A Small Island of Order

Last winter the mess in the dining room reached critical mass. The dining room is always chaotic in the winter, for the very good reason that the dining room is the home of the woodstove. And all life centers around the woodstove in the winter. So the dining room gets cluttered with all reading material, mugs from coffee and tea, sweaters that have been taken off, and, most crucially, all the winter apparel.

The dining room door is the most-entered door in the house. This meant there was always a jumble of boots and hats and mittens and coats, COATS EVERYWHERE.

There is no closet in the dining room*. There are no hooks. Until last winter, there wasn't even a coat rack. We were just hanging our coats over the backs of the dining room table chairs when we came in.

This is not the tidiest look, to say the least.

Then we added in children and their coats and boots and hats and gloves and the dreaded bulky snowpants. In an attempt to control the mess, I got a coat rack, but we had too much even for a normal coat rack, and anyway the kids couldn't reach that high to get their own stuff.

And now Cubby has a backpack. 

TOO MUCH STUFF, HELLLLP.

I was determined to come up with a better system this winter than a big pile of crap next to the dining room door.

So I decided to cast the children and their crap into the front hall. 

I found a brand-new floor mat that was mysteriously hiding under a rug and pulled it out to put in the little space next to the front stairs in the hall. I rescued an ancient shelf of mysterious origins but with handy hooks from its sad, cobwebby home in the shed, scrubbed it off, and then got A. to paint and hang it for me.

Now I'm in the process of training the children to enter through the front door and stash all their junk in that little spot in the front hall. It's an uphill battle, and I'm sure it will get somewhat messy as the weather deteriorates and the outdoor apparel multiplies, but for now . . .

Order has been established. Temporarily.

(I need to get some little boxes or something to put on the shelf and corral the mittens, gloves, and hats. Eventually.)

* There are no closets anywhere in the older part of the house, because old houses were not built with closets. Ever. Keep this in mind should you someday be swept away in the romance of living in a very old home: You will have nowhere convenient to put your shoes. It's not actually very romantic to be tripping over shoes by the door all the time.

This Art Brought To You by Cubby and a Camera

A few weeks ago, Cubby commandeered the camera and the results are surprisingly artistic.

Okay, so really they're just mostly strangely angled and weird, but we'll go with artistic.

Here we have an artistic action shot:

The surprise photo is pretty much the only kind of photo we can get of Charlie.

And an artistic view of the living room and library:

Carefully framed, obviously.

And the most artistic of all:

Jack's station at an artistic angle and bathed in a celestial light.

I should let him have the camera more often. The results are pretty impressive, don't you think?

Splitting the Duties

A. took Cubby and Charlie to the lean-to in the gully for an overnight camping trip.

Looks like fun already.

That leaves me with just one boy.

And his gourd.

I definitely got the better end of this deal.

The Big Sigh of Relief

Last week when I went to pick Charlie up at preschool on Tuesday, the teacher informed me that they had found him crying in the bathroom, sobbing that he missed Mommy.

Huh. Kind of strange. He had so far not evidenced any separation anxiety with school (quite the opposite, actually). But the next day, same thing with the random tears in the middle of the morning.

Then Thursday morning came and he lost his mind when I started to leave. Sobbing, clutching, screaming after me when I tried to leave, the whole nine yards.

I stood upstairs (the school is in a church basement) for a full twenty minutes listening to him cry, waiting to see if the teachers thought I should take him home. One of them finally came up and told me it was my choice, that they could distract him eventually but if I wanted to, I could take him home with me.

I left him there. It was truly awful. Walking away from a desperately crying child is pretty much the cliche of a mother's heart breaking.

But I did it, because I really think he needs to be in school now and I knew if I caved, it would be even worse later.

The report when I picked him up was that he cried for quite awhile, but after one of the teachers read him many, many books, he finally calmed down.

His next school day was this past Tuesday. As soon as I announced it was time to go to school, the tears started. He went to the bathroom and put on his boots and got in the car, as I asked him to do, but he sobbed the whole time. He doesn't like school, he said. He misses me, he said. He doesn't like the Play Doh or the sandbox or the playground or the snacks.

He cried the whole way to drop off Cubby, the whole way into his school, the whole time I put on his slippers and made him wash his hands. And then I gave him a hug, unwrapped his clinging arms from my legs, and left.

Again with the heart breaking.

This time, though, the teacher said he got a hold of himself quickly and went right in to help make bread with everyone else.

Yesterday was a field trip to the apple orchard, which Jack and I attended, so there were no partings to worry about. But he still got teary whenever school was mentioned and repeated that he didn't like anything about school and missed me when he was there.

This morning he was a whole different kid. He was psyching himself up all morning, talking about how he's big now and can go to school. Talking about how he loves the Play Doh and the sandbox and the snacks. He put his shoes on and got in the car with nary a tear. When we got to Cubby's school to drop him off, Charlie announced, "Mommy, I'm used to school now."

And then we went right to his school, put on his slippers, washed his hands, and went into the snack room to cut up fruit for fruit salad. There was a small moment of hesitation when I quickly kissed him good-bye and bolted, but he was led to the table by a teacher and was fine.

As A. said when I called to tell him (I had to share my relief about it with someone), "Well, Charlie's kind of an all-or-nothing guy."

I can't tell you how relieved I am that this morning it was nothing. And I sincerely hope that nothing is what we get from here on out.

Like the Brady Bunch, but with Turkeys

We got a delivery of heating oil today, our first of the season, and Charlie wanted to go out to see the truck. He of course said hi to the driver when the man started to pump out the oil, and that is when I discovered our oil delivery man is exceedingly loquacious.

I learned the following things about him: He lives on a very windy hill overlooking a lake that is not very near to ours. He has chickens, turkeys, goats, and cows. One of the cows--name of Lola--escapes every morning and comes to the back door to say hello. He takes the turkeys to some processing place kind of far away where they do all the butchering and plucking and all for only three dollars a bird.

And he and his second wife have, between them, nine children. Four boys, five girls, and the oldest is nineteen years old.

Can you imagine the scene at that house? Children, poultry, goats, and cows all over the place? Craziness. But extremely entertaining, no doubt.

The Happiest Surprise

When I was little and we would visit my grandparents in New Orleans, we would sometimes be there when Norman's fig tree was bearing fruit. Norman was the next-door neighbor, and the fig tree was right on the property line, so there were figs all over the place. Norman didn't mind sharing. There were far too many figs for him to eat by himself, anyway.

Thus began a lifelong love of fresh figs.

Unfortunately, fresh figs are hard to find unless you grow your own, as my parents do now in Tucson. Also unfortunately, figs do not appreciate our climate. The MiL one time got a cold-hardy variety of fig that we kept in a pot. I think we got a dozen figs from it. Then the pot it was in broke and we planted it in a sheltered spot in the garden.

That winter was particularly brutal and the fig was not cold-hardy enough. Dead fig. Sadness.

But someone around here has had a lot more success with fig trees, because when I stopped at the very small farmers market in the village on my way back from the dump this morning, I spied figs hidden way behind some very exuberant kale. (All kale is far too exuberant, in my opinion.) Several small boxes, and two varieties.

One of the varieties was the standard brown turkey fig--the only fig I have so far had any experience with--and the other was a yellowish-green. The lady selling them didn't even know what kind it was, but she thought maybe it was the same as the kind they use to make Fig Newtons.

Did you know they use yellow figs to make Fig Newtons? Me neither. The things you can learn on a random Saturday morning.

So now I have two boxes of fresh figs. And that makes me happy.

The Tidying Outliers

A few months ago, I was seeing this little book that somehow totally took over the Internet: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Perhaps you've heard of it?

Thought so.

I needed to see for myself what all the excitement (dare I say obsession?) was about, so I checked it out at the library and read it.

And then I called bullshit.

Not on the premise that people need to get rid of stuff. Most people do. Including me. But I called bullshit on it because it is not applicable to everyone. Not even close.

If you want to live in a sterile apartment and do nothing but go to work and, I don't know, stare at your TV when you're home, get on that tidying up method. If you live alone, or with one other rational adult? It's probably perfect for you. Even if you live in a nice, modern suburban home and have a nice, modern suburban life (as I used to), it would probably work really well. And has for a lot of people.

But if you live in the country with three insane boy-children, two other adults with varying interests--one of whom is an enormous man with enormous clothing--in a climate that requires multiple wardrobes and equipment for the change of seasons, plus dogs, ducks, and a cat . . . well, I'm afraid Marie Kondo would not know what the hell to make of Blackrock.

We need tools. We need snowshoes and utility sleds and snow shovels. We need building materials. We need lots of changes of outdoor apparel for the children (and ourselves). We need a lot of STUFF.

Yes. Need. That's what I said, and that's what I mean. To live the life we choose to live, we need things. More things than will fit in an apartment in Tokyo, for damn sure.

I am the opposite of a hoarder. That happens when you grow up in a military family and move every three years. Packing boxes so frequently makes you very conscious of what is worth shipping three thousand miles. Throwing things out brings me great peace, and I do it with some frequency, but Marie Kondo's tidying just doesn't work here.

Though I think it would be pretty amusing to have the lady herself show up and try to apply her principals to Blackrock.