Thanksgiving is one of the three days a year on which I do the cooking. I’m sure it’s a total coincidence that this morning my family is developing a treatment for a cooking show.
“I know! It’ll be called ‘Ms. Frazzle’!”
“Tagline: ‘This gravy isn’t my best.'”
This morning, two days after the photo above was taken and about a week after taking a spill on his bike, Huck burst into my studio at his usual sunrise moment and announced with excitement, “Mom, look! My leg is almost totally better!” He lifted the injured knee almost to his chin, Karate Kid-style, to demonstrate. “Now it only hurts when I do THIS!”
She may be thirteen now, but the puppydog eyes retain all their power
Yesterday I got on a housecleaning jag and without really meaning to, I found myself going full-throttle A Bowl Full of Lemons on the basement and laundry room. Except: as I told Scott later, during the laundry-room deep-clean I faced my most difficult parenting challenge yet. In nearly 24 years as a mother, I’ve never been put to the test quite like this.
Our laundry room is in the (finished) basement and has one small high-up window. When we moved in, the house had been professionally cleaned and was immaculate except for a spiderweb in that particular window—a large web, quite old, thickened with lint and age into a heavy cobweb the size of a saucer. No sign of a spider—the original webspinner was probably long gone—but we left the web just in case. Nearly two years and seven million loads of laundry later, the cobweb is the size of a cloth napkin. There’s no spider. There never was, not in our time.
But when Rilla saw me on a stool, vacuum hose in hand, she begged me to spare the cobweb.
I’d just finished hoovering up every speck of dust and lint from the rest of the room and I was all set to decobwebify that window. And wash it, even!
But Rilla implored. “For science!” Heh, she knows my weak spots.
So I gritted my teeth and left it. For now, I said ominously. She grinned, unfazed by my direful tone.
When Scott came home later, I told him the story.
“So you left it there?” he asked. “WHEW. That thing is cool.”
“That thing is the size of a wedding veil.”
“Like I said. Cool.”
Well, he does all the laundry, so I guess if he wants a year-round Halloween theme, he can have it.
(For the record, if I believed that old circus tent was still the home of a spider, I wouldn’t have needed any persuasion to leave it alone. No Aunt Sponge or Aunt Spiker here.)
Yesterday’s post sent me on a happy rabbit trail of reading other posts in my archives bearing the same “These People Crack Me Up” tag. My kids crack me up.
Some of the gems I found:
Disgruntled 3-year-old reporting on her big brother: “Mommy, he keeps telling me to knock it off! The ploblem is, I don’t want to knock it off.” (That IS a Ploblem, 2009)
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Huck: “Mommy, be prepared for me to shout, ‘It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas, woohoo!’ tomorrow morning. It will probably startle you.” (Early Warning System, 2015)
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“Mommy, whenever you’re not with me, I want you. I want to be with you all the time. At night when I’m sleeping, or when I’m cuddling—I always want you! Or else…I want candy.” (The Birthday Girl Tells It Like It Is, 2006)
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Me: Hey, looks like someone forgot to sweep up the dust pile.
Rose: Wasn’t me. I never sweep. (Exonerated, 2014)
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Huck: “I bet all the kids with this coloring book are doing this with their moms right now, too.”
(Yes, I melted.) (Huckisms, 2015)
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Meanwhile, Scott’s been sending me old photos from a cache he found. Mah babies! Funny and cute.
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I keep forgetting I set up an IFTTT to automatically save my Instagram posts as drafts here. I know it’s redundant for a few of you, but I worry about losing (eventually) things I post to platforms that aren’t my own. I have such an urge to archive everything.
In the comments of one of last week’s posts, my friend Chris shared his very smart strategy for dealing with all the stuff he’d posted to Facebook over the years:
Every day I went through the “On this day” page and deleted just about everything. After a year, I had dramatically cleaned up Facebook.
This is brilliant. I’m thinking of following Chris’s example, and capturing anything worth saving over here. There was a good one yesterday, a hilarious moment I’d totally forgotten about from when Huck was seven:
In my house this morning: a breadcrumb trail of Angry Birds cards leading from my bedroom, down the hall, through the kitchen, through the patio room, to the wide-open back door.
Me: “It’s freezing in here!”
Huck: “That’s what the trail is for. To show you what a cold day it is.”
I’m still laughing!
Feb 4, 2018. Wilshire Park, Portland, Oregon.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m scooping things up from Facebook memories.
Feb 3, 2009 (A couple of weeks after Huck was born)
Just said goodbye to my parents (sniffle) and now I’m alone, possibly for the first time, with my OH MY GOODNESS six children.
Feb 4, 2009
Off to a busy start. Speech therapy, piano, Journey North. Nothing like diving right in!
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Feb 3, 2010
This moment caught: 9yo sketching amaryllis, the 2 boys playing w/ trains. 11yo reading about B. Franklin. Teen reading Gulliver. 3yo sings.
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Jan 27, 2013
Kids tearing through the room, shrieking, swords aloft, while Scott softly strums the ukelele, singing sweetly: I Wanna Be Sedated
Feb 4, 2013
Aw, how cool is this? The Journey North Mystery Class coordinator wrote me to say thanks for sending so many new families their way. Thanks to YOU guys for joining the fun! You know who you are.
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Feb 3, 2014
In my statcounter this morning: search hits for “done with downton abbey” and “downton abbey season 4 not believable.”
Feb 3, 2014
Dear new lady in yoga today who said to me, “You’ll understand once you hit 30”: I LOVE YOU.
Feb 4, 2014
Sticky short film preview: “Exiled from the tropical paradise where they evolved, a tiny population of remarkable stick insects dodged extinction by hiding under a single windswept bush on the world’s tallest sea stack for 80 years. Thanks to a dedicated team of scientists they’re now living safely in captivity, but when can they go home?” (2020 note: I never did see the whole film. Must remember to look it up.)
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Feb 3, 2017
In the car on the way to piano lessons, there’s a heavy sigh from the backseat.
Rilla: Sometimes…sometimes I just wish I were a mantis shrimp.
Feb 4, 2017
Just read the 2009 NYT obit for Eleanor Perenyi. Have decided that being remembered as a “writer and deliciously opinionated amateur gardener” is a worthy life goal. I’m sure I have a book of horticulture essays in me somewhere.
Feb 4, 2017
This one’s too long to paste: a detailed note about books I was reading/half-reading after two frenzied months of reading Cybils YA Fiction nominees. “Books I have read 1-3 chapters of since January 1st, most of which I do mean to finish eventually.” (Note to self: would be fun to do an update of this post. Which ones did I actually finish?)
I’m in a weird place right now where reading is concerned. I do this sometimes–read the beginnings of too many things and find it hard to settle down to finish something. I could have read three books in the time I’ve been pinballing between a dozen.
I try to be patient with myself when this mood hits, once or twice a year. It’s very common for me to rebound from Cybils reading this way—that fierce two-month drive to read a staggering volume of books. It’s compounded this year by—oh, let’s just say by many factors unique to 2017.
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Feb 4, 2018
This one reminds me it’s time to visit Wilshire Park to see if these beauties are back in bloom. I’m guessing yes: we’ve got crocuses popping up all over the neighborhood.
Another delicious flashback from my FB memories. This was a mere three years ago, in February 2017, on a shopping run with Huck.
Topics covered during a six-minute drive to Trader Joe’s:
—Did it rain last night or is that condensation
—Wait, I thought “morning dew” meant poop
—Discussion of various spellings/meanings of do/dew/doo
—Ice/water/steam, water vapor, why condensation happens
—Is that guardrail crumpled from a car crashing into it
—Why are they called “action figures” instead of dolls
—Where do I think the monkey will be hidden this time
—Are peanut butter crackers sweets
—Sewing, pros and cons
—What to spend birthday money on: probably K’nex
—That bus is too long to be Steven’s
—Why does Steven ride the bus
—What does “qualifications” mean
—Qualifications for being on American Ninja Warrior
—Really nice job parking, mom.
