One of the best conversations I have had this month was with 4-year-old Ellen. While visiting our house, she noticed a coloring page Liam had made that was hanging on the wall in our kitchen.
Ellen: “Hey, I know who that is! Martin Luther King!”
Me: “Why is he famous?”
Ellen: “He had dreams.”
Me: “What were his dreams about?”
Ellen: “Love.”
Happy Hump Day.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
A Note from the Laundry Maven
My inside-out-fix-it-yourself system has been compromised. This morning, pulling clothes out of the dryer, I discovered a suspicious number of shirts had one sleeve inside-out and one right-side out. The same was true for jeans. It's too awkward to fold and hang clothes like this.
I'm righting the inside-outs... should I be wronging the right-side outs??
I'm righting the inside-outs... should I be wronging the right-side outs??
Saturday, January 21, 2012
The Laundry Maven
The writer is in the house...and the house desperately needs the laundry maven.
The writer, looking for time to scoop up as her own, has been negotiating with the laundry maven. The writer believes she can cope with laundry by doing a load every other day.
When I opened Liam’s jean drawer on Wednesday morning, it was empty.
“You did the wrong load on Monday!” shrieks the laundry maven. That woman is downright crazy.
But I KNOW there is a pair of clean jeans here because Tuesday night I asked Liam to fold his jeans and put them in the drawer. We are trying hard to break the wear-it-once mode. The maven questioned Liam. He was clueless and confused and not concerned. “They are not in your drawer!” accused the laundry maven. We both looked and could find them nowhere – not in the dirty clothes basket, not on beds, not in the wrong drawer. We scrambled to the “wrinkled” basket and found a pair of sweats.
Anticipating the writer’s long overdue return, the laundry maven had been working overtime: First moving her mindset from having toddlers to having capable 6- & 8- year-old boys, then delegating responsibilities. The art of changing sheets can be enjoyed by the entire family, with the help of Bill’s long arms for beds against walls. The challenge of inside out clothes has been handled accordingly: However it goes into the wash is how it returns clean. The crew needed tips on handling inside out shirts, jeans, and underwear, but after a few practice sessions on solving these puzzles, it’s working with only occasionally tags on the outside.
After the Wednesday morning school shuffle, the maven returns to determine the most advantageous load of laundry.
Oh my dear lord, she can’t see the floor in the laundry room. Walking on the mounds, toward the washer, she begins the double sort. With Liam’s eczema, the boys’ clothes need to be washed separately without Downy. This doubles the number of loads to go through one cycle of Doing Laundry.
She digs through the bins. Grown-up jeans sorted on top of boy jeans! The mysteries of her world begin to unravel as she lifts the lid to toss in the boy jeans. But there’s a spun-out wet load in there. Sighing, she takes the headband from her jeans and pulls her hair back into a ponytail; then she mechanically opens the dryer to help the wet load continue its journey. Behind door #2 is a load of dry wrinkled clothes – boys’ darks. Translated, that means ten shirts and 300 little dark blue socks. Since it’s already wrinkled, it can easily be dumped into a laundry basket.
Honestly, why would she expect an empty laundry basket to be in the laundry room? The maven hand-carries the load to the guest bed and finds her way back to the laundry room by following a trail of little blue socks. At last, both machines are happily whirring away.
The laundry maven must retire as the chess club organizer needs to get to school. The laundry maven hands her a pair of sweatpants. “Remember? Will has karate before chess and you couldn’t find any sweatpants this morning.”
After chess, I herd the boys’ out of Will’s classroom and eye a rumpled pair of jeans lying in the middle of the floor. I recognize them as belonging to the Malcolm household. I snag the jeans and the laundry maven proudly smiles at my discovery. She does not like missing clothes. While the boys settle in the van, she picks up the jeans, turns them right-side out, and holds them up to fold them.
She’s stunned. Dazed. Confused. “Will… where did you get these?”
“I took them out of Liam’s drawer this morning. There weren’t any in my drawer.” The maven belly laughs and shakes her head, delighted that he is such a resourceful 8-year-old.
At home that night, the exhausted laundry maven hands the writer her pencil and journal. The writer looks at the blank page not knowing where to start.
The writer, looking for time to scoop up as her own, has been negotiating with the laundry maven. The writer believes she can cope with laundry by doing a load every other day.
When I opened Liam’s jean drawer on Wednesday morning, it was empty.
“You did the wrong load on Monday!” shrieks the laundry maven. That woman is downright crazy.
But I KNOW there is a pair of clean jeans here because Tuesday night I asked Liam to fold his jeans and put them in the drawer. We are trying hard to break the wear-it-once mode. The maven questioned Liam. He was clueless and confused and not concerned. “They are not in your drawer!” accused the laundry maven. We both looked and could find them nowhere – not in the dirty clothes basket, not on beds, not in the wrong drawer. We scrambled to the “wrinkled” basket and found a pair of sweats.
Anticipating the writer’s long overdue return, the laundry maven had been working overtime: First moving her mindset from having toddlers to having capable 6- & 8- year-old boys, then delegating responsibilities. The art of changing sheets can be enjoyed by the entire family, with the help of Bill’s long arms for beds against walls. The challenge of inside out clothes has been handled accordingly: However it goes into the wash is how it returns clean. The crew needed tips on handling inside out shirts, jeans, and underwear, but after a few practice sessions on solving these puzzles, it’s working with only occasionally tags on the outside.
After the Wednesday morning school shuffle, the maven returns to determine the most advantageous load of laundry.
Oh my dear lord, she can’t see the floor in the laundry room. Walking on the mounds, toward the washer, she begins the double sort. With Liam’s eczema, the boys’ clothes need to be washed separately without Downy. This doubles the number of loads to go through one cycle of Doing Laundry.
She digs through the bins. Grown-up jeans sorted on top of boy jeans! The mysteries of her world begin to unravel as she lifts the lid to toss in the boy jeans. But there’s a spun-out wet load in there. Sighing, she takes the headband from her jeans and pulls her hair back into a ponytail; then she mechanically opens the dryer to help the wet load continue its journey. Behind door #2 is a load of dry wrinkled clothes – boys’ darks. Translated, that means ten shirts and 300 little dark blue socks. Since it’s already wrinkled, it can easily be dumped into a laundry basket.
Honestly, why would she expect an empty laundry basket to be in the laundry room? The maven hand-carries the load to the guest bed and finds her way back to the laundry room by following a trail of little blue socks. At last, both machines are happily whirring away.
The laundry maven must retire as the chess club organizer needs to get to school. The laundry maven hands her a pair of sweatpants. “Remember? Will has karate before chess and you couldn’t find any sweatpants this morning.”
After chess, I herd the boys’ out of Will’s classroom and eye a rumpled pair of jeans lying in the middle of the floor. I recognize them as belonging to the Malcolm household. I snag the jeans and the laundry maven proudly smiles at my discovery. She does not like missing clothes. While the boys settle in the van, she picks up the jeans, turns them right-side out, and holds them up to fold them.
She’s stunned. Dazed. Confused. “Will… where did you get these?”
“I took them out of Liam’s drawer this morning. There weren’t any in my drawer.” The maven belly laughs and shakes her head, delighted that he is such a resourceful 8-year-old.
At home that night, the exhausted laundry maven hands the writer her pencil and journal. The writer looks at the blank page not knowing where to start.
2011 Recapped
I felt a wisp of hair get caught in my eyebrow at the beach in May, pulled my hair into a tiny ponytail for my birthday in July on Mt. Rushmore, and felt a curl settle on my collar bone while riding a double decker bus in London at Christmas time. I love having hair. 2011 was a good year.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The Red-Toed Crab
April 16th marked my first year away from breast cancer treatment. The day passed rather unceremoniously. Then another date appeared on the horizon. May 25th, the date of my second mammogram since “all that.”
Despite my attempts to just keep it as an appointment on the calendar, it burrowed right under my skin and sat at the base of any rational thought I attempted to maintain. And it fed those ridiculous irrational thoughts as well.
I had chemo to kill any tiny cancer cell circulating. I had radiation to kill those that might be lingering in my breast. I’m on the 5-year aromatase inhibitor plan; the test drug that eats the estrogen that fed my kind of breast cancer. But the other breast… could another type spring up on the other side?
A mammogram won’t pick up anything; it’s a formality because I’m an MRI girl. Before an MRI is when I should shake and spin. Not now.
Have I done all that I can for Will, Liam, and Bill? If I’m gone, I want some sort of stability in their daily lives. For the boys to move through the days confidently. At school. At swimming and gymnastics. To love reading more than playing Wii. To get dirty playing outside. What more can I do?
Tuesday, the day before the mammogram, I had a quick pedicure with a friend. Red hot toes are ready for summer. But when I put them up on a chair and looked at them – they were the same toes I remember from June 2009. Sitting in my friend’s hammock waiting for her to return from a walk with the boys. I had my doctor’s appointment and she took care of the boys for me. Leaving that appointment, I knew. And, in that hammock looking upward beyond my toes, it was my first pissy conversation with God. “So this is it, huh? You are putting THIS in my path?” I left the hammock with a strangely confident, pissed-off attitude. It matched my red toes. Perhaps matching the crab shell I was born into, like a suit of armor. I saw the boys coming up the sidewalk, and I left the hammock hissing, “Try it. Just try to pierce this.”
Last Wednesday, tempting fate, my red toes marched me into the compression chamber. Although a tight squeeze, it wasn’t painful. However, the tech said if I got a call to come back it wouldn’t be for lack of compression! I looked in the mirror after I took off the dreaded blue Johnny to see the skin on my chest was a lighter shade of the color on my toes.
Friday afternoon I got the all-clear call while waiting in the hallway at gymnastics. “When does this get easier?” I asked the bearer of good news; the same person I had talked to the day before to say, “This is working on me. I can’t wait for the letter; please call me when you get the results.” She said it would get better with time.
Since in public, the crab didn’t crumble at the news. Although I wanted to share it with my new gymnastic-mom friends, I held back because the bigness of an OK mammogram… well, verbalizing probably would make me cry. Took a deep breath and blew out those daunting thoughts that had been rumbling since the turning of the April page on my calendar, since I had an inescapable dream two weeks ago that I had to have chemo again; since a “hot” spot was found on a friend’s lung a week ago. All that sat more thinly veiled than I realized through every meeting at school this month; behind every laugh with friends; next to me every night while reading books to my boys.
Ack… Yuck… Enough.
Onward as a red-toed crab dressed for summer. Keeping the uncertainty at bay – at least until the flip of the October calendar page, revealing a November MRI.
Despite my attempts to just keep it as an appointment on the calendar, it burrowed right under my skin and sat at the base of any rational thought I attempted to maintain. And it fed those ridiculous irrational thoughts as well.
I had chemo to kill any tiny cancer cell circulating. I had radiation to kill those that might be lingering in my breast. I’m on the 5-year aromatase inhibitor plan; the test drug that eats the estrogen that fed my kind of breast cancer. But the other breast… could another type spring up on the other side?
A mammogram won’t pick up anything; it’s a formality because I’m an MRI girl. Before an MRI is when I should shake and spin. Not now.
Have I done all that I can for Will, Liam, and Bill? If I’m gone, I want some sort of stability in their daily lives. For the boys to move through the days confidently. At school. At swimming and gymnastics. To love reading more than playing Wii. To get dirty playing outside. What more can I do?
Tuesday, the day before the mammogram, I had a quick pedicure with a friend. Red hot toes are ready for summer. But when I put them up on a chair and looked at them – they were the same toes I remember from June 2009. Sitting in my friend’s hammock waiting for her to return from a walk with the boys. I had my doctor’s appointment and she took care of the boys for me. Leaving that appointment, I knew. And, in that hammock looking upward beyond my toes, it was my first pissy conversation with God. “So this is it, huh? You are putting THIS in my path?” I left the hammock with a strangely confident, pissed-off attitude. It matched my red toes. Perhaps matching the crab shell I was born into, like a suit of armor. I saw the boys coming up the sidewalk, and I left the hammock hissing, “Try it. Just try to pierce this.”
Last Wednesday, tempting fate, my red toes marched me into the compression chamber. Although a tight squeeze, it wasn’t painful. However, the tech said if I got a call to come back it wouldn’t be for lack of compression! I looked in the mirror after I took off the dreaded blue Johnny to see the skin on my chest was a lighter shade of the color on my toes.
Friday afternoon I got the all-clear call while waiting in the hallway at gymnastics. “When does this get easier?” I asked the bearer of good news; the same person I had talked to the day before to say, “This is working on me. I can’t wait for the letter; please call me when you get the results.” She said it would get better with time.
Since in public, the crab didn’t crumble at the news. Although I wanted to share it with my new gymnastic-mom friends, I held back because the bigness of an OK mammogram… well, verbalizing probably would make me cry. Took a deep breath and blew out those daunting thoughts that had been rumbling since the turning of the April page on my calendar, since I had an inescapable dream two weeks ago that I had to have chemo again; since a “hot” spot was found on a friend’s lung a week ago. All that sat more thinly veiled than I realized through every meeting at school this month; behind every laugh with friends; next to me every night while reading books to my boys.
Ack… Yuck… Enough.
Onward as a red-toed crab dressed for summer. Keeping the uncertainty at bay – at least until the flip of the October calendar page, revealing a November MRI.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Dear 1:15 on Monday
First, I hope you are reading this. Second, please don’t be offended.
With tomorrow being May 1st, I turned the calendar page to start filling in the boxes. It’s pretty much a blank slate right now, but I know I don’t have that much freedom. I’m writing in the weekly events that will continue right through to June 17th, the last day of school. There’s some comfort in knowing what the weeks will look like until then. Until all hell breaks loose – in a good way – for summer. What camps are the boys going to? Should we just have an old-fashioned summer instead of all that scheduled entertainment? Shall we have more days like today: With friends here overnight last night, we made smores and then they stayed up late giggling, thinking I wouldn’t hear. And I decided not to hear. I closed my door. This morning all four of them were up early and outside at 8 a.m. spraying silly string and painting a banner and reading on a blanket. Dare we let summer just happen?
I digress. At 1:15 on Mondays, I have no standing obligation. And on my calendar in the May 2nd box are all of my normal morning responsibilities with time and title. But then in the middle of that day’s box: “1:15.” Period. No description of who I’m supposed see or where I’m supposed to be. I hate seeing that and other than a futile brain racking for the next 72 hours, I can do absolutely nothing about it.
If we emailed about 1:15 on Monday, it’s quite possible that email no longer exists. I found Liam last week closing out my email, “Just click on the X in the corner, right Mom?” Yikes, I’m unsure what else got X’d out. And late one night last week, I was cleaning out my inbox and the delete button got stuck. Perhaps a little yogurt from the fingers of my little closer.
1:15, I hope you are reading this and respond. Or, when you call at 1:30 on Monday wondering where I am, I hope we are good enough friends that you forgive this oversight that is bugging the heck out of me.
With tomorrow being May 1st, I turned the calendar page to start filling in the boxes. It’s pretty much a blank slate right now, but I know I don’t have that much freedom. I’m writing in the weekly events that will continue right through to June 17th, the last day of school. There’s some comfort in knowing what the weeks will look like until then. Until all hell breaks loose – in a good way – for summer. What camps are the boys going to? Should we just have an old-fashioned summer instead of all that scheduled entertainment? Shall we have more days like today: With friends here overnight last night, we made smores and then they stayed up late giggling, thinking I wouldn’t hear. And I decided not to hear. I closed my door. This morning all four of them were up early and outside at 8 a.m. spraying silly string and painting a banner and reading on a blanket. Dare we let summer just happen?
I digress. At 1:15 on Mondays, I have no standing obligation. And on my calendar in the May 2nd box are all of my normal morning responsibilities with time and title. But then in the middle of that day’s box: “1:15.” Period. No description of who I’m supposed see or where I’m supposed to be. I hate seeing that and other than a futile brain racking for the next 72 hours, I can do absolutely nothing about it.
If we emailed about 1:15 on Monday, it’s quite possible that email no longer exists. I found Liam last week closing out my email, “Just click on the X in the corner, right Mom?” Yikes, I’m unsure what else got X’d out. And late one night last week, I was cleaning out my inbox and the delete button got stuck. Perhaps a little yogurt from the fingers of my little closer.
1:15, I hope you are reading this and respond. Or, when you call at 1:30 on Monday wondering where I am, I hope we are good enough friends that you forgive this oversight that is bugging the heck out of me.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Uncovering the Real England: Roasted Potatoes
(Written February 2010)
Regularly a part of an English dinner, roasted potatoes are crackly and perfectly browned on the outside and soft on the inside. I make roasted vegetables at home. I collect a variety of hardy root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips. Then I cube them into my big 60’s barely-yellow mixing bowl, drizzle enough olive oil on to cover them, add salt and pepper – and maybe a little fresh chopped rosemary – and roast them in a 400+ degree oven. After fifteen minutes, I flip them so they roast evenly. They are OK, but they never come out with that great English crunch covering.
Last night I was keeping Anne company in the kitchen while she was making dinner. Steak and kidney pie (steak and mushroom for me), roasted potatoes and parsnips, carrots, green beans, and gravy. We were just waiting on the roasted potatoes. I hadn’t seen the beginning of the process, so I asked Anne exactly what she had done. Anne explained that she had peeled the potatoes, cut them in half, and parboiled them for five minutes. Then she put them in the roasting pan with fat. I hovered to watch the roasting process, looking for the secret of why mine weren’t English. After several minutes in the oven, Anne checked on them. She pulled the pan out, tilted it to one side, and spooned fat from the gully at the bottom of the pan over the potatoes.
Stateside Problem #1: I never use that much oil.
We had a brief chat about the difficulty of really getting them roasted properly because there is usually something else in the oven that can’t take the temperature that proper roasted vegetables need. (My thought: make pot roast in the crock pot and roast veggies in the oven – that would work.) I glanced at the counter and saw an open empty can. Anne followed my eyes. “Ahhh, and that is supposed to be the very best for roasted veg. Goose fat.” A whole can of goose fat was crisping up those spuds in the oven.
Stateside Problem #2: No cans of goose fat at my grocery store.
I had an extra helping of Anne’s English roasted potatoes last night, knowing I won’t – and probably shouldn’t – replicate them at home.
Regularly a part of an English dinner, roasted potatoes are crackly and perfectly browned on the outside and soft on the inside. I make roasted vegetables at home. I collect a variety of hardy root vegetables: potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips. Then I cube them into my big 60’s barely-yellow mixing bowl, drizzle enough olive oil on to cover them, add salt and pepper – and maybe a little fresh chopped rosemary – and roast them in a 400+ degree oven. After fifteen minutes, I flip them so they roast evenly. They are OK, but they never come out with that great English crunch covering.
Last night I was keeping Anne company in the kitchen while she was making dinner. Steak and kidney pie (steak and mushroom for me), roasted potatoes and parsnips, carrots, green beans, and gravy. We were just waiting on the roasted potatoes. I hadn’t seen the beginning of the process, so I asked Anne exactly what she had done. Anne explained that she had peeled the potatoes, cut them in half, and parboiled them for five minutes. Then she put them in the roasting pan with fat. I hovered to watch the roasting process, looking for the secret of why mine weren’t English. After several minutes in the oven, Anne checked on them. She pulled the pan out, tilted it to one side, and spooned fat from the gully at the bottom of the pan over the potatoes.
Stateside Problem #1: I never use that much oil.
We had a brief chat about the difficulty of really getting them roasted properly because there is usually something else in the oven that can’t take the temperature that proper roasted vegetables need. (My thought: make pot roast in the crock pot and roast veggies in the oven – that would work.) I glanced at the counter and saw an open empty can. Anne followed my eyes. “Ahhh, and that is supposed to be the very best for roasted veg. Goose fat.” A whole can of goose fat was crisping up those spuds in the oven.
Stateside Problem #2: No cans of goose fat at my grocery store.
I had an extra helping of Anne’s English roasted potatoes last night, knowing I won’t – and probably shouldn’t – replicate them at home.
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