my mom used to use, which would remove a layer of skin from your hands but sure got the tiles sparkling in a jiffy. Advice from fellow green-cleaners out there? Is the secret all in the elbow grease and the lowered standards?
If I’m talking a lot about the house, it’s because this has been a housebound week, high on domestic necessities. My girl is still sick. We will be heading to see the doctor shortly.
I don’t function well in housebound mode (and for the record, yes, my office is at home, but my office does not make me feel housebound). I don’t function well on interrupted sleep. I get grumpy. It’s fair to no one, but by 6pm, on a day when I’ve been doing nothing but scrubbing grout with a toothbrush, preparing meals, cleaning up from meals, entertaining sick children, worrying about sick children, and ferrying other children with sick child in tow to after-school activities — by 6pm I’m liable to bite someone’s head off. Usually my husband’s. Because by 6pm he’s around, that’s why. And he’s not a kid. Yup. Totally unfair.
I’ve been enjoying reading the latest issue of Brain, Child magazine, which has a piece on whether or not mothers complain too much about motherhood these days. Do we? Do I? Or should I really be complaining more? I wonder sometimes whether I get the balance right: truth-telling, accurate reporting of on-the-job realities mingled with gratitude. I do feel some discomfort about being a “mommy blogger” … about presenting my family’s life in some ideal package or inducing guilt in any other mother out there who doesn’t have time (or the interest) to make homemade food or who drives instead of making her kids walk to school or etc. I think we’re all trying our best. We have good intentions. We make mistakes. Life isn’t perfect. And “mother” might just be the most judged and criticized role any of us could have chosen to take on, but that didn’t stop us, so there’s bravery right there.
And I’m rambling.
And it’s time to go.
AppleApple’s Singer’s Theatre show, reprised for the home audience
Very serious production, as you can see. You can’t see the parents in stitches over the seriousness, though we tried to keep our faces straight. Fooey earned a walk-on role.
Spot the sick child
She slept in late after a restless night. She still has a fever, so I kept her home sick. But as soon as she got up, she saw the snow. She’s been playing outside for over an hour. I just peeked, and she’s working on turning the snow fort into a snowperson. Nope, make that snowpeople! “I made a snow angel, too.”
Making peace with the last-minute scramble
There is no snow. This is a photo from last week, when ever so briefly snow fell and stayed. Now it has rained for days. The wishful thinker in me imagines the piles of snow that would have accumulated between then and now had the temperature been lower, the possiblities for snow forts and snowmen and seasonal festiveness. The practical thinker in me says: Remember shovelling? And scraping the windshield? Remember bad drivers?
Ah, but remember the sound of the snow, the muffling effect, the crunch underfoot, remember crispy eyelashes after a long run.
This morning was one of those mornings when I spent about ten chaotic minutes wishing things could go more smoothly. The obvious every day things like: getting all of the children out the door, along with all of their possessions, and their homework completed. But maybe that last-minute flurry is just the way that it is and ever will be. Maybe I should apprciate all that we managed to accomplish this morning, despite the last-minute scramble.
– I swam 2.5km
– Kevin and Albus swam for half an hour (AppleApple was too exhausted from her multifaceted weekend to get up early)
– supper was started in the crockpot
– six people ate a healthy breakfast
– a load of laundry went into the machine
– Albus completed homework that was due last Wednesday and only discovered at 9pm last night (well, at least he did it; I hope there’s a lesson in there somewhere)
– Fooey practiced piano
– the after-school walk home was arranged
– everyone took their vitamins
– Fooey took her medicine (she’s on antibiotics for strep)
– I talked to FedEx to arrange couriering the page proofs to my publisher
– everyone except Fooey got out the door; most were even wearing appropriate footwear
– I remembered to call the school re Fooey’s absence today
– no one was late
And it wasn’t even 9am.
Is there a better way? It’s so tempting to think that there must be, that life can always be improved upon (and I’m not advocating staying in a rut of obviously wrong behavior). But maybe sometimes there actually isn’t a better way. Maybe sometimes I need to take a deep breath and gut through those ten minutes of chaos, and appreciate everything that is working.
The week in suppers
**Monday’s menu: Tandoori vegetable soup. Baked fish. Rice.
**Inspiration: This recipe in Saturday’s Globe and Mail. Except I used my own mixture of spices, threw it in the crockpot, and skipped the shrimp. I suspect the recipe would also make an excellent base for a fish stew, but my kids prefer their food options separate, so I baked the fish separately.
**Tuesday’s menu: Beans and rice and tortillas.
**Because: Easy and good.
**Totally lacking: A vegatable. Oops.
**Wednesday’s menu: Saag paneer. Baked potatoes.
**Because: Discovered a bag of russet potatoes in the cupboard. And a package of paneer. And some spinach! And threw them all together into one fantabulous meal.
**Thursday’s menu: Black bean chili in the crockpot. Cornbread (pictured above). Leftover rice. Retro-cabbage salad with broccoli and carrots.
**Because: Leftover beans + new vegetarian crockpot cookbook + slug of balsamic vinegar = really fabulous chili.
**Reviews: “I’ll take the cornbread in my lunch tomorrow, Mom.”
**Note to self: It might be time to double the batch of cornbread from an 8×8 pan to a 9×13 pan.
**Note to reader: In many instances, including this one, “retro” actually means “mayonnaise.”
**Friday’s menu: Leek and potato soup in the crockpot. Steamed broccoli. Biscuits.
**Because: Feeding MIL who loves leek and potato soup. Also, accumulation of excess leeks in fridge. Suspect they may be producing offspring. Generations of leeks! In my fridge!
**Sigh: I may be lactose intolerant. The biscuits were light, fluffy, and loaded with butter, and my stomach was heavy and puffy. This has been happening every time I eat butter! Life without butter? Throw me a lifejacket.
**Weekend kitchen accomplishments: Nary a one. Such is life.
**Vegetarian confession: I am craving meat! I almost ordered ten pounds of hamburger from our local food buying club. Somehow stopped myself. But I can’t wait for the turkey I’ve promised “the children” for Christmas day. The guilt!